Lucy Hawking read French and Russian at the University of Oxford before becoming a journalist and novelist. She is author of two adult novels Jaded (2004) and Run for Your Life (2005). Her latest book George’s Secret Key to the Universe (2007) is a collaboration with her father Professor Stephen Hawking.

Nikki Gamble discussed George's Secret Key to the Universe with Lucy at the end of a day packed with media interviews.

Lucy, you’ve written this new book in collaboration with your father but it isn’t the first thing you have written. Can you tell us a bit about your background?

 That’s right; I’m a creative writer, a journalist and an author with an arts background. Even as a small child I was really interested in drama, theatre, performance art and ballet, dancing and singing and music. I did a degree in Languages. I must have been an awful child, I was forever organising my family into an audience and making them sit in rows in the sitting room.

Were you introduced to complext  scientifici deas when you were a child?

I was introduced to the ideas because I knew my dad was a physicist and a great mathematician, but I was really the family entertainer.

Did you have your own son in mind as the reader of the book?

Yes. It’s dedicated to William and George. William is my son and George is my nephew. I thought George was a perfect name for my character as it works in lots of different languages around the world. And it’s not a name that places you in a particular social stratum, so I thought it wouldn’t alienate anyone.

So,  was George’s Secret Key to the Universe an idea for a story first of all, or was it consciously a vehicle for making accessible the complex ideas in cosmology?

 Well, it was a bit of both really. I thought it would be really nice to work with my father in order to write a book that would explain some of his work for my son and my nephew. There is nothing quite like George’s Secret Key to the Universe. There is a huge wealth of science fiction available for kids; it’s very creative, very clever, but ultimately it’s fantasy. I was watching an episode of a science fiction programme on television and it just struck me, that writers don’t make use of this ever-expanding fount of knowledge about the universe. Artists are starting to use some of the images from the Hubble Space Telescope as the inspiration for paintings and certain composers have been inspired by space and cosmic music. I thought it my father and I would be a good combination to reflect that interest in children’s literature.

Your story does have fantasy elements. The portal – Cosmos is very much fantasy.

Yes, Cosmos is a bit of a liberty. I can’t claim it’s all factually accurate, although I can tell you there are a lot of people who wish they had a Cosmos. I think there are a lot of adults who really wish that they had a computer that could draw a doorway onto the universe for them. Well, it would be handy, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t need all this expensive space travel

The story is rooted in science fact with a fantastic element. Did you have any discussions with your father about how children would perceive those boundaries?

Oh, totally. And that is a very good point. You could look at Cosmos as a metaphor for the knowledge that we currently have about the universe. In classic children’s literature there’s an established convention in which a child living in the world as we know it often passes into another dimension. This is true from Alice through the Looking Glass right up to, you Harry Potter. So I thought the idea of an amazingly clever computer, who can just draw a doorway  to the Universe, was a beautiful idea that fitted that tradition.

Cosmos can’t go beyond the known universe, so in that respect the story is  rooted in reality.  We wanted to send George on his adventures and have him things to happen to him so he needed to be there to see, to touch and to feel.

The observation of scientific principles is present from the outset. For instance, in the way water behaves as a result of static electricity. Children will find these observations amazing. In many ways science has a lot in common with magic.

Well yes, except, obviously, we would say that it’s a scientific reality that we’re showing. And that reality IS very exciting. At the moment we’re finding out more and more about the Universe that we inhabit and I think it is important to try and convey that knowledge to children, so that they have some sense of where they are and what’s around them.

As well as introducing science theories and concepts, your story is also concerned with the ethics of applying science. Can it be used for good or evil?

 Well, exactly. There’s the micro battle between Eric and Reeper on a personal level. Although Eric doesn’t really engage with it because he doesn’t really know it’s happening. He’s not that, sort of, person and he doesn’t bear any malice. And the there’s the macro battle: the idea that science is neutral but the application of knowledge can be used for good or evil ends.

The book is future oriented as well. George is left to decide whether we can make the earth a better place to live or search for other planets to inhabit. You deliberately throw the question back to George rather than leave it for the scientists to make the decisions.

Children are tomorrow’s world, so it was important that a child made that decision. I think that we need to do both.

The teacher in your book is the villain. I wondered whether you had a view on the teaching of science of science in schools.

That’s an interesting point because he’s not really a teacher. The person who is a true teacher is Eric, though that isn’t his profession. He loves explaining things. He’s the educator who loves gaining knowledge in order to benefit humanity, either by the application of the science or the sharing of knowledge with other people. Reeper is only posing as a teacher - biding his time. I went to a school in North London this morning to talk to a class full of kids. It was quite funny, the first thing the science teacher said was, “Hello, I’m Dr Reeper.”

I wouldn’t want to comment directly on the teaching of science in schools except to say that we hope that George’s Secret Key to the Universe is something that teachers like and will be able to use to spark curiosity, inspire and engage children in learning about science.

You said, you wanted to show not tell in this story. Was that a challenge?

In some ways: there was an experimental aspect to the actual writing of this book. I’ve never written a children’s book before and I’ve never worked with my dad. My dad also worked with a former PhD student of his, Christopher Galfard, who helped interpret the science. And so there was a lot to learn actually in order to get the project going. Inevitably there was a lot of rewriting, which fortunately I enjoy. It’s also interesting to think back through the different versions the book went through. For instance, Cosmos couldn’t always draw a doorway. At first it wasn’t really explained how George could travel in space.

The book is laid out with factual textboxes which add more scientific information. Why did you decide to do it like this?

I’m not quite sure when that idea appeared, but I do really like it because it gives a certain flexibility to the way of reading the book. You could either read the whole story and then the textboxes, read the story and each textbox as you go, or you could just read the textboxes if you wanted, or you could just flip back if you wanted to look later. It’s an easy way to reference the material. The storyline would get very bogged down if we tried to include all of that information in the narrative.

Children are adept at reading in non-linear ways.

 It does make it a bit more interactive, doesn’t it?

Do you have plans for getting involved in promoting the book in an educational context?

I did a talk at the Edinburgh Book Festival for kids. We played a game “Who wants to be a Cosmic Billionaire?” which was great fun. I introduced the talk by asking “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” Then we talked about the number 1 million. Then I gave them a few million facts like “The earth is 93 million miles away from the sun” I explained that as the game is based on the cosmos a million is not a large enough number: it is four billion miles from the summit of Pluto at the edge of the Solar System,” The idea was to get a sense of scale. The game had the same rules as ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’ and my dad was my phone a friend.

Do children know who he is?

Yes, they do. I did start off by showing The Simpsons picture of him but they seem to know of him from a variety of sources. Some know he’s a genius others know him as a disabled man, so I try to bring those different images together for them.

How easy did you find the transition from writing for adults to writing for children?

I found it very, very refreshing to be writing for children. I loved having the children as the main characters. They have a freshness and wonder and vigour, not being, in any sense, cynical. What sorts of questions do children as when you talk to them about the book? I was very, very impressed with the class. That I met today. One of them asked me “What it is the fourth dimension in time?” another one asked me “What’s the end of a black hole?” and another “What’s a pulsar?” These are not naïve in any way but I’ve also had some really sweet questions which are endearing in their simplicity. One girl in the first year asked “What’s the biggest star in the sky?” Of course from where we are, it’s the sun. She hadn’t realised that the sun is the same as the stars.

 Is George going to have further adventures?

 Well, poor old George he’s just at home in bed at the end of the book. He’s going to have a short rest and then he’s off again. Destination unknown - I mean, destination unknown to him. I know where he’s going, but he doesn’t. So, he’s not going to get much downtime. The book will be about the search for life in the Universe and the architecture of space - the manmade objects that we put out into space.

We look forward to reading it.

 Thank you Lucy Hawking for talking to Write Away.