ReZoom

Michael Sims, ReZoom's creativity columnist, has been described as "an acclaimed science writer with a flair for giving reality the luster of myth." He does not disappoint with his newest book, "Apollo's Fire: A Day on Earth in Nature and Imagination." Publisher's Weekly describes the book best, "Here he takes a single day and guides readers through the history of what we know, and what we've imagined, about sunrises, clouds and other natural phenomena."

1. What was the inspiration for your most recent book?
I think it was the slowly dawning awareness that my participation in our daily narrative never pales for me; I seldom forget to notice and celebrate it. So I began to examine the rhythms of my daily life: dawn, sunrise, twilight, the waxing and waning of the moon. I find a deep spiritual kind of satisfaction in attending to larger patterns and rhythms of which I am just as much a part as a migrating blue whale or a sunflower that turns its face toward our star. Even amid the clamor and distractions of an ordinary day in messy urban America, I want to be aware of the larger world beyond the street lights and billboards.

2. What's the most significant change you've made since turning 40?
Perhaps the single most significant change is my attempt to limit distractions in concentrating on what I really want in life: plenty of time outdoors, a strong marriage, a meaningful life outside the schlock gimme-gimme culture, and the opportunity to write about topics that fascinate me. My 40s have been the happiest and most productive decade of my life, but I hope to top them in my 50s, a decade I'll enter in a few months.

3. Tell us your thoughts about the web?
This is one of the 72,385 topics about which I am shamefully ignorant, but like most people I like to formulate opinions with or without knowledge to support them. I think even professional futurists see only a faint glimmer in their crystal ball of how much the science-fictional Jetsons world of the new millennium will be affected by the Web.

Instantaneous communication—across distances beyond what you can see with your own eyes—dates back only to the invention of the telegraph. Like most inventions, the Web is clearly a double-edged sword: helping citizens disseminate information about the abusers of power, and simultaneously assisting the tyrants with their Big Brother agenda. I think we must keep it as free and open as possible, but doing so will be a constant struggle against profiteers and censors, as you can see with the recent revelations about how much bureaucrats like to eavesdrop on our every google.

But on a day-to-day basis, I seem to use the Web mostly to look up song lyrics I didn't quite catch on the radio.

4. Where do you go when you want to get away?
Finally I live in an old house I enjoy, with a woman whose company I find entertaining, so I tend to want to get home more than to get away; although our little town in western Pennsylvania isn't exciting, the countryside around it is beautiful. But I go to Europe whenever I get the chance. We have enjoyed jaunts to London, the Adriatic, the North Carolina coast, Prince Edward Island. And almost every week I escape alone to a beautiful wooded hillside whose location I'm keeping to myself.

5. If you met a genie, what would be your first wish?
To go back in time long enough to keep George W. Bush from getting into the White House and hurting my country as much as he has over the last few years—perhaps get him a job for which he's more qualified, such as cleaning toilets in service station restrooms.

Then if I could sneak a second wish, I could use an old cottage in rural France.

6. What books are you reading?
Ross King's new biography of Macchiavelli; Edward J. Larson's new history book, A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign; a new Icelandic detective novel called Last Rituals, by Yrsa Sigurdadottir; Frank Santoro's graphic novel Storeyville. I review a lot of books, so I'm always reading for that—lately the new Ruth Rendell, a cultural history of Frankenstein, Conan Doyle's letters. For an anthology I'm editing for Penguin, I'm reading century-old crime stories. I'm always re-reading Dickens (mainly the later books) and Proust; I'm now on the last novel Dickens completed, Our Mutual Friend, and on my second reading of In Search of Lost Time.

7. Describe your next creative project.
There are two in the works. I'm writing a first-person account of the natural history of a perfectly ordinary year in an ordinary town—our house and yard, the neighborhood, rush hour, shopping at Home Depot, against the background of the seasons. And I'm simultaneously writing a natural history of five great children's classics: Peter Rabbit, The Wind in the Willows, Winnie-the-Pooh, Rabbit Hill, and Charlotte's Web. Although seemingly very different, the two books play together in my mind and keep me awake at night watching how they respond to each other.

Look for new installments of Michael Sims' column, Creative Approach, every two weeks on ReZoom.com.