Community Event: Swallow Stories Bookshop - Meet the Author: Horror on the brain

Meet Austin Lim, Ph.D., a neuroscientist and associate teaching professor at DePaul University. Dr. Lim offers a course that explores how science fiction authors have used the popular scientific advances of their time to inspire their creative works. His work has appeared in Scientific American, U.S. News & World Report, and many other publications. Scientists throughout centuries have mined the depths of humanity looking for answers to life’s most mysterious questions, but perhaps the most memorable accounts of hidden dimensions have been left to us by science fiction writers such as Philip K. Dick and Octavia E. Butler. When science discovers, science fiction writers ask, “What’s next?” Horror on the Brain reveals the real science and psychology behind science fiction’s most iconic characters, from Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein to the doctors of H. P. Lovecraft, and even today’s horror blockbusters such as Get Out and Last of Us.