Andrew May: 35 books

Aliens, flying saucers, ESP, the Bermuda Triangle, antigravity … are we talking about science fiction or pseudoscience? Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference. Both pseudoscience and science fiction (SF) are creative endeavours that have little in common with academic science, beyond...

Mars is back. Suddenly everyone – from Elon Musk to Ridley Scott to Donald Trump – is talking about going to the Red Planet. When the Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon in 1969, many people imagined Mars would be next. However NASA’s Viking 1, which landed in 1976, was just a robot....

As end-of-the-world scenarios go, an apocalyptic collision with an asteroid or comet is the new kid on the block, gaining respectability only in the last decade of the 20th century with the realisation that the dinosaurs had been wiped out by just such an impact.   Now the science community...

Extraterrestrial life is a common theme in science fiction, but is it a serious prospect in the real world? Astrobiology is the emerging field of science that seeks to answer this question. The possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmos is one of the most profound subjects that human beings...

The Cold War saw scientists in East and West racing to create amazing new technologies, the like of which the world had never seen. Yet not everyone was taken by surprise. From super-powerful atomic weapons to rockets and space travel, readers of science fiction (SF) had seen it all before. Sometimes...

Everyone knows that Einstein was a genius, yet only a few people understand his work. One of many brilliant scientists grappling with the deepest problems of theoretical physics during the first half of the 20th century, he may not have been the most important or influential of them, but he was the...

People are used to seeing “fake physics” in science fiction – concepts like faster-than-light travel, antigravity and time travel to name a few. The fiction label ought to be a giveaway, but some SF writers – especially those with a background in professional science – are so adept at “technobabble”...

Isaac Newton believed everything in the physical universe could be described using mathematical relationships. His law of gravity explained why objects fall downwards, how the moon causes the tides, and why planets and comets orbit the sun. While his work has been added to over the years, his basic...

Ancient legends of ghostly apemen haunting the Cambridgeshire woods! Mysterious government agents, sinister Cold War secrets and a Japanese professor of Robotics! A gateway that leads to a parallel world! And a giant-sized mechanical gorilla! Multiple strands of weirdness converge to a head-on collision...

• HORRORS of the caves! The GHASTLY true story of the Cheddar cannibals!• Twilight of the Empire! Romans, Saxons and the legends of King Arthur!• SWORDS against the VIKINGS! The Somerset heroes who defied the Norse hordes!• Martyrs, murderers, pirates and mad scientists – Somerset’s strangest...

SOLVED! The Secret Oxford League of Volunteer Extracurricular Detectives investigates: The Case of the Dangerous Book; The Case of the Invisible College; The Case of the Shakespearean Super-Chimp; The Case of the Abducted Astrobiologist; The Case of the Ghost in the Machine; The Case of the Shocking...

What is the secret of the Kundalingam – a huge phallic icon with a snake wrapped around it? A trio of super-powered bookworms – Tilly Fontana, Monica Moonmaiden and Ratgirl – delve into the mystery of the Void: a sinister sex cult that lurks in the back-streets of Oxford. Their quest leads them...

Whether you’re interested in visiting Apollo landing sites or the locations of classic sci-fi movies, this is the tourist guide for you! This tourist guide has a twist – it is a guide to a whole different world, which you can visit from the comfort of your backyard with the aid of nothing more...

In recent years, there have been significant developments in detector technologies in the field of astrophysics, requiring lower temperatures with simple self-contained refrigerators. Temperatures in the range of 1K to 50mK are now achieved by using dedicated closed-cycle miniature sorption coolers. This...