| A postdoc at the mysterious "Institute for Mathematical Analysis and Quantum Chemistry" is surprised to learn that his work on Riemann-Hilbert Problems is being used as part of his employer's crazy alchemy project.
Those who liked my previous stories (published in Reality Conditions) will also enjoy this newer story that follows the same approach of embedding some real mathematical ideas in a tongue-in-cheek story with a surprise ending. Those who did not like my previous writings (probably a larger group) may still enjoy this one, because I received advice from some highly skilled authors while writing it. It was written as part of the Workshop on Creative Writing in Math and Science at the mathematics research center in Banff (June 2006). The organizers and the other participants read drafts of the story and gave advice. So, if you like this one better than my earlier attempts, quite a bit of the credit should go to this team of advisors. (And if not, I'll accept all of the blame.)
The story was first published in the October 2007 issue of Analog magazine. A slightly different version appears in the collection The Shape of Content, an anthology of material from the participants at the Banff workshop. It is that second version which is available for free at this website in PDF format.
The story was reprinted (in Russian) in the February 2008 issue of Esli Magazine. | Contributed by
Stephane Lafortune
My first comment concerns the ideal reader. When I read the story, as a mathematician, my opinion was that to enjoy the story, one needs to have a certain knowledge of higher mathematics (by which I mean higher than calculus). Since then however, my wife who has no knowledge of higher mathematics has read the story. She told me that she did enjoy her reading very much and that she did not feel she was missing anything because of the mathematics. I thus would say that this story is for everyone irrespective of the mathematic knowledge level.
As for the story itself, the author succeeds in creating a story in which mathematics plays an important and believable role. The story is written in such a way that the research work described seems almost completely believable. It was really pleasant to read a story in which mathematics plays such a central role.
The characters in the story, for an academic like me, also seem almost believable. The author succeeds, at several instances, to make me laugh at how well he is able to describe and sometimes caricature the academic mind.
I thus give this story high marks for how well it is written and how good of a role the mathematics plays in it. I also give high marks for the light style in which it is written: I caught myself smiling at several instances while reading this story.
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