WINNERS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY MANHIRE PRIZE FOR CREATIVE SCIENCE WRITING

Wellington Writer Dave Armstrong, and Otago University PhD student Will Catton, have won the fiction/non fiction sections, respectively, of the Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing. Their cash awards of $2500 each were presented at the Science Honours Dinner, Te Papa, Wellington, on Tuesday night, by Bill Manhire, for whom the prize is named, and Guy Somerset from the New Zealand Listener.
Both the Listener and the International Institute for Modern Letters headed by Professor Manhire and the Listener are partners with the Royal Society in this award.

The judge of the prize this year was writer Bernard Beckett, who has written successful fiction and non fiction on science themes. The topic for this year’s prize was evolution, commemorating 150 years since the joint Wallace-Darwin paper on evolution by natural selection was made “public” at the Linnean society in London.

Here are Bernard’s comments on the two winning entries, which will shortly be published in the New Zealand Listener, and are currently on the Royal Society website together with all twenty shortlisted entries: www.royalsociety.org.nz

Fiction Category: Waimate, by Dave Armstrong

The strength of this piece was its rather oblique response to the posted topic. Whereas many made the mistake of trying, in a work of fiction, to confront the topic and its implications, this piece rather used it as a stepping off point from which a story could unfold. In this way it avoided becoming didactic, rather than having something it urgently wanted to tell us it was content to quietly reveal an aspect of a family relationship through a simple trip to an old mission house. The house of course has a link to Darwin, and to the family, and these echoes are further crafted through the father being a biology teacher. The key thing though is the crafting; these details, the entries from Darwin's journal, and the glimpses of scientific discussions all sit naturally within the text.

At the end of this story the lingering impressions are of summers past, of a gently combative parental relationship, of a growing boy's respect for his father. And this is just as it should be. There are lovely hints of a rationalist's collision with a religious tradition, but they are cleverly kept as just hints. The little boy jumping up and down on the graves, shouting 'but we're atheists' is a perfectly formed detail, and typical of the touches that set this story apart.


Non-fiction Category: Progress, Laughter, Sex, by Will Catton

I loved the sheer exuberance of this piece. Non-fiction of this type it seems to me should be both entertaining and informing, and that's a tricky balance. Here the writer has managed to sustain a carefully structured argument, yet do it in a way that it never feels as if you are simply being informed. It is the enthusiasm for the subject matter, along with a clever turn of phrase that achieves this effect.

I was also much taken with the sense of play that quite appropriately pervades the writing. Lined up against a selection of work that sought to reprimand humanity for its evil ways, here at last was a piece that managed to celebrate the human miracle; to acknowledge that yes, we are animals too, part of a fragile, delicate eco-system and all that, but hell we're something more. We're animals that wonder, dream, ponder and ultimately have a laugh. I was cheering along on the sidelines as the case developed, for here was a piece of writing that spoke directly to my prejudices; a stroke of luck for the writer, and for me.

For further information please contact Glenda Lewis, Glenda.lewis@royalsociety.org.nz 04 470 5758, 027 210 0997.