Books & Arts in 2013

Melanie Keene revisits two Victorian children's science primers that harnessed interest in the supernatural.

Harold McGee surveys a seething array of microbially transformed treats — from beard beer and grasshopper sauce to extreme herring and armpit cheese.

Joe Letteri, Oscar-winning co-creator of Gollum on screen, looks at the evolution of computer animation as the next instalment of The Hobbit trilogy reaches cinemas.

George Helffrich relishes a film on John Milne, whose work in Japan put earthquake science on the map.

Rob Phillips celebrates the US physicist's seminal series as it nears its 50th anniversary.

Erika Check Hayden ponders a call for schools to embrace genetic information as a priority.

Zeeya Merali weighs up a simulated tour of the Large Hadron Collider.

Alison Abbott reviews the story of how a DNA forensics team cracked a grisly puzzle.

Ann Finkbeiner ponders a script inspired by the 1945 internment of eminent German physicists in England.

Tanguy Chouard rates a film probing the psyches of Indonesia's paramilitary killers.

Historian Peter Westwick and his colleague Peter Neushul thought up their scientific history of surfing, The World in the Curl (Crown, 2013), on boards off the coast of California. As the winter surfing season gets into full swing, Westwick talks about warfare, wetsuits, climate change and forecasting surf.

Philip Ball reconsiders the mix of dystopian science fiction and satire 50 years after Aldous Huxley's death.

Stuart Pimm joyously clicks his way through an ornithological classic as it goes online.

Andrew Robinson assesses two studies on the culture, biology and chemistry of psychotropic substances.

Anthony King finds himself on some of the wilder shores of synthetic biology at Dublin's Science Gallery.

Mike Davis explores a vision of car-free, socially networked urban environments.

Jad Abumrad co-hosts Radiolab, the science-heavy, nationally syndicated US public-radio show. As it enters its tenth year, he takes time out from a 21-city North American tour with co-host Robert Krulwich to talk about crafting high-speed science stories on radio.