Classic Works of Building Science Literature

Insulated-man-ray-bradbury-movie-poster

Yesterday was Energy Efficiency Day. I saw a lot tweets on the topic, and the photo above, showing the movie poster for The Insulated Man, was in one of them. That, of course, got me thinking about other classic works of literature related to energy and building science. For example, have you read these other works by Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and other great building science fiction writers?

  • Something Humid This Way Comes
  • The Latent Chronicles
  • The Green Buildings of Earth
  • Stranger in a Strange Attic
  • The Positronic Manometer
  • The Energy Auditor’s Guide to the Galaxy
  • The Crawl Space at the End of the Universe

Beyond building science fiction, there’s a whole world of classic building science literature:

  • Fifty Pascals of Solitude
  • The Lord of the Blower Door Rings
  • Alice’s Adventures in Passivehouseland
  • The Thirty-Nine Steps to the Basement
  • A Thermal Bridge Too Far
  • The Scarlet Ladder
  • Wuthering Lights

Oh, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to catch up on all the great works of building science literature! What are your favorites? Which ones did I miss?

 

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This Post Has 16 Comments

    1. Oh, yeah. I skipped over the

      Oh, yeah. I skipped over the whole genre of children’s building science literature. Another great one is “Thermal Bridge is Falling Down.”

  2. Sci-Fi classic I, R Camera.
    Sci-Fi classic I, R Camera. Are you accepting plays? Because I was always a fan of SEERano de Bergerac.

    1. Of course we’re accepting

      Of course we’re accepting plays. If it’s literature, it’s fair game. Which means there’s also comic books and graphic novels, too.

  3. My favorites are:
    My favorites are:

    “Psychrometrics Runs Through It”

    “A Tale of Two Enthalpies”

  4. I think “Lord of the Blower
    I think “Lord of the Blower Door Rings” wins.

    I’m stretching a bit and I really need to be doing work, but:

    2001 CFM An Air Infiltration Odyssey
    Pride and Static Pressure

    1. Lord of the Blower Door Rings

      Lord of the Blower Door Rings, eh, Leigha? That’s definitely a good one, but my two favorites are The Crawl Space at the End of the Universe and Fifty Pascals of Solitude. If I had to choose one, I’d go with the latter.

    1. Good one, Bill! I was trying

      Good one, Bill! I was trying to figure out how to use Orwell’s class but couldn’t come up with anything.

  6. I’m pretty sure Ray Bradbury
    I’m pretty sure Ray Bradbury wrote a non-fiction companion piece to Fahrenheit 451, in conjunction with Lew Harriman and Terry Brennan…

    …called Dewpoint 55

  7. An Inconvenient Draft
    An Inconvenient Draft
    Sense and Sensible Heat
    The Count of Magnehelics
    Frankenhouse
    The Adventures of Tom “The Tool Man” Taylor
    The Great Gasping for Air
    Of Mice and Men Who Foam their Holes

    Some titles are more accurate than we thought:
    Great Expectations
    Les Miserables

    Of course, we need to sell energy efficiency, so you’ll need “The Art of the Spiel.” Not exactly a classic, though.

  9. Haha!! Here are a few more
    Haha!! Here are a few more for the shelf:
    Do Auditor’s Dream of Infrared Sheep?
    Condensation and its Discontents
    The Island of Dr. Joe
    Crawl of the Wild

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