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Engineers’ novels seems to be to be more dense than the normal run of the mill novels perhaps because engineers seem to believe in making words count, and there is more to absorb in a sentence written by an engineer, than a sentence written by your average author.
This means for me that novels written by engineers take longer to read which, to my mind, is a nice thing because you stay with the book longer and, once you get into a book, it becomes a chum.
The greater density of the engineers’ novels usually means they are very much less prone to padding from over-done descriptions of the physical appearance of things and over-elaborate delvings into emotions.
This is a plus because many novelists become wordily self-indulgent and self-consciously ‘literary’ when it comes to descriptions of things and peoples’ emotions and that impacts the art of the story-teller which is to remain invisible.
We already know what sun-sets look like and what anger, love and jealousy feel like.
So there’s much to be said for the engineer-novelist plus the bonus of learning about unfamiliar disciplines.
I blame creative writing classes as the route to literary endeavour. Even who-dunnit crime novels are ridden with superfluous angst and descriptions of every daisy and buttercup on an otherwise “bleak noorland” etc. ad nauseum.
Notable exceptions of our era include Ian Rankin and Sophie Hannan. I don’t think it is just engineers that share the virtues of dense and interesting writing. To my mind the finest sci-fi writer of our time was, unquestionably, Iain Banks. Neither Rankin nor Banks were engineers but, curiously, both were Scots and both Ians (more or less anyway, discounting Iain Banks spare “i”)
Since resorting to a Kindle I have discovered great troves of crime novels written between the wars, and up to the 60s which are mercifully free of the so-called “creative” curse. In addition most of these autjhors are little known or read these days and their novels sell for as little as 70p. Many of them are free if you have a Kindle subscription!
Buckmister Fuller was an engineer futurist author worth reading. An engineer is an applied scientist and a scientists is one who focuses on knowledge. Galen and Hippocrates were applied scientists who wrote the foundation texts on pharmacy and medicine. William Shockley was an engineer and prescient author.
I think I prefer my definition of a scientist being an engineer who can’t be bothered to finish the job. Your definition makes them sound better than engineers, not a grade lower. Fortunately, in the UK at least, they are paid a grade or more lower, and then moan like hell about it.
Nevil Shute Norway.
Aeronautical Engineer. R100. (The one that didn’t crash).
Heinlein Yes – he got an engineering qualification from the US Navy but Asimov was not an engineer, he was an academic scientist – professor of biochemistry at Boston University while Arthur C Clarke had no formal engineering or scientific qualifications – he was a writer.
Clarke worked as a radar engineer in the war, and then wrote his seminal paper on geosynchronous satellites. That makes him an engineer of the highest order. The fictional writing came later.
And I said Asimov was a professor of science. Isn’t a scientist just an engineer who can’t be bothered to produce the final product ?
I said Clarke had no formal engineering or scientific qualification. Can you be called either without that? Asimov was an academic scientist teaching biochemistry which hardly justifies calling him an engineer.
“I said Clarke had no formal engineering or scientific qualification. Can you be called either without that? ”
Absolutely !! This modern nonsense of you must have a degree to be called something is ridiculous. And he could hardly get a qualification as we were at war at the time.
The greatest engineer of all time (IKB) had a sort of proper maths/engineering education thanks to his dad (but it was in France so he had to do philosophy and poetry as well !), but neither Telford or Edison did.
Lots of people become things by working up the ladder from the shop-floor or whatever. Indeed I often used to prefer hiring those people over many graduates.
You see a lot of people object when your telly company or whoever says they’ll ‘send an engineer round’ to fix some fault on the grounds that these guys are not usually qualified engineers. You are saying anyone can call themselves an engineer even if they can only connect two tin cans with a piece of string.
Definitely not. They are a technician. Totally different skillset.
But Clarke was definitely an engineer, as were Telford and Edison.
He’s hardly alone. The ‘big 3’ sci-fi authors :
Isaac Asimov : professor of biochemistry
Robert A. Heinlein : aeronautical engineer
Arthur C. Clarke : engineer/scientist