Editor's Note: In the previous issue of The Scientist (12[20]:7, 14, Oct. 12, 1998), we published the first part of an excerpt from NO by Carl Djerassi. We met the chief protagonist of the book, an Indian scientist named Renu Krishnan, who has developed a drug called NONO-2 and a delivery system called MUSA. Guided by Martin Gestler, a hard-charging expert on biotechnology start-up companies, Krishnan has left academic research to found a company called SURYA. The previous extract described t

EDITOR'S NOTE: Carl Djerassi's novel NO concerns the development of a fictional, though close-to-life, drug and delivery system for the relief of male impotence. While the science in the novel is accurate, the book is a work of fiction. Nevertheless, some real-life characters, including Djerassi himself (a professor in the chemistry department at Stanford University), and other more or less disguised fictional characters based on real people make appearances in the book. In this issue and in t

The need for the popularization of science is almost as old as science itself. Like every generation with its own set of societal problems, ours thinks of today's problems as particularly acute. Current examples are the explosive growth of scientific information at a time when general scientific illiteracy is growing alarmingly; the complexity of "technological fixes" presented to a risk-aversive public suffering from chemophobia and oncophobia; the almost pathetic desire of legislators and com

This is not science fiction, but “science in fiction,” says Carl Djerassi, the celebrated Stanford chemist whose first novel, Cantor’s Dilemma, is being published this month by Doubleday. The novel portrays what Djerassi calls “the soul and baggage of contemporary science,” including its brutal competition, baroque professional etiquette, and complicated relations between professors and their students. Nearly all its science is real; also, real-life scientists and