By the way, as I write this it is Srinivasa Ramanujan's birthday (December 22).
Ramanujan, as not-nearly-enough people know, was an amazingly intuitive, brilliant mathematician, whose tragically short life makes a remarkable story. One anecdote that illustrates the kind of observation he would just casually throw off now and then concerns the number 1729, now known as Ramanujan's number, which happened to be the number of a taxicab his friend and fellow mathematician G. H. Hardy took to visit him in the hospital one day. Apparently the pair were fond of working out "interesting" facts about numbers they randomly encountered, because Hardy mentioned 1729 to Ramanujan and added that he hadn't been able to think of anything particularly interesting about it.
Ramanujan at once countered that it was, in fact, a very interesting number, being the smallest number that is the sum of two squares in two different ways.
His insight was correct, as it often was (though not always): 1729 is 10 cubed plus 9 cubed (1000 + 729), and also 12 cubed plus 1 cubed (1728 + 1).
I actually make very brief passing reference to this anecdote in a story of mine that has been accepted into one of the upcoming Superversive Planetary anthologies, which I'll be writing more about later.
Meanwhile, here is a slightly curious fact relating Ramanujan's number to the coming new year, 2019, that AFAIK no one in the world is aware of, except me, and now you (if you're the first one to read this post, and to get this far... which is pretty likely). If you take the 14th root of 1729, and add 5, and raise the result to the 4th power, you get VERY close to 2019. Within about one-one hundredth, as I recall from when I worked it out. Plugging 1729 into this works better than either 1728 or 1730, too.
It also happens that 1729 to the power 6/7 (that is, raised to the sixth power and then extracting the seventh root) is quite close to the whole number 596.
Another original-with-me curiosity of modest interest: If you raise 12 to the 3rd power and add one, then of course you get 1729. But if you add one to 12 and then raise to the 3rd power (that is, take the cube of 13), you get 2197, which is a palindrome of 1729. There's another number smaller than 12 that has this property, that if you cube-and-add-one or add-one-and-cube you get two numbers that are palindromes: can you find it? As I recall there are several more such numbers, at least one of them below 100, and a few more below 2000.
Ah, well. Enjoy Ramanujan's Birthday!
Science fiction and fantasy author, published for the first time in 2017. Also into recreational math, chess variants, puzzles, doggerel.
Saturday, December 22, 2018
What's new in our corner of SFF
I want to start doing more blogging going forward, and less wasting time on media like Twitter (where I've recently joined the growing throng who have deleted their accounts). So after a long hiatus from Tarquin the Humble, it seems good to return with a quick roundup of some of what's new in "our" corner of the science fiction and fantasy (SFF) genre, whatever we're calling ourselves these days--the readers and writers who hope to enjoy speculative fiction as it used to be, focused on fun, inspiration, imagination, and the celebration of humanity, human achievement, human potential, and all that. You know, like the Sad Puppies, or PulpRev, or NobleBright. The Inklings, Chesterton, Dunsany, Merritt, John C. Wright, etc.
John C Wright has had a successful funder for a new series, STARQUEST, to be published by Superversive Press, and aimed at being a space opera of the sort that would not have disappointed Star Wars fans. AFAIK there's no projected publication date yet; if you know better, there's a comment section.
Out already are the first two books of Declan Finn's new Saint Tommy, NYPD series. Declan, of course, is the author of the Honor at Stake series, the Pius Man series, and wrote a terrific story in the underappreciated Tales of the Once and Future King , the anthology where (ahem) you can find one of my stories. Declan is also an editor in an upcoming Superversive Press anthology where another of my stories is slated to appear, which I'll be blogging more about later. So far I've only read the first Saint Tommy book, and I would recommend it heartily, as I did in my Amazon review.
If we really want to influence the course of SFF, how would we go about it? I recall reading in Frederick Pohl's autobiography that someone asked him a question around 1950 about how to get more or better writers for one of the pulp magazines, or something like that--sorry, my copy is in a box someplace--but what struck me was less the question than his answer, which for a leftist like Pohl was quite astute. He said simply, "Pay more." If I had a fortune at my fingers, that would be my strategy: I'd start about 20 monthly fiction magazines, priced low, that would each publish about 70,000 words each issue of fun, uplifting, religion-positive (or at least religion-neutral) SFF, mysteries, westerns, romances ... and I would pay the authors 15 cents a word.
That would do it, I think. Authors would look at that market, and instead of trying to get into Asimov's or Analog or F&SF would aim first at this market. The whole writing market would change as a result. Granted, I'd have to be ready to lose millions while the reading public shifts; but for those millions I'd get a wholesome change in the whole culture.
Could a market support fiction magazines paying that much? Actually, as a fascinating post at Emperor's Notepad reveals, the market once did. If you think the pulps underpaid the authors, go read that post. Actually go read it if you're interested in the history of SFF at all.
Misha Burnett, author of the Book of Lost Doors series, has been turning his attention to shorter fiction this year, and has a good blog post on his experiences also. I'm personally interested in short fiction markets because I have several ideas for short stories I want to get written in the near future; a few more short stories and then start adding some work on novels to the mix. Burnett also has a good story in the just-released (good bargain!) Utopia Pending anthology.
I'm going to have to do another roundup soon because there's so much going on in "our corner of SFF" (we really need to come up with a name).
John C Wright has had a successful funder for a new series, STARQUEST, to be published by Superversive Press, and aimed at being a space opera of the sort that would not have disappointed Star Wars fans. AFAIK there's no projected publication date yet; if you know better, there's a comment section.
Out already are the first two books of Declan Finn's new Saint Tommy, NYPD series. Declan, of course, is the author of the Honor at Stake series, the Pius Man series, and wrote a terrific story in the underappreciated Tales of the Once and Future King , the anthology where (ahem) you can find one of my stories. Declan is also an editor in an upcoming Superversive Press anthology where another of my stories is slated to appear, which I'll be blogging more about later. So far I've only read the first Saint Tommy book, and I would recommend it heartily, as I did in my Amazon review.
If we really want to influence the course of SFF, how would we go about it? I recall reading in Frederick Pohl's autobiography that someone asked him a question around 1950 about how to get more or better writers for one of the pulp magazines, or something like that--sorry, my copy is in a box someplace--but what struck me was less the question than his answer, which for a leftist like Pohl was quite astute. He said simply, "Pay more." If I had a fortune at my fingers, that would be my strategy: I'd start about 20 monthly fiction magazines, priced low, that would each publish about 70,000 words each issue of fun, uplifting, religion-positive (or at least religion-neutral) SFF, mysteries, westerns, romances ... and I would pay the authors 15 cents a word.
That would do it, I think. Authors would look at that market, and instead of trying to get into Asimov's or Analog or F&SF would aim first at this market. The whole writing market would change as a result. Granted, I'd have to be ready to lose millions while the reading public shifts; but for those millions I'd get a wholesome change in the whole culture.
Could a market support fiction magazines paying that much? Actually, as a fascinating post at Emperor's Notepad reveals, the market once did. If you think the pulps underpaid the authors, go read that post. Actually go read it if you're interested in the history of SFF at all.
Misha Burnett, author of the Book of Lost Doors series, has been turning his attention to shorter fiction this year, and has a good blog post on his experiences also. I'm personally interested in short fiction markets because I have several ideas for short stories I want to get written in the near future; a few more short stories and then start adding some work on novels to the mix. Burnett also has a good story in the just-released (good bargain!) Utopia Pending anthology.
I'm going to have to do another roundup soon because there's so much going on in "our corner of SFF" (we really need to come up with a name).