August Pointdexter accuses his colleague, Dr. Edward Barron, of being overly-confident in the safety of the time machine he has just invented. The story does not specifically say that Barron is a mathematician, but he frequently refers to math and equations, and it does specify that Pointdexter is not a mathematician:
| (quoted from Blank!)
"Of course I'm right. For God's sake, why couldn't you have been a mathmatician instead of a machinist with a college education?" In his impatience, Barron could scarcely hide his contempt. "Look, this machine is only possible because certain mathematical relationships between space and time hold true. You understand that, don't you, even if you don't follow the details of the mathematics? The machine exists, so the mathematical relations I worked out have some correspondence in reality. Right? You've seen me send rabbits a week into the future. You've seen them appear out of nothing. You've seen me send a rabbit one week into the past one week after it appeared. And they were unharmed."
"All right. I admit all that."
"Then will you believe me if I tell you that the equations upon which this machine is based assume that time is composed of particles that exist in an unchanging order; that time is invariant. If the order of the particles could be changed in any way - any way at all - the equations would be invalid and this machine wouldn't work; this particular method of time travel would be impossible."
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Hubris and condescension are among the common stereotypes of mathematicians in fiction,
and I would argue that the author is utilizing that here. (At the risk of spoiling the story, I will give away the fact that things do not work out well for the two men after they attempt to travel through time, thereby justifying Pointdexter's initial skepticism.)
This story was one of three stories entitled "Blank" which appeared in the first issue of Infinity science fiction magazine in June 1957. (The titles differed only in their use of punctuation.) Asimov explained that editor Larry Shaw gave the title to him, Randall Garrett, and Harlan Ellison as a challenge. In my opinion, it is not one of Asimov's best and only barely qualifies as "mathematical fiction", but it has been reprinted a few times. (See here for its full publication history.) |
