The Books Podcast: science fiction from Jim Al-Khalili

In this week’s books podcast I’m joined by the physicist Jim Al-Khalili (host of Radio Four’s The Life Scientific) to talk about his first novel, a science-fiction thriller called Sunfall. In it, Jim uses real science to conjure up a plausible but fantastical near-future crisis in which the earth’s magnetic field falters and dies. What would that mean? (Nothing good, is the answer.) He helps us sort our neutralinos from our neutrinos, tells us about the real existential threats we face, and explains why he’s drawn to so-called “hard sf”.