This book. This book. I saw the announcement about the new Jurassic London anthology Irregularity earlier this week, and got properly excited because, well, did you see the table of contents? But, for some reason, I hadn’t noticed the cover. And then I did. Did you see that cover? I am reduced to incoherent birb speak.
Here’s all the info from Jurassic London‘s website:
Irregularity is about the tension between order and chaos in the 17th and 18th centuries. Men and women from all walks of life dedicated themselves to questioning, investigating, classifying and ordering the natural world. They promoted scientific thought, skepticism and intellectual rigour in the face of superstition, intolerance and abuses of power. These brave thinkers dedicated themselves and their lives to the idea that the world followed rules that human endeavour could uncover… but what if they were wrong?
Irregularity is about the attempts to impose man’s order on nature’s chaos, the efforts both successful and unsuccessful to better know the world.
Fom John Harrison to Ada Lovelace, Isaac Newton to Émilie du Châtelet, these stories showcase the Age of Reason in a very different light.
This anthology is published to coincide with two exhibitions at the National Maritime Museum taking place in 2014: a major exhibition on the story of the quest for longitude at sea and a steampunk show at the Royal Observatory. The Museum is also our partner for the publication of Irregularity, including access to their archives for materials, imagery and inspiration.
Click below for the full Table of Contents.
CONTENTS:
- “Fairchild’s Folly” by Tiffani Angus
- “A Game Proposition” by Rose Biggin
- “Footprint” by Archie Black
- “A Woman Out of Time” by Kim Curran
- “The Heart of Aris Kindt” by Richard de Nooy
- “An Experiment in the Formulae of Thought” by Simon Guerrier
- “Irregularity” by Nick Harkaway
- “Circulation” by Roger Luckhurst
- “The Voyage of the Basset” by Claire North
- “The Assassination of Isaac Newton by the Coward Robert Boyle” by Adam Roberts
- “Animalia Paradoxa” by Henrietta Rose-Innes
- “The Last Escapement” by James Smythe
- “The Darkness” by M. Suddain
- “The Spiders of Stockholm” by E. J. Swift
Afterword by Sophie Waring and Richard Dunn, Head of Science and Technology at Royal Museums Greenwich
Illustrations by Gary Northfield and the National Maritime Museum
Cover by Howard Hardiman
Edited by Jared Shurin
Irregularity will be available on July 24th, 2014 from Jurassic London.
Far Beyond Reality 
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