Frank Ryan's Blog - Posts Tagged "frank-ryan"
Major new title commission
July 2013.
I'm pleased to report that HarperCollins has commissioned a new title that could be seen as a sequel to Virolution. I received very large numbers of communications on the latter, many from scientists in a wide variety of disciplines. The new book is a major commission, in the sense the subject matter is a major one.
I hope to complete in eight months.
3 Jan 2014. I am now well into the book. Meanwhile I've co-authored a new paper with colleagues in Sweden that presents a new methodology for examining the expression of viral genes in human genome as proteins in human cells, tissues and organs.
See: open online access copy here
http://jrs.sagepub.com/content/early/...
Virolution
I'm pleased to report that HarperCollins has commissioned a new title that could be seen as a sequel to Virolution. I received very large numbers of communications on the latter, many from scientists in a wide variety of disciplines. The new book is a major commission, in the sense the subject matter is a major one.
I hope to complete in eight months.
3 Jan 2014. I am now well into the book. Meanwhile I've co-authored a new paper with colleagues in Sweden that presents a new methodology for examining the expression of viral genes in human genome as proteins in human cells, tissues and organs.
See: open online access copy here
http://jrs.sagepub.com/content/early/...
Virolution
Ann Rice loves Metamorphosis
Anne Rice, renowned US novelist, best known for her amazing Vampire Chronicles series, appears to love my humble book, The Mystery of Metamorphosis. Here's what she has to say:
"Let me share with you the book I'm reading today: The Mystery of Metamorphosis by Frank Ryan. In Ryan, I've found another brilliant science writer, like Nick Lane, who makes available to the scientifically challenged some insight into the magnificence and mysteries of biological life on this planet. This is just a wonderful book. If you have, as I do, a million questions about how catepillars become butterflies, and no science vocabulary to study it, well, this may be the book for you. This is beautifully written. A gem of a book."
See: https://www.facebook.com/annericefanpage
The Mystery of Metamorphosis: A Scientific Detective Story
"Let me share with you the book I'm reading today: The Mystery of Metamorphosis by Frank Ryan. In Ryan, I've found another brilliant science writer, like Nick Lane, who makes available to the scientifically challenged some insight into the magnificence and mysteries of biological life on this planet. This is just a wonderful book. If you have, as I do, a million questions about how catepillars become butterflies, and no science vocabulary to study it, well, this may be the book for you. This is beautifully written. A gem of a book."
See: https://www.facebook.com/annericefanpage
The Mystery of Metamorphosis: A Scientific Detective Story
Of Blues and books and Captain Beefheart
I’m in the sad process of winding down small press publishers, Swift Publishers, who published several bestsellers and two of the books I am most proud of. Tuberculosis: The Greatest Story Never Told (in the US The Forgotten Plague), which was one of three non-fiction Books of the Year for the New York Times, and my only contemporary novel, Taking Care of Harry.
I’m also in the process of converting the Protext version of the TB book into Word, in anticipation of preparing either a paperback or a kindle, or both. I don’t know how many it sold world-wide – it was translated into Chinese twice – but the UK (Swift) hardcover alone sold 22,000 copies. But we’re now down to the last 60 or so. A pity that the beautiful full colour pics will no longer be available either in paperback or Kindle. But I can’t really complain.
Meanwhile I’m taking a good hard look at Taking Care of Harry. I suppose that the usual custom is to give readers a glimpse of the beginnings of a book but I’m going to give you the final page instead. I do so partly because I want to hoist the standard here, as I did in the book, for Captain Beefheart’s Tarotplane as one of the great blues tracks, however surreal, of all time…
I am still standing there, with the tide now washing around my thighs, as the first false dawn is breaking. I can't feel my legs any more. I am floating on this gentle cloud of grief as a silvery light makes one of the horizon and the sea. I am confusing the light with the presence of the woman as she comes up to me without my asking her, gently, slowly, just as she entered my bedroom that night. That last occasion when I needed her.
'You're shivering, Mylie!'
'Yeah!' I hardly recognise my own voice because my teeth are chattering. Still riding the languid wave of my grief.
'You're freezing cold. You'll die of cold if you don't come out.'
Some time, during the hours I have been standing here in the slowly rising tide, I have found myself thinking about Captain Beefheart. About his relationship with Frank Zappa. About the fact they knew each other from way back, from when they were kids and they went to the same school.
When Zappa commissioned the Troutmask Replica album from Beefheart, he finished it in a three-hour take. Zappa couldn't believe he did that. So he started asking him questions. How could it be finished? It took a week, sometimes weeks, to complete an album. And Beefheart, with his deep, growly Western accent, said simply,
'It's over, Frank.'
