Back to the future: Bill Bryson to return to OZ with ‘Everything’ updated
Astronomy, quantum mechanics, evolution … Bill Bryson’s quest to make science fascinating and accessible to everybody continues, but it meant a complete rewrite of the biggest-selling science book of the 21st century.
Our planet is a wondrous thing. Making sense of it spurred Bill Bryson, all those decades ago, to embark on a journey to explain the science behind the Earth and our Universe – so everybody could understand.
His phenomenally best-selling tome, A Short History of Nearly Everything, released in 2003, whet the appetite of everyday folk by explaining the wonders of stars and planets, time and space, atoms and protons and everything scientific in between.
From the Big Bang to the rise of civilisation – how we got from being nothing at all to what we are today – Bryson’s enviable gift is that he has the knack of making complex subjects clear and compelling – and often funny – for people interested in the world around them.
So, Zooming with Bryson just a few days ago ahead of his tour Down Under in February, it’s the window behind me on this beautiful spring morning that attracts the man who wrote “the best scientific primer ever published”.
“It’s so lovely out your window,” he observes, noting the verdant green sub-tropical palm fronds swaying in the breeze from the warmth of his timber-lined study in chilly autumnal Hampshire, UK.
Largely retired this past five years, the former US-born globetrotter decided to interrupt that “bliss”, concerned as he was that his successful tome was 20-plus years old, almost fraudulently outdated, he thought, and in need of serious revision.
The result is A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0, a fully revised and updated edition that reflects the many advances in science that have occurred since the first book.
Things like why Pluto is no longer a planet, how the number of moons in the solar system has more than doubled in 20 years, and how scientists used advances in genetics to discover previously unknown species of early humans. He will be exploring all this with audiences across Australia early next year.
“There are two updates that really surprised me,” he shares. “One was that the number of known moons in our solar system has more than doubled. I just thought, why didn’t they notice all those moons before. The answer is that a lot of them are quite small – just big rocks – and sometimes they follow eccentric orbits. The only definition of a moon is anything that travels faithfully around the planet – even if it’s a fist-sized rock. I was staggered by that number. Our cosmic back yard was unknown 20 years ago.
“The other update that was even more staggering is the discovery of archaic species of early humans that nobody suspected 20 years ago, like the Denisovans in Russia (dating back 280,000 years) and the ones everybody call ‘the hobbits’, Homo floresiensis, in Indonesia.
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“They existed, yet we had no suspicion of their existence. But it also tells us all sorts of things about people spread out across the planet, much earlier and much more successfully than anyone would have imagined 20 years ago. I had to rewrite two whole chapters in the book to deal with the questions of what we know about human origins.”
That includes Indigenous Australians, who Bryson describes as “one of the greatest mysteries in the world”.
“Because how did they get there? How did they cross all that water from Indonesia? You’ve got to get enough people over, to start a new civilisation. Get enough genetic variety to be able to sustain a growing population. And that’s hard to explain. Because Indigenous people arrived in Australia tens of thousands of years ago, way before anyone was known to have ocean-going craft of any kind. The distance between Indonesia and Australia was always formidable. So, how they did it? Why they did it?”
Gifted with an innate curiosity, Bryson effusively recounts scientific discoveries and concepts throughout our Zoom. Despite turning 74 next month, he’s like a kid in the world’s biggest science lab. Still, he does admit to not keeping “everything” in his book, in his head.
“I forget it faster than I can accumulate it,” he chuckles. “I really do. I was very, very proud when I did the revised version of the book, because I’m getting old now and I wondered about just the organisation. I was very proud that I seemed to be able to keep track of everything. It’s a big project, with 20-something chapters on the go and trying to keep it organised.
“I’m hopeless at remembering actual facts, particularly numbers, but if I had to suddenly tell you something, I know where to go to get the right piece of paper with the answer.”
So, why does he think A Short History of Nearly Everything was so successful?
