Yet the picture-book atmosphere is periodically disrupted by harsh timbres, rumblings of dissonance, engulfing masses of tone.
Inspired by a series published by Marvel in the 1980s, it has more old-style comic-book atmosphere than "Man of Steel" or "Iron Man 3".
The book's atmosphere of arid heartlessness begins to produce a parched feeling in the reader.
Ms Oswald has audaciously set out to translate the book's atmosphere, rather than its story.
The book's atmosphere is deeply influenced by a bunch of tremendous movies, especially the full six-hour version of Olivier Assayas's "Carlos".
Despite its necessary ambiguity, reviewers responded to Wilde's story with disgust; "a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odors of moral and spiritual putrefaction," a critic wrote in The London Daily Chronicle.
The public outcry which followed the novel's appearance – "it is a tale spawned from the leprous literature of the French Decadents – a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction," wrote the Daily Chronicle – forced Wilde to revise the novel still further before it appeared in book form in 1891.
But it was no more than two or three poems in before I started to sense the book's atmosphere, to see it as an uncommon chance to share Greek experience beyond the headlines – in a way that is fascinating, revelatory and only possible through poetry.
Author Mike Jay, who previously explored nitrous oxide's beginnings in his book The Atmosphere of Heaven, penned an introduction to this chronological collection of essays, scientific observations, and poetry, as well as assisted with its curation.
Where stroke patients used to be wheeled down gloomy linoleum corridors into dark Victorian wards equipped with little more than rows of adjustable exercise beds, now there's an air of hope and determination From the pine floors, and coffee dispensers, to the cheerful decor, television, and shelves overflowing with paperbacks, magazines, and picture books, the atmosphere is upbeat and positive.
But the huge diversity of alien worlds argues for a new way of thinking, writes Seager, who literally wrote the book on exoplanet atmospheres ("Exoplanet Atmospheres: Physical Processes," Princeton University Press, 2010).
