Vision
From 1990 to 2002, Petroglyph published many writers and visual artists, including Terry Tempest Williams, Chip Rawlins and Robert Pyle. The journal brought forth many fine contributions, including the collective work of students, volunteers and faculty who guided each issue to publication. While honoring—and embracing—the kind of work that best defined Petroglyph, this new magazine, Isotope, seeks an expansive vision of explorations of nature and science. Too often, it seems that nature writing is viewed through a narrow lens—either celebration or elegy. And that wild places—an increasingly problematic category—are the most sought-after venues for revealing explorations of the human relationship to the nonhuman world.
We don’t dispute the need to venerate such locales or the need to celebrate and to grieve. It’s worth noting that within the word “isotope” the Greek root “topos” occurs…a reminder of the importance of place.
But if nature writing stays within those constraints a good deal of nuance—and fine art—is lost. Isotope seeks to embrace the tradition of nature writing—and move beyond it (even challenge it) by including a wide range of work that engages such fields as astronomy, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, sexuality, urban ecosystems, restoration ecology, physics and math. We are a journal of literary nature and science writing. We are not a journal of science fiction or of science journalism. We are a journal of compelling artwork, poems, lyric and narrative essays, microfiction, short stories and new regular features. Our new sections include “Soliloquy,” in which we invite a writer or artist to respond to a specific question; “Voice,” in which we feature a long piece or several works by a single writer; and “Portfolio,” in which we display the work of a coherent group of artists or several pieces by a single creator.
Definition, Improvisation, Image
An isotope is “one of two or more atoms having the same atomic number but differing in atomic weight and mass number. The nuclei of isotopes of the same element have the same number of protons but have different numbers of neutrons. The isotopes of a given element have identical chemical properties but slightly different physical properties,” according to the Concise Columbia Encyclopedia. In essence, an isotope is a useful variation on a theme, and all elements have such variations. A minor change-up at the center, and things change just enough to matter. Consider that carbon—the basis of life—has multiple isotopes. C-12 and C-13 have a ratio of 99:1. A biochemist put it this way recently to the editor: “In other words, 99% of CO2 [Carbon Dioxide] would contain C12 and 1% would contain C13. Likewise for glucose in your body or in that of a tree.”
Variations sustain. They link us.
A Geneva naturalist named A. Jurine, in an 1803 article on “Researches Respecting the Organization of Leaves,” in Alexander Tilloch’s famed The Philosophical Magazine writes of how a leaf has “considerable vacuities, which have a communication with each other. To these...I have given the name of utricular interstices...Each of these...is filled with a viscous juice...” and one “is remarkable on account of the bundle of small prisms contained in its inside.”
The symbol for Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing is an enlargement of the 1803 “prisms” that Jurine included in his article. We like that the image is from the green world—full of C12 and C13—and that the prisms look like writing implements: Leafy light refracting into words.