You see it's all there in Beefheart's words. She understands, Pfion. I am only just beginning to grasp how musical she is. Maybe I've been humming, or singing, and I haven't noticed. But I read understanding in her eyes as she keeps looking at me like that. Asking without words if it is okay to join me. To come aboard the Tarot Plane. I reply with my eyes, equally wordlessly.
'You never finished it – your story.'
'What story is that?'
'Captain Beefheart.'
I smile, the ghost of a smile. 'I was talking crap. Don't pretend you were even listening.'
'It wasn't crap. And I was, I was listening.'
I hesitate, inviting her to prove it to me.
'He was prepared to look silly, if that was what it takes.'
'Takes for what?'
She smiles to herself. 'To set himself free.'
There is a moment's hesitation between us and then she astonishes me when she steals the music out of my head. She starts to hum it first and then to sing it, exactly where it is running in my mind, word for word, note for note. To sing it softly, with a hoarse kind of softness, this woman who has taken the battering you accept from life, so that I hear my song coming to my ears from her lips. It is coming to me from that distant place that is the meeting of worlds, the consummation of air and sky. It amazes me that she has remembered it perfectly from that single hearing, when I thought she wasn't listening.
Pfion is hugging me now. Rubbing my arms. Pulling me backwards, against the inertia of my stubborn legs.
I let her drape my arm around her shoulders, so she can support my flagging legs. I say, 'The last I heard of Captain Beefheart, he was a sick man, making a living as an artist in the Mojave Desert. You know what he said? Do you want to know what he said?'
'I want to know.'
When I lean over to kiss her, the kiss feels strange because my lips are numb. But she holds on to my kiss, so that our lips cling together a little longer, as if to remain in my memory a part of this bitter-sweet ecstasy that has enveloped me here in the water.
'He said that the difference between art and music is that art you can physically drown in while music you can mentally drown in.'
'Yeah, but what a way to drown!'
'Yeah!' I say.
Taking Care Of Harry
I’m also in the process of converting the Protext version of the TB book into Word, in anticipation of preparing either a paperback or a kindle, or both. I don’t know how many it sold world-wide – it was translated into Chinese twice – but the UK (Swift) hardcover alone sold 22,000 copies. But we’re now down to the last 60 or so. A pity that the beautiful full colour pics will no longer be available either in paperback or Kindle. But I can’t really complain.
Meanwhile I’m taking a good hard look at Taking Care of Harry. I suppose that the usual custom is to give readers a glimpse of the beginnings of a book but I’m going to give you the final page instead. I do so partly because I want to hoist the standard here, as I did in the book, for Captain Beefheart’s Tarotplane as one of the great blues tracks, however surreal, of all time…
I am still standing there, with the tide now washing around my thighs, as the first false dawn is breaking. I can't feel my legs any more. I am floating on this gentle cloud of grief as a silvery light makes one of the horizon and the sea. I am confusing the light with the presence of the woman as she comes up to me without my asking her, gently, slowly, just as she entered my bedroom that night. That last occasion when I needed her.
'You're shivering, Mylie!'
'Yeah!' I hardly recognise my own voice because my teeth are chattering. Still riding the languid wave of my grief.
'You're freezing cold. You'll die of cold if you don't come out.'
Some time, during the hours I have been standing here in the slowly rising tide, I have found myself thinking about Captain Beefheart. About his relationship with Frank Zappa. About the fact they knew each other from way back, from when they were kids and they went to the same school.
When Zappa commissioned the Troutmask Replica album from Beefheart, he finished it in a three-hour take. Zappa couldn't believe he did that. So he started asking him questions. How could it be finished? It took a week, sometimes weeks, to complete an album. And Beefheart, with his deep, growly Western accent, said simply,
'It's over, Frank.'
You see it's all there in Beefheart's words. She understands, Pfion. I am only just beginning to grasp how musical she is. Maybe I've been humming, or singing, and I haven't noticed. But I read understanding in her eyes as she keeps looking at me like that. Asking without words if it is okay to join me. To come aboard the Tarot Plane. I reply with my eyes, equally wordlessly.
'You never finished it – your story.'
'What story is that?'
'Captain Beefheart.'
I smile, the ghost of a smile. 'I was talking crap. Don't pretend you were even listening.'
'It wasn't crap. And I was, I was listening.'
I hesitate, inviting her to prove it to me.
'He was prepared to look silly, if that was what it takes.'
'Takes for what?'
She smiles to herself. 'To set himself free.'
