Translation Rights TQE / Luminous Fish. Stories of love and science

The reader who has already approached Lynn Margulis’ essays may not be surprised by this collection of stories that Tusquets Editores publishes in Spanish and in its first worldly edition, since her books combine precision and clarity with an exquisite literary sensibility.  These tales, which seem to be portraits or documentaries, fruit of a «long incubation», as the author likes to call it, not only confirm a humanist vocation, but also offer a vivid approximation to science and scientists. 

Margulis unfolds for the reader stories of men and women — some real, such as J.R. Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and others fictitious — dedicated to science in body and soul. These pages are peopled by young scientists-to-be overwhelmed by the weight of their own goals and fears; children and adults that find in science a refuge to a hostile reality or an escape to their frustrations; men who have held in their hands the destiny of millions of human beings, and who did not know how, or did not want, to question the consequences of their actions… The  author carefully and precisely dissects their sacrifices and resignation, their passions and obsessions, the oftentimes insoluble equation of the thirst for knowledge on one hand and of life on the other hand.  Nevertheless, perhaps we should not give up hope that knowledge and life may coincide, even if only in the fleeing light that allows the sparkle of a luminous fish.

Lynn Margulis (Chicago, 1938 - Amherst, Massachusetts, 2011) was a professor of the Geo-science department in the University of Massachussets. She also was a member of the Science Academy of the United States, directed a committee of Planetary Biology and Chemical Evolution, and was co-director of the Planetary Biology department of NASA. She was one of the main supporters of the Gaia Theory and of simbiogenesis, and the author of important and prolific scientific and divulgate works, such as ¿Qué es la vida? (What is Life?), Microcosmos (Microcosms), and ¿Qué es el sexo? (What is Sex?), co-written with Dorion Sagan and all published by Tusquets Editores in the Metatemas collection. There is a place reserved within this collection for her work of reference (in collaboration with Karlene V. Schwartz) Cinco reinos.Una guía ilustrada de los phyla de la vida en la Tierra (Five Kingdoms. An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth).