Contributed by
Jason Earls
[This work appears in] an experimental cyberpunk split novel that I put out with Jason Rogers, who is a literature professor currently teaching in S. Korea. The full title is IF(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk()}, but my part is called "I Sin Every Number" and his part is called "Manufactured." (His part is very short -- more like a short story rather than a novella or novel).
"I Sin Every Number" has a straight story line with some hints of science fiction, but it also has some unusual text experiments for chapters (some might consider the novel 'Bizarro,' which is a new genre of fiction emerging). The chapters alternate between straight and experimental, and the experimental ones were generated by various computer programs. I wanted half of my novel to be computer-generated, which fits with the plot of the book in two ways.
My source material for the experimental chapters was my own math articles (and other articles I had written) plus chapters from the King James Bible, which is in the public domain. I used programs that implemented Burrough's cut-up method and another program for translation and also an anagram program, among others. The text experiment chapters have an avant-garde poetic quality (I wanted them to be similar to Cy Twombly's paintings) and I edited them to bring out the poetic language as much as possible. Also, I broke some punctuation rules in the 'straight' portions of the novel because I was inspired by the prose styles of William Burroughs, Dianne Di Prima, and James Frey. Someday I would like to develop my own unique prose style.
There are a few sections of the book that contain some original number theory work. It isn't deep or anything, just recreational stuff. It isn't too hard to tell the real math from the stuff in the experimental chapters.
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