“I think there are a lot of people like me, people who are never going to be scientists. One of the problems with schools everywhere is they teach the sciences as if they are trying to make more scientists. Whereas most of us will never become that.
“So many of us miss out on the wonder of science. What I was trying to do was to engage with science at a level that wasn’t technical but would give me and the reader, I hope, some sense of wonder of what science does for us. And the amazingness of our existence.
“There’s this universe and how lucky are we that we get to live on the only planet we know anywhere that could possibly support life of our type. We were lucky enough that everything went our way.”
On a more sombre note, Bryson also reminds us in his book how remarkably careless humans have been about looking after our planet.
“As a species, we’re pretty slapdash. One of the things human beings don’t do very well is to think about the future … predicting or managing where we are going to be. It’s a human instinct to live for now, for the moment.”
At this point Bryson references what the country of his birth, the US, is doing to science today, saying that it “certainly isn’t looking ahead in a way that is reassuring”. “The only conclusion you can come to, I think, is that humans are simultaneously absolutely brilliant and absolute idiots at the same time,” he says.
On the question of Alien life forms existing, Bryson thinks it’s pretty inevitable that they do.
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“Most cosmologists are convinced that because the universe is so massive, there’s so much possibility with a gazillion galaxies and planets and suns, it’s just unthinkable that we would be all the advanced life there is. But it is a massive space, and any other advanced life that is out there is probably so far away from us that it doesn’t matter that they exist, because nothing can move faster than the speed of light.”
Which brings us to Bryson’s main message in his book – as far as we know, we are alone.
“Whether or not there are other lifeforms out there, this is the only planet we’re ever going to get, so we really should look after it because there’s not going to be a backup planet.”
Here, Bryson gives another nod to my window outlook: “Look how lovely it is, how perfect. How lucky we are.”
Bryson is a prolific author with almost 30 titles under his belt devoted to travel, science, history and language. His magical writing style blends personal anecdotes with easy to understand yet witty explanations of complex subjects. Apart from A Short History of Nearly Everything, his bestselling books include The Road to Little Dribbling, Notes From a Small Island, A Walk in the Woods, One Summer and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.
“I used to travel a lot for work – assignments and doing research for books and all the stuff that goes with it, like book tours, which was always exciting and very rewarding but it also meant having to spend a lot of time away from home, which I hated,” Bryson explains from the comfort of retirement.
“I always thought, no matter where I was and how good it was – magazines would send me to the Seychelles or somewhere – but I always felt that if someone came along and said, ‘Oh, Mr Bryson, there’s a car waiting to take you to the airport to fly you home’, I’d be so happy to go straight away. I always wanted to be at home. That’s my real goal.”
Still, Bryson is soon to interrupt his retirement to head Down Under, where he’s been many times before. His 2000 travel book, In a Sunburned Country, noted that Australia: “has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world’s ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures – the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish – are the most lethal of their type in the world … you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It is a tough place.”
Reflecting on this, Bryson tells me how much he loves Australia.
“I really do,” he says. “It fascinates me. It’s such a luxury when you get interested in a subject and you want to know everything, go everywhere and see everything. I felt this great luxury of being able to immerse myself. Altogether, I’ve spent about 18 months of my life in Australia.”
He adds that the most fascinating man he met when writing A Short History of Nearly Everything was an Australian.
“Of all the people I interviewed, for both editions, the Rev Bob Evans (the world’s greatest hunter of supernovae) was probably the most endearing and also the most extraordinary,” he says.
The quest to understand human endeavour and human fortitude has always been a driving force for Bryson.
“What’s always fascinated me is not what we know, but how do we know,” he says. “How do we figure things out. I stand in awe of scientists who can work out how hot it is at the centre of the Earth or on the surface of the Sun. How much the Earth weighs?
“The capacity of the human mind to work things out is really quite amazing!”
The Best of Bill Bryson – Live on Stage, Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide, February 17; Brisbane City Hall, February 18, and elsewhere.