When we paused Asimov Press six months ago, our goal was to assess both what we had built and the role that writers can play in shaping scientific progress. After doing so, we came to believe more than ever that words are the best starting point to manifest ideas in the world. A well-constructed story acts as a 'force multiplier': it raises awareness for an idea while orienting the field around bottlenecks. Writing can be uniquely catalytic. Brian Wang wrote a piece for the press about broad-spectrum prophylactics and then became a program director at ARIA, an R&D agency in the UK, where he launched a $50 million program to build them; Wendi Yan wrote about the discovery of artemisinin, the first antimalarial drug, which became the impetus for launching the Research Revival Fund; and Liyam Chitayat argued that mitochondria are alive in an essay that reached millions of readers, growing interest in developing new tools to engineer them. Making these ideas intelligible in print was,...
learn more
