WORLDS COLLIDE; "SCIENCE COUTURE" IN A MAGAZINE

by Gareth Cook

On the cover, the lithe nude female stares deeply into the eyes of the lithe nude male, her breast just covered by his hand. Inside is a photo spread of a woman in an aquarium, a full-page picture of a pacifier with text that begins "you suck,'' and another page that is entirely blue, with just a wisp of cloud.

And then there are the ads-Hugo Boss, Kaluha, Evian, Club Monaco, Absolut Citron, Kenzo, Skechers-with more sultry, beautiful people living the life.

This is, of course, a magazine about science.

Calling itself a publication of 'science couture,' Seed magazine, distributed by AOL Time Warner, combines breathy articles on brain science and the Big Bang with the glossy look of a fashion magazine. It is an attempt, the editors say, to draw a completely different audience into science-and to combine worlds that nobody has dared bring together.

"One of the things about the science community that has been bugging me all along is that science is not a part of the scene,'' said Felice Frankel, a scientific photographer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is the new magazine's arts editor. "I've always felt that scientists are kind of snobby about getting the style and fashion worlds involved with science.''

Seed is a mark of the growing influence of science on culture. But it is also, analysts said, another example of the rush to slicker, more visual media.

"This is science for the Maxim generation,'' said Samir Husni, a leading analyst of magazines and professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi, referring to the popular men's magazine. "They are aiming at a younger, more hip generation who wants to go a little beyond beer and sex and sex and beer.''

Husni said he planned to watch the magazine's fortunes closely. With the economy softening and even established magazines failing, this is hardly an auspicious time to launch a new publication. Roughly half of all magazines fail within the first year, according to Husni. But then, Husni said, there is nothing else quite like Seed.

"With all the hundreds of magazines out there,'' Husni said, "somebody was able to find a new twist.''

A number of American science magazines, including Discover and Scientific American, have been going after broader audiences with new looks. The Cambridge-based Technology Review recently saved itself from financial ruin with broad editorial changes and a total redesign that true technophiles might even be tempted to call sexy.

Abroad, science magazines have been even more adventurous. Nature, the top British scientific journal, is less staid and more accessible than its American counterpart, Science, whose jumbled, complex table of contents looks more like a test than an invitation. And New Scientist, another British publication, goes places graphically where its American competition never treads. But Seed, which is based in Montreal, is not an attempt to spice up science with fashion, said editor Adam Bly. It is built on the premise that the two share a common ground.

"Traditionally, science regards fashion as superfluous and fashion regards science as nerdy,'' Bly said. "But both rely on individuals with a unique appreciation for their surroundings, at whatever level.''

Much of the magazine consists of large images and short appreciations-brief essays on a scientific theme. Above a pacifier image is an essay on fluids and engineering with curves. A purple balloon floats above a few sentences about the expanding universe.

There are also several longer pieces, more like traditional magazine articles, including one by Matt Ridley, the science journalist who most recently wrote Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters.

Bly said 100,000 copies of the first issue, with a cover price of $5.95, are being distributed. There will be six issues per year, he said, and he is aiming for a circulation of 250,000 in five years.

MIT's Frankel also said that she thought the magazine's mission was serious and important. One of the reasons that science and scientists are so misunderstood, Frankel said, is that the public doesn't understand the topic's beauty.

If the public saw science the way that scientists do-shimmering galaxies, animals that are perfectly attuned to their place in the world-then the public is less likely to be left behind as science bounds forward.

Frankel said, however, that she is disappointed in one thing about the first issue-the amount of science in its pages.

"The thing that I'm trying to make happen is to generate more science in the publication, to urge the staff and editors to not just throw off tokens of science,'' Frankel said.

But Frankel said she was delighted to work on the magazine because they have taken up what she considers to be a vital, and sometimes lonely, task: bridging the divide between research that will transform society and a population that finds it inscrutable and scary.

"This,'' she said, "is an evolving project.''

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"World Collide; 'Science Couture' in a Magazine," the Boston Globe, Nov. 13, 2001. © Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.

Gareth Cook is a science writer with the Boston Globe.