"Reality is a manifold." (25, p. 335)
I thought that "manifold" just meant "many and various" but it means something else in mathematics.
"Human affairs are chaos. But, riding along, she could retrace their course into this particular strange attractor." (32, p. 423)
I don't know what a "strange attractor" is but the Wiki article is there for anyone who can understand it.
Thinking about this particular strange attractor is Dagny Beynac who is about the become Dagny Beynac, Detective, just for one chapter.
Dagny:
has dealt with three governors general of Luna;
has been mayor of Tychopolis;
is the current mayor's grandmother;
has four generations of descendants who, just for her, have posed for a very un-Lunarian photograph;
looks more ethereal to her downloaded grandfather, Anson Guthrie, every time he sees her;
is the title character of the "Mother of the Moon" chapters.
The narrative skips through the decades. An entire series could have been set in each period of Dagny's life and career.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Now you are getting to where Poul Anderson wrote an ingeniously thought out mystery which he made a part of THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE. And, in a way, we do get series of short stories about Dagny Beynac, in the Mother of the Moon chapters of that book.
Sean
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