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This month I have two books coming out-The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime, which has just appeared, as you can tell from this blog page; and In the Womb: Animals, which National Geographic Books will publish later this month. The latter, my fourth book about nature, prompted a colleague, an editor, to email and ask me about my interest in science and technology. He phrased it that way: "science and technology," as if they were linked, like Laurel and Hardy or time and tide.

So I had to explain that although I often write about nature and the natural sciences I really have very little interest in or knowledge about technology. Not that I'm a Luddite; I'm writing this on a laptop from my deck and sending it via email where it will appear on the Web. I use digital cameras almost exclusively nowadays. Clearly I don't hide out in a cabin in the backwoods of Manitoba and commune with moose. But I can't stir up much interest in technology in itself. In fact, after years of interest in photography in the 1980s and 90s, I got bored with the paraphernalia until digital came along and its immediate gratification restored my waning interest in, to use the origin of the word photography, "drawing with light."

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Blogging on a publisher's Web site, while I'm also in the process of writing a new book, editing a new anthology, reviewing two books, and writing an introduction to a classic novel about to be reissued, naturally leads me to think about books and reading and writing and what used to be called rather grandly "the life of the mind."

Recently a college prof told me that one of her students was in her office talking about future plans and casually remarked, "As a child all I did was sit around and read books." My friend thought that this was not necessarily a bad thing and was expecting the next remark to express this idea. Instead the student muttered, "I was such-a-loser."

Remember in It's a Wonderful Life, when that squeaky annoying angel Clarence is showing George Bailey what the lives of other people would have been like had he never been on Earth? We zoom in on the life of Donna Reed's character-actually a pleasant and beautiful woman, who no doubt could have taken her pick from the men in Bedford Falls or anywhere else. But what is poor Mary Hatch doing in a world that never had a George Bailey in it?

         GEORGE: Where's Mary? . . .

         CLARENCE: You're not going to like it, George.

         GEORGE: Where is she?

         CLARENCE: She's an old maid. She never married.

         GEORGE (grabbing his collar): Where is she?

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"Just Imagine," purrs the New Ager's bumper sticker, and dorm room posters feature Einstein's line "Imagination is more important than knowledge" over a blurry photo of a seagull. How we love to babble vaguely about that noble concept we call creativity.

In my blog post on Monday I confessed that I seem to think of imagination and creativity as, in general, "herd-free thinking," as a way of diligently following your own compass. But that definition is too broad to mean much. Obviously I don't have answers to that question or to anything else. I'm not even terribly interested in answers. "Try to love the questions themselves," intoned Rilke, which raises another question: What good is poetic imagination, considering that such a wonderful poet was such a crappy human being? I can't answer that one either.

Recently some friends and I were talking so naturally I brought up this topic: "What is imagination?"

"It's what distinguishes Homo sapiens from other apes."

"No, our hallmark is accessorizing."

"Surely our most species-distinctive accomplishment is porn."

"People, please. It's like Short Attention-Span Theater around here. What about chimpanzees who learn to manipulate a bunch of levers and gears and stuff to finally get to the banana that they can see on the other side of a laboratory? How is that not imaginative thinking?"

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Once at a party, while I was holding a martini in my hand, I backed into a large armchair and accidentally did a backflip over the arm of it, landing on my feet-without spilling a drop of the martini. (It's possible that this was not my first martini of the evening.) I stood there blinking. Witnesses report that I then said casually, "And that's how centrifugal force keeps water from flying off our spinning planet."

Perspective. That's what you get from the natural sciences. Perspective.

I find curiosity and a passion for learning glamorous, even sexy. I'm not a scientist; I don't even play one on TV. But I love the knowledge we get from the natural sciences: biology, geology, astronomy, the disciplines devoted to figuring out how the real world works. Their aerial view-above my daily earthbound scurry in the minutiae of paying bills and driving in rush hour-enriches my life and gives me a different perspective.

But I had never really been asked to justify my interest in nature and the natural sciences until this guy walked up to me at a book festival last year-a miniature fellow in a crazy loud houndstooth-of-the-baskervilles blazer. He looked very intense. I thought, Hmm, he can't dislike me already; we haven't even met.

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"Admit it," whispers Julia Roberts into the ear of Clive Owen, in the new caper movie Duplicity. "You don't trust me, either." The rule in this wonderful movie is simple: Doubt everyone, including the director. I think I grinned from the opening sequence through the song that accompanies the closing credits-"Being Bad Never Felt So Good."

I was happily back in the (admittedly weird) place in my mind where I think of great thieves as elegant, attractive, witty, intelligent-and creative. After all, we call them con artists. And talented cat burglars have a certain cachet in my mind, too. Just think of Cary Grant in Hitchcock's lightweight mid-50s movie To Catch a Thief.

I have limited enthusiasm for thrillers, whether book or film; I already find real life suspenseful enough, thanks. Also, like everyone else, I'm not fond of real-life thieves, who are too often of the Bernie Madoff stripe. And I think all political con artists should be placed in the same leaky boat and set adrift. But I can't resist a caper. I love to watch the characters tricking each other and I like knowing that the author or director is tricking me as well. It's the same reason I love magicians. Conjuring and confidence games are both feats of imagination. I expect to be tricked. I paid good money to be tricked and I damn well better be tricked.

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Michael Sims is our guest blogger during the week of April 13th. If you have any questions for Michael Sims, add a comment to any of his posts.

Here is more information about The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime: Con Artists, Burglars, Rogues, and Scoundrels from the Time of Sherlock Holmes

Read an excerpt here.

An exclusive collection-the first- ever gathering of rogues from the gaslight era.

Collected here for the first time: the best crime fiction from the gaslight era. All the legendary thieves are present--A. J. Raffles, Colonel Clay, Simon Carne, Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, and the Infallible Godahl--burgling London and Paris, conning New York and Ostend, laughing all the way to the bank. Also featured are stories by distinguished writers from outside the mystery and detective genres, including Sinclair Lewis, Arnold Bennett, and William Hope Hodgson.