There is a moment's hesitation between us and then she astonishes me when she steals the music out of my head. She starts to hum it first and then to sing it, exactly where it is running in my mind, word for word, note for note. To sing it softly, with a hoarse kind of softness, this woman who has taken the battering you accept from life, so that I hear my song coming to my ears from her lips. It is coming to me from that distant place that is the meeting of worlds, the consummation of air and sky. It amazes me that she has remembered it perfectly from that single hearing, when I thought she wasn't listening.
Pfion is hugging me now. Rubbing my arms. Pulling me backwards, against the inertia of my stubborn legs.
I let her drape my arm around her shoulders, so she can support my flagging legs. I say, 'The last I heard of Captain Beefheart, he was a sick man, making a living as an artist in the Mojave Desert. You know what he said? Do you want to know what he said?'
'I want to know.'
When I lean over to kiss her, the kiss feels strange because my lips are numb. But she holds on to my kiss, so that our lips cling together a little longer, as if to remain in my memory a part of this bitter-sweet ecstasy that has enveloped me here in the water.
'He said that the difference between art and music is that art you can physically drown in while music you can mentally drown in.'
'Yeah, but what a way to drown!'
'Yeah!' I say.
Taking Care Of Harry
The Viruses in You
I've written both popular books and many scientific papers on the contribution of endogenous retroviruses to human evolution. I'm pleased to report a new paper in which I acted as co-author with some leading figures in Sweden who are currently working on the Human Proteome.
More at www.fprbooks.com.
The new paper, which looks at the contribution of viral loci - in other words whole viral genomes that have inserted into and become a working part of the human chromosomes - to human proteins that play a physiological role in many different human tissues. They may also play a role in some important human diseases.
This type of research is relatively new with much that still needs to be carefully evaluated.
I teach this at Sheffield University Medical School and later this year will be giving a plenary lecture and other teaching to biology PhD students for the annual get together of the PhD group of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology.
I don't want to befuddle non-scientific visitors but the paper can be found here:
http://jrs.sagepub.com/content/early/...
Ordinary visitors who want to know more can get in touch with me. Scientific readers will easily get hold of the paper which is freely available on-line. I believe it's important not because of my contribution but because my Swedish colleagues have worked out a new methodology that may change the way we look at certain aspects of the human genome.
I would love to explain further. The importance applies to MS but may apply further. All you have to do is to ask.
Darwin's Blind Spot: Evolution Beyond Natural Selection
Virolution
More at www.fprbooks.com.
The new paper, which looks at the contribution of viral loci - in other words whole viral genomes that have inserted into and become a working part of the human chromosomes - to human proteins that play a physiological role in many different human tissues. They may also play a role in some important human diseases.
This type of research is relatively new with much that still needs to be carefully evaluated.
I teach this at Sheffield University Medical School and later this year will be giving a plenary lecture and other teaching to biology PhD students for the annual get together of the PhD group of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology.
I don't want to befuddle non-scientific visitors but the paper can be found here:
http://jrs.sagepub.com/content/early/...
Ordinary visitors who want to know more can get in touch with me. Scientific readers will easily get hold of the paper which is freely available on-line. I believe it's important not because of my contribution but because my Swedish colleagues have worked out a new methodology that may change the way we look at certain aspects of the human genome.
I would love to explain further. The importance applies to MS but may apply further. All you have to do is to ask.
Darwin's Blind Spot: Evolution Beyond Natural Selection
Virolution
Update on Virolution
I'd like to thank those people who have read this book, and Virus X before it. I'm pleased to report that the central thesis of both books, the concepts of viral symbiosis and its contribution to holobiontic genomic evolution, has been confirmed by some important new research by colleagues in Sweden involved in the prestigious Human Proteome Project. They did me the honour of including me in a keynote paper on the expression of viral genes in multiple human tissues - more at www.fprbooks.com.
I'm also pleased to inform those who might be interested that I am currently writing a sequel to Virolution that will be published reasonably soon by HarperCollins, who published both the previous books.
It's an exciting and stimulating challenge. I shall keep readers informed on Goodreads.
Virolution
I'm also pleased to inform those who might be interested that I am currently writing a sequel to Virolution that will be published reasonably soon by HarperCollins, who published both the previous books.
It's an exciting and stimulating challenge. I shall keep readers informed on Goodreads.
Virolution
The Mysterious World of the Human Genome
I have written a new book that might be of interest to people. The title is "The Mysterious World of the Human Genome”. It is aimed at a non-scientific reader and assumes no prior knowledge of DNA, genes, or any aspect of heredity in the reader. It will be published by Collins (HarperCollins) on June 5 2015. It covers in a light and reader-friendly way the evolution, entire structure and function of what makes us human. It begins with the discovery of DNA and runs right through to the modern age of personalised medicine.
I hope my friends here on Goodreads like it. Not long to wait now. I hope to put up the introduction as a free download on my website www.fprbooks.com.
The Mysterious World of the Human Genome
I hope my friends here on Goodreads like it. Not long to wait now. I hope to put up the introduction as a free download on my website www.fprbooks.com.
The Mysterious World of the Human Genome
US publisher for The Mysterious World
HarperCollins have sold the US rights for my new non-fiction, The Mysterious World of the Human Genome to Prometheus Books. Just a month to go before publication. Should be interesting to see public reaction since I begin with assumption my reader knows nothing whatsoever about DNA, genes, genomes, or the genetic engineering of the same.
About time I got my skates on with promotion and marketing.
Fingers crossed . . .
The Mysterious World of the Human Genome
About time I got my skates on with promotion and marketing.
Fingers crossed . . .
The Mysterious World of the Human Genome
First lecture on Mysterious World
I'm preparing a PowerPoint talk to a group of the Women's Institute on the theme of my new book, The Mysterious World of the Human Genome. It's kind of topical since, just a very short time ago, the human genome was deliberately engineered in a scientific experiment for the first time.
Our genome is at the very core of us. It makes us what we are - literally determines the meaning of the deep inviolable self. It controls our formation and development within the womb of our mothers. In the sense of what we call "the epigenetic" portion it continues to control and change us throughout our lives. It's about a lot more than just genes.
The question, then, is how do I explain something that is truly extraordinary but also potentially very complex in a book, or a lecture, to a non-scientific audience or readership. The answer is to keep to a plain and non-technical language. Oh -- but I also have a trick or two up my sleeve that will liberate the imagination of the readers or audience by enabling them to create a wonderful landscape they can travel through in their own imaginations. I literally invite them to step on board a magical ultramicroscopic steam train . . .
The Mysterious World of the Human Genome
Our genome is at the very core of us. It makes us what we are - literally determines the meaning of the deep inviolable self. It controls our formation and development within the womb of our mothers. In the sense of what we call "the epigenetic" portion it continues to control and change us throughout our lives. It's about a lot more than just genes.
The question, then, is how do I explain something that is truly extraordinary but also potentially very complex in a book, or a lecture, to a non-scientific audience or readership. The answer is to keep to a plain and non-technical language. Oh -- but I also have a trick or two up my sleeve that will liberate the imagination of the readers or audience by enabling them to create a wonderful landscape they can travel through in their own imaginations. I literally invite them to step on board a magical ultramicroscopic steam train . . .
The Mysterious World of the Human Genome
Virus X on kindle for first time
This is just to notify readers that Virus X, the book in which I began to take a novel look at viruses and their potential role in the evolution of their unwitting hosts for the first time, is now available for purchase at low cost on kindle. So also is the related book that followed it, Darwin's Blind Spot. The amazing thing is that between them the kindles have already been bought by readers on the amazon sites in seven different countries.
Encouraged by this I am placing links to all the amazons on the individual book pages on my website www.fprbooks.com so readers can easily find the new kindles.
Find Virus X on amazon.co.uk
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0...
Find it on amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015...
Virus X
Encouraged by this I am placing links to all the amazons on the individual book pages on my website www.fprbooks.com so readers can easily find the new kindles.
Find Virus X on amazon.co.uk
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0...
Find it on amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015...
Virus X
World first treatment of genetically caused disease
As will be apparent to readers of my new book, listed below, medical science is fast approaching the earliest attempts at direct treatment of genetically caused diseases.
There are very many of these, since genetic factors play an important role in many common disease, for example cancer and the auto-immune disorders.
As increasing numbers of people are now reading my book I would like to offer them the chances of asking questions about the evolution of the human genome, the way DNA codes for heredity, what terms like genetics and epigenetics mean, and where we now appear to be heading.
The invitation is open. Don't feel silly or afraid to ask any question that is bothering you.
The Mysterious World of the Human Genome
There are very many of these, since genetic factors play an important role in many common disease, for example cancer and the auto-immune disorders.
As increasing numbers of people are now reading my book I would like to offer them the chances of asking questions about the evolution of the human genome, the way DNA codes for heredity, what terms like genetics and epigenetics mean, and where we now appear to be heading.
The invitation is open. Don't feel silly or afraid to ask any question that is bothering you.
The Mysterious World of the Human Genome
