I’ve spent my career with my students exploring microbes in all kinds of worlds, from cosmetics on our skin to the glaciers of Antarctica. In Antarctica, I discovered bizarre bacteria that form giant red blobs; we call them the “red nose” life form. In our lab at Kenyon College, we isolated new microbes from a student’s beauty blenders. These experiences, and those of the books I list here, inspire the microbial adventures of my science fiction. If microbes could talk, how would they deal with us? Find out in my novel, Brain Plague. And I hope you enjoy all the microbial tales on this list!
The air we breathe and the water we drink are wild with microbes! This book tells amazing true tales about the personal microbes in our home, and how a space station lacked important microbes because no astronaut was female.
I love how some experiments failed the first time, but then revealed amazing finds. The same epidemiology that showed the cause of cholera now reveals “diseases of absence” of the microbes we need to protect us from asthma and food allergies. And our best drinking water contains microscopic crustaceans.
I learned so much about our body’s live-in microbes.
The old saying that you can “feel it in your gut” is true. Our gut microbiome (community of microbes) is part of our brain!
Our own bacteria tell us to eat sugar so they can digest it. Bacteria in our intestines make our neurotransmitters that prevent depression and Parkinsonism. They make short-chain fatty acids that strengthen our immune system and endocrine organs.
Now, doctors are developing “psychobiotic” microbes like Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus to treat anxiety and other disorders. This research inspired my science fiction about microbial aliens in the brain.
"A friendly, interesting, and up-to-date read on the science of the microbiome and the brain" - Psychology Today
"Compelling, engaging, and informative, this book teaches us why microbes may affect all of our decisions" - Jack Gilbert Ph.D., co-author of Dirt Is Good
MEET YOUR MICROBES
Written by the leading researchers in the field, this information-rich guide to improving your mood explains how gut health drives psychological well-being, and how depression and anxiety can be relieved by adjusting your intestinal bacteria. This groundbreaking book explains the revolutionary new science of psychobiotics and the discovery that your brain health and state…
Besides microbes, what other kind of minds could be alien to ours—yet communicate with us?
In this book, a lonely woman, Tova, who cleans aquariums, finds an escaping octopus named Marcellus. The octopus reveals his own personality, his longing for diverse fare such as cockles and abalone, and above all, his determination to return to the sea. Trying to help each other, Tova and the octopus embark on various adventures until each finds a surprising reward.
This unusual friendship of human and sea creature offered me a unique experience that will stay with me long after reading.
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK
'Full of heart and humour . . . I loved it.' Ruth Hogan
'Will stay with you for a long time.' Anstey Harris
'I defy you to put it down once you've started' Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night cleaner shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Ever since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat over thirty years ago keeping busy has helped her cope. One night she meets Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium who…
What if reproduction required people to mate with another species—creatures more alien than bacteria?
In this book, Lilith Iyapo awakes after a nuclear war to find her alien saviors expect just that. The alien Oankali are organisms whose cells modify their own genes to perfection. But their genes run short of diversity, until they are compelled to share genes with a population as alien to them as—humans.
This disturbing novel asks us how much of our own humanity would we trade for survival? Would I welcome a half-alien child if its monstrous traits cured cancer? A science fiction novel that made me imagine the biological dilemmas of gene exchange.
'One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century' JUNOT DIAZ
'Octavia Butler was playing out our very real possibilities as humans. I think she can help each of us to do the same' GLORIA STEINEM
One woman is called upon to reconstruct humanity in this hopeful, thought-provoking novel by the bestselling, award-winning author. For readers of Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison and Ursula K. Le Guin.
When Lilith lyapo wakes in a small white room with no doors or windows, she remembers a devastating war, and a husband and child long lost to her.
Liddy-Jean Marketing Queen and the Matchmaking Scheme
by
Mari SanGiovanni,
Introducing the irrepressible Liddy-Jean Carpenter, a young woman who has learning disabilities but also has a genius plan.
While Liddy-Jean spends her days doing minor office tasks with nobody paying attention, she sees how badly the wand-waving big boss treats the Marketing Department worker bees. So, she takes lots of…
This is the best novel I’ve read about bubonic plague.
Student historian Kivrin travels back in time to England of the Middle Ages—unknowingly at the start of the Black Death. The cause of Black Death was the plague bacteria, unknown to people of that time.
What makes the book memorable is its depiction of everyday life, where children who get lost in the forest must find their way home by the tolling of the village church bell. Ultimately, the bell tolls for all the plague’s victims.
The vivid characterization makes me experience people of a time so distant their minds feel alien to us, yet still deeply human.
"Ambitious, finely detailed and compulsively readable" - Locus
"It is a book that feels fundamentally true; it is a book to live in" - Washington Post
For Kivrin Engle, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing a bullet-proof backstory. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.
Suppose a million microbial aliens colonize your brain and offer to make you a genius? On the planet Valedon, a starving artist, Chrysoberyl, takes up this ultimate psychobiotic challenge. Chrys rules her microbes like a god, leading them to create masterworks of art and build extraordinary buildings, in a city of a hundred levels and cultures from many worlds.
But not all her microbial aliens are good. The bad ones invade her skull to control her with the neurotransmitter dopamine—an addictive plague. While her microbial genius takes the art world by storm, Chrys fights epic battles within her skull to save herself and her friends from the brain plague.
This is a multicultural epic fantasy with a diverse cast of characters. Sickly fifteen-year-old Prince Psal, the son of warrior-king Nahas, should have been named Crown Prince of all Wheel Clan lands. But his clan disdains the disabled.
When the mysterious self-moving towers that keep humans safe from the Creator's…
The Drum Tree explores an Earth equivalent world at the cusp of ecological and economic uncertainty through the discoveries and explorations of four exceptional teens and their families.
In this book, you will meet Delan—a drummer and forest wanderer, Hali—a dancer and free spirit, and Jase—a blacksmith and martial artist.…
