I took a William Faulkner/Toni Morrison course back in college that has stuck with me for 20+ years–we read 5 by each author which led to some very cool and unexpected resonance and conversation. Two books that I remember fitting very well were Light in August and Song of Solomon.
I also just read American Prometheus and loved it, while my mom read the other Oppenheimer biography from Ray Monk. I was really curious about the cajones Monk had to write his biography in the massive shadow of Prometheus. It is by far the established biography, but Monk makes a strong case for his own–that he focuses on Oppie’s significant contributions to physics, which Prometheus mostly disregards, focusing instead on his diminishing returns as a manager. Prometheus is a fantastic book, but talking about the Monk made me turn a more critical eye to the ways it may have pigeon-holed Oppie too simplistically.
I’d love to hear what other pairings of either author or books y’all may have!
James Tiptree Jr. and Suzette Haden Elgin.
Both were early feminist/proto-feminists with academic backgrounds, who thought about how humans would perceive aliens.
Tiptree was a self-identified xenophile who did psych research on the desire for novel stimulation. She imagined that aliens would be so overwhelmingly NOVEL that we’d be irresistibly drawn to them. “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” is the best example, but it’s present in “With Delicate Mad Hands” and “The Women Men Don’t See” as well.
Hadin Elgin was a linguist who worked with the Sapir-Word hypothesis, the idea that language impacts what we perceive. SHE thought aliens would be SO novel that we’d be unable to relate to them in any way, and would instinctively isolate as much as possible. So in her Native Tongue trilogy, people generally want to avoid aliens if they don’t have the right linguistic training.