Mathematicians in Love, Rudy Rucker

A decade ago, i knew a man who went by the moniker “The Professor” (Fess). we all called him that because he was our leather clad, pc geek, rivet head savant. Dustin, as his parents called him, was a real gem of a human.

fond memories of fess prior to his demise include drunken ramblings regarding “abstract mathematics”. the professor did not hold the same view on abstraction as core mathematicians. core math removes the ties to physical objects thus breaking out into pure theory and crossing standard mathematical boundaries. Fess firmly believed that standard abstraction was wrong and the ties to physicality are ultimately more important.

in the professors perspective:

couch + toilet paper (wristwatch/french fries) = lower half of a broken gi joe.

likewise

(pressed flower/4th of july fireworks) * (glow worms/butter knife) / baton rouge area code = mink coat

Mathematicians in Love was like having the professor back. he would have truly enjoyed this book

Characters Paul and Bela are mathematicians, they have minimal in common. they became friends while in school, as room mates.? they are very competitive and nervous about intellectual theft. both are close to being done with their final thesis work, and both are missing key concepts to complete. they also have alma.

alma approaches bela with the intent of interviewing him for a local rag e-paper. he falls for her almost instantly. when bela brings her home, so does paul. 3, 2, 1… FIGHT

strangely enough, though Alma is the key to the whole story, she is not the story in itself. This would actually be washer drop, the Gobrane paracomputer, and the morphic classification theorem.

Washer drop is Bela’s band, the band that did not exist before he destroys the washing machine while filming a live feed to rabid non-fans (intentionally vague). washer drops creation and the mayhem involved is fundamental to the plot. bela is a rockstar in a geeks body. but in this dimension (similar to our Berkley) math geeks are pretty much rockstars anyway.

The Gobrane paracomputer is a nu-technology available in this incarnation of earth. it is a simple binary computer system that is functionally more like a crystal ball and the i-ching smashed together with a hammer and them spit shined. they do not resemble? a standard windows pc in our world, though some functions could be the same. its form can be a simple box or a shining membrane. it is essentially a codec, with proper usage, it can decode life itself.

and the morphic classification theorem. this is the thesis that paul and bela are working on for school. this is what causes all the trouble as a gobrane cant exist with out it. with out the theorem, there would be no washer drop or rabid now-fanbase.

as stated in the book -

“five basic morphons. Fish, dish, rake, birthday cake, teapot. They’re like the cross-cap and the torus in algebraic topology [...]

[...] Each morphon had a characteristic activity– the fish swam; the dish shattered;? the teapot poured; the rake dragged,; and the birthday cake blazed with candles. implicit in these behaviors were five fundamental processes: rhythm, fracture, flow, aggregation, transformation. [...]

[...] The dish morphon goes under the birthday cake, with the teapot sitting on the cake inside the circle of candles. The fish is inside the teapot peeking out. [...]“

ultimately, when all the pieces are together, you can program anything you would like, toss in a fractal, or perhaps some car keys and you get the root of everything.

wish you could have read this one Fess. would be a good read with Wumpscut playing in the background.