“New Scientist” Magazine
Pros: Interesting topics, good writing, lively style
Cons: Expensive
Rating: 5 out of 5
Technorati Tags: magazines, New Scientist, reviews
First published 1/22/2001
Previously published on Epinions.com
New Scientist is one of my favorite magazines. I do a lot of writing, and often need research material on fun little scientific facts and technologies to inspire odd plot directions or background material. It’s hard to do better for this than the New Scientist magazine. NS goes into enough technological detail to satisfy the techie in me, to make me go, “I didn’t know the world worked in that way!” It’s enough for me to get a good sense of how a new technology works, or what new odd fact scientists have discovered about the world. It lets me feel like I really have a handle on what’s going on, rather than leaving me with a headline and a few layman’s details and little more.
Yet it’s clearly and succinctly written, with the well-educated layman in mind. Little tiny news bits are accessible to pretty much everyone, detailing some new development in the study of global warming, the accent drift of the Queen of England, or new patents in the field of surgery instruments.
Topics range all over the scientific spectrum, from the physical properties of the new “black silicon,” to ways Christmas tree growers are combating diseases that are killing certain kinds of trees. NS recently had a Christmas issue devoted to all sorts of trivial, fun scientific details, like whether binging on Christmas food can give you nightmares. They even interviewed a PR adviser to ask whether scientists could use a bit of PR help to fix up their images.
Unlike some of the research-magazines I get, NS doesn’t just go up onto the shelf until I need it. I page through most of the issues as they arrive, reading the little snippets of news and odd articles. The writers who work for NS have a fair amount of style, so these articles aren’t dull and uninteresting. The writers always seem to find the fun bits, the interesting twists, the great turns of phrase that make NS good entertainment reading as well as good news.
The magazine is expensive ($70 a year as of 2001), but then it does come out weekly rather than monthly, and it’s much more likely to be well-read and well-used than many other such magazines. Issues are not short (the one in front of me is 113 pages), and while there are ads, there are very few of them. Frankly I’m amazed at how many pages I can go through without finding ads.
There are job boards toward the back for those people looking for jobs in the sciences. This includes news on the state of the job market, large ads from big companies, and ads from various universities. Unlike the scientific information, however, which comes from all over the world, the job postings concentrate on the UK, where NS is produced.
You’ll find a large handful of medium-sized science pieces (a little less than a page) in every issue; 11 in the issue in front of me. There’s a section called “In Brief,” that lists particularly short bits. There are fascinating feature articles, opinion pieces, listings of interesting books, and letters from readers. The magazine arrives in plastic wrapping so that it shows up safe and sound. My issues have always arrived reliably and on time. NS also tends to have big, bright, colorful covers; I haven’t always loved them, but they’re always interesting.
