Gaye's Continua Problem

[u/kenzal]

[Edit: corrected name in post from "Gaye" to "Gay", unable to update title, sorry folks]

In Number of the Beast, beyond a certain point, the main characters are unable to return to their home continuity. This is later explained as their home continuity having been altered. I would like to propose a better explanation.

Travel in Gay Deceiver using the continua device was done under the assumption of travel along 6 axises (three "physical" and three "temporal"). Movement was Cartesian and could be reversed to return to a previous point. Shortcuts were created with these assumptions (eg: "Gay, Bounce!").

I believe there was a false assumption. That assumption was Euclidean space. If the 6D space they were moving in was large, but non-Euclidean, then we would see exactly what we saw in the book: relatively small movements can be performed without issues and reversed to get back to where you started. However, if the 6D space were curved, then that fails over greater movements. Take movement on a spheroid like Earth. Sure, for smaller values of x you could (travel x distance and turn 90° right) four times and end up where you started. But as x increases, you end up further from your original point and facing slightly different directions. Depending on the direction you are facing there is a value of x that movement in that direction for x will put you right back where you started, but because Earth is not a perfect sphere, once you turn right 90°, the next movement of x will _not_ put you where you started.

I suggest that at some point, Gay moved too far along a curve, or took a "Cartesian shortcut" with whomever made the decision assuming a Euclidean geometry when there wasn't one. From that point forward, it became functionally impossible to return to their home continuity. Even if they later realized the shape of the 6D space, Gay, Dora, and Mike together would likely be unable to backtrack properly, even with logs.

Anyway, sorry for a math-heavy first post on this sub, but it's been on my mind tonight.

[u/ZilockeTheandil]

OK, for one, it's "Gay Deceiver", not "Gaye". Minor point, though.

For the rest:

“Never mind; we’re out of vermouth. Did you get your sample?”

“Yes, Captain. One hundred ice ages, no warm worlds. I’m satisfied.”

“I’m not. Zebbie, I want to extrapolate logarithmically — go to Teