Rudy Rucker, Mathematicians in Love

Mathematicians in Love

Rudy Rucker

Tor, November 28 2006, $24.95

ISBN 076531584X

In the university, the two mathematics graduate students, Bela Kis and Paul Bridge, are room mates who share much in common, besides trying to obtain a PH.D by the numbers and a flat. Both are advised by maniacal mathematician Dr. Roland Haut, and each enjoys the lifestyle of an advanced student living in college towns like Humelocke and Klownetown, where the zaniest crazies of the universe come together to discuss the meaning of life (more often than not with various forms debating existence). However, what they most share in common is the love of Alma Ziff, who is more or less Bela's girlfriend, though she zips the bridge at times to be with Paul.

The two room mates compete for who gets the girl at a time when their insane faculty advisor has begun developing a mathematical model that predicts the future; that is when he is not seeing monsters. Jumping off of Mad Haut's theory, Bela and Paul inventing the paracomputer "Gobubble" that predicts even more accurately the future, as their advisor's monsters prove real and their love triangle even more acutely convex than keenly isosceles than either student calculated.

Rudy Rucker lampoons politics, universities, mathematical theories, and humanity as he spins a terrific romantic science fiction satire that takes readers where they have never been before, with perhaps the only recent exception being the author's novel FREAK AND THE ELIXIR. The math is highbrow insanity, as the shortest distance between two points is an arc, but also augments the humorous storyline. Haut is way outside the circle of sanity, while Bela and Paul argue number theory to determine who ends up with Alma, monsters aside. Readers will appreciate this zany tale that proves the sum of the angles of a romantic triangle does not equal 180 degrees.