Yeah, that Nature.. I’m just as surprised as you are. Especially since the story is essentially a one-line joke I came up with while pacing barefoot in my kitchen as I talked to Squid on his birthday. (Happy birthday; you got your wish.)
Dave and Karl say this means No More Whingeing. (I’ll try.) Death Ray is proud and jealous; he says it’s unfair that a practising optical engineer should see his humanities-trained wife published in Nature before himself. (I remind him that there’s a reason he makes Actual Money while I write for free most of the time. Also, he doesn’t get mistaken for a minor at the cineplex. That’s real success.)
In unrelated news: tonight while researching a piece on green investment, I realized that one of my story ideas wouldn’t work unless I went back and re-read my Conrad. This is a rather unsettling realization, as I always suspected that I’d have to wrestle with him again at some point and wanted to delay our re-match until absolutely necessary. But honestly this approach is the only one that allows the tech to reveal itself at a natural pace rather than a laboured one; it is always best to discover these things through the eyes of an outsider. My own story is too foggy and amorphous. I need a map, and he can give me one.