#(—and the main mathematician went 'and so I'd solved it 🙂 ... but then we found a problem 🥺' and the whole class went 'AWWWW 😭')

[ckret2]

Okay, weird compliment: I love how obvious it is that you're familiar with Geometric Literature™, which is a weird-ass niche. You've directly referenced Flatland, of course, but you also give the vibes of someone who knows Sagan style science education and might have read Orphans of Chaos. Usually I read stories with a geometric component and they're kind of reinventing the wheel - Which isn't bad or anything! But you are Part of the Literary Tradition, instead of just writing the literature.

Oh thank you!! I have not read Orphans of Chaos, but that's something I'll have to look into now. Love me a good sci-fi/mythology blend.

When I was in college I took a course on the history of science by a dude with a Nobel in physics—not a class to teach science itself but to teach about how philosophers, mathematicians, and eventually scientists conceptualized the idea of what science is—and that's shaped how I've interacted with science and math ever since. (We also talked about cryptography some! All I remember now is the RSA algorithm lol.)

When I'm writing about the cosmology of the multiverse or Bill's backstory, I'm thinking about how math & science were explored in that class and about physics courses I've taken that discussed how major physics discoveries were made in the 19th and 20th centuries and about Flatland and Plato's Cave and old-old-school pre-Lovecraft cosmic horror, and all that together goes into it.

(If you haven't read it already, you might be interested in Machineries of Empire by Yoon Ha Lee! It's not quite geometric literature, but it's mathematical literature, and I really enjoyed the ideas it put forth.)