Under The Microscope

BLINDED BY THE LIGHT -- The Secret Life of the Sun, by John Gribben; Bantam Press 1991; 226 pages; $39.95

It is psychologically unsettling to live eight minutes away from a thermonuclear reaction, under that label or any other.

Humankind's efforts to grapple with the big question -- what is going on in the Sun? -- and its efforts to clear the answers with the theocracy of the day make for brilliant journalism.

From 500 BC to the present day, the science concerning the Sun has been improving. Gribben does not mock honest effort, but the struggle to understand is, in hindsight, sometimes hilarious. More predictably and less amusingly, the religious reaction was sometimes savage. It is a comfort that the scientific method seems recently to have prevailed, although a few days ago a creationist interviewed on the National Programme assured us that it has not.

John Gribben is an excellent journalist, who has written for The Times, The Guardian, New Scientist, and the BBC. He's won awards for previous books on Schroedinger's cat, the DNA double helix, and the Big Bang.

One must come to terms with mergers in the publishing industry as Britain joins Europe for 1992 and as the Americans buy a share. Gribben's own notes in the bibliography, splendidly complete, cannot always say precisely by whom any book is now published. This Bantam is a handsome hardback, English, not American, and is quite different from the cheap paperbacks that shed leaves everywhere.

Ken McAllister