Scientists who write are no rarity, but Alan Lightman, author of Einstein’s Dreams, is virtually unique in combining a significant career as a research scientist with an equally significant career as a writer of literary fiction. Most people experience a certain tension between their logical and affective selves, between cold rationality and a more intuitive, artistic way of interpreting the world, but the Memphis native seems to have escaped that process, giving his intellect free rein in both realms. He is credited with discoveries that have wide application in astronomy and astrophysics, and he has published a dozen books, including several collections of his essays and four bestselling, highly regarded novels.

Alan Lightman has explored the mysteries of both science and spirit in his fiction, taking readers from Einstein’s alternate worlds (Einstein’s Dreams) to a ghostly encounter in a mortuary (Ghost). In Screening Room (due from Pantheon in early 2011), Lightman will venture into his own childhood memories of Memphis during the tumultuous 1950s and 60s: “This book is about Memphis and the South in the 1950s and 1960s; my family and the family movie business; the music, food, and culture of Memphis; racism in Memphis and the South; Boss Crump, Elvis, Martin Luther King, etc.,” he writes. In this excerpt, the opening chapter of the fictionalized memoir, he provides a glimpse—though a child’s innocent eyes—of the old social order of a city poised on the brink of change.