The passengers still on board were keen to watch as Tessa's crew scrambled for their positions, and she heard jokes about icebergs and devil's triangles, and anxious childish queries answered by soothing adult tones.

In Fred Stenson's 2014 work of petrofiction, Who by Fire, pyric imagery assumes striking visual form in the gas flare stacks that populate rural Alberta, conjuring promises of light and wealth drawn from the earth and separated into useful and waste substances.

Another substance, composed of extract of quassia and liquorice juice, used by fraudulent brewers to economise both malt and hops, is technically called multum.

She performed appallingly on standard neurological tests, which are, as Sacks perceptively notes, specifically designed to deconstruct the whole person into a stack of 'abilities'.