Scientists fall down the rabbit hole and find themselves trapped in an ambiguous wonderland. A chance to do endless cutting edge research without having to write any grant proposals or mark undergrad exams? Isn’t this heaven for a scientist? Aren’t fresh air and sunshine vastly over-rated anyway?

This is an odd little story. It has a distinctive tone which is by turns frustrating and charming. It seems to be a straightforward narrative, while at the same time being whimsical and surreal. It’s not exactly repetitive, yet there seems to be a tendency to return and re-emphasize certain actions, attitudes, or quirks of a character back and forth in a chapter which gives the narrative a staccato pace. There are typo’s and misspellings and some oddly constructed turns of phrase, which make me wonder whether the author is writing in her mother tongue.

There are eight chapters posted, which at first made me expect a tightly constructed novella, which I would consider an impressive thing to do. Now having reached the end, I suspect there was meant to be more to come – for one thing, not everything mentioned in the author’s introductory blurb has happened yet. However, nothing more has been posted since April 2009.  I suppose the place it stops could almost work as an ending, although quite a downer ending. One central mystery of the purpose of the labs has been revealed, at least. The author should make this clear by putting either The End or To Be Continued at the end of this last post.

Rough around the edges, in need of editing, and quite possibly abandoned – yet, despite problems there is something original and poignant here. Cleaned up and with the question of the ending dealt with, it would be worth a look. For now, you could try approaching each chapter as a self-contained poem, and then, weirdly, it works.

the title of this review is not my from own imagination but the name of a Canadian science radio show

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