Running round like a mad thing this afternoon organizing a huge fundraising auction for my kids’ school tonight, but I must just note that Paul Callaghan will be talking to Kim Hill at 10.45 tomorrow morning on National Radio, just before the launch of the new book out from VUP, Are Angels OK?. If you have any interest at all in the crossover between quantum physics and literature (who hasn’t?), you must listen to this man and buy this book.

The event which spawned the book happened last year and is about to have a huge spin-off. I have the book here, sporting a gorgeous and witty cover by Dylan Horrocks, and it looks great. Topics covered are the sandpile phenomenon, the curvature of space time, wave particle duality, the untimely death of Schrödinger’s cat, Elsewhen, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, dark energy, entropy, the arrow of time, quarks, anti-matter, the death of the sun and The End of the Universe. Little bits and pieces like that.

The resulting poems, cartoons and short fictions by Catherine Chidgey, Glenn Colquhoun, Dylan Horrocks, Witi Ihimaera, Lloyd Jones, Elizabeth Knox, Margaret Mahy, Vincent O’Sullivan, Chris Price and Jo Randerson, ‘form a provocative and fascinating reader for science and non-science buffs alike. Since Einstein’s time the world of physics has become a strange, fantastic and sometimes disturbing place – potentially a rich domain for philosophers and artists, the results of these science/literary and artistic collaboration prove this point’ (this from the VUP media release).

I saw two of these remarkable writers this week at a Book Council event – Messrs Knox and Mahy. Margaret Mahy in particular was waxing lyrical about the wonder of the world when seen through the eyes of a quantum physicist: 'Why doesn't this glass of water simply fall through this table for example? It's mostly made of air!' More about that later, when I’ve got some 'Time'.

The book will be launched in New Zealand next week at a special one-off event chaired by Kim Hill where you’ll find out, over a glass of wine, why our writers and scientists do indeed live in parallel universes. The above writers will be there, as well as project directors Bill Manhire and Paul Callaghan. It’s at 7.30pm, 31 May at the Paramount Theatre, Wellington. $12 tickets from The Paramount or call 04-3844080. They’re going to be touring it to the UK as well. Rock and roll.