This 21st Century homage to H.P. Lovecraft features math professor Arthur Hilton:
| (quoted from Passing Through)
"Yes, the same Hilton who is the world-famous mathematician
Miskatonic is so proud to claim as a member of their staff. The Five-
Color Problem Hilton. You're one of the select few to discover my
secret. Dr. Hilton, graduate of Princeton, Harvard and Yale, is a student of the occult. Better keep that information quiet, though. The
administration would be extremely hard on the man who revealed
that the university's only Nobel Prize winner has a crackpot strain.
Bad for the school's image."
Hilton rambled on and I managed to interject a few remarks of
my own. I knew of the man but never dreamed I might actually meet
him, least of all encounter him in the vault. The mathematician was
regarded as one of the leading theorists on space and time relation-
ships in the world. Only three years ago, his work on transfinite topo-
logical sequence spaces had earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics.
As Hilton had mentioned, he was without a doubt the most famous
member of the Miskatonic faculty.
|
In Lovecraft's The Dreams in the Witch-House (1933), Walter Gilman, a mathematics graduate student at Miskatonic University dies a horrible death while using his mathematical knowledge to summon beings with supernatural powers. In this modern sequel,
Hilton has stumbled upon Gilman's notes and plans to use them to communicate with four-dimensional being without meeting same sad fate as the student did so many years before:
| (quoted from Passing Through)
Gilman was a mathematical prodigy. His work
might actually have led into a branch of my own field of study if he
had lived. The problem with Gilman was a lack of understanding of
the underlying structure of the field. He was trapped by his own
inadequacies. I think I could succeed where he failed."
|
His plan is that math itself will be used to communicate with the "Ancient Ones":
| (quoted from Passing Through)
"No sight of the creatures is necessary," said Hilton, his voice
calm and cool. "Communication will be done using the universal
truths of mathematics. Basic axioms will quickly lead to more complex ideas. All writing can be done using chalkboards..." |
Aside from that, the story includes the usual sort of discussion of four-dimensional space that one would find in a pulp sci-fi story and vague mention of scribbled mathematical formulas.
It was published in The Disciples of Cthulhu II: Blasphemous Tales of the Followers edited by Edward P. Berglund. |
