Thomas Söderqvist The LabLit.com-website is a “labor of love” website/netzine edited by Jennifer Rohn, who has worked for 15 years in virology, cell biology, cancer research and gene therapy and has, as she says “an incurable addiction to science-related literature”. The site is
“dedicated to real laboratory culture and to the portrayal and perceptions of that culture – science, scientists and labs – in fiction, the media and across popular culture. The site is intended for non-scientists as well as scientists, and the goal is to inform, entertain and surprise”.
It contains a great selection of features, essays, interviews and book reviews, and also an overview of novels, movies, plays and TV programs about laboratory life; there’s even a fledgling list of websites and blogs about laboratory literature and akin subjects. It is not about science fiction, but about literature dealing with laboratory science as it works today, the fiction counterpart of ‘science and technology studies’ (STS). To its credit it is apparently vacuum-cleaned for STS jargon — this is really a ‘labor of love’ site, not a ‘labor of suspicion’ site. Browse and enjoy!
(I should add that Jennifer Rohn has a short promotion article about the LabLit-phenomenon in Nature, vol. 439 (19 January 2006), p. 239. Also, the Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) blog has a post about it, with commentaries.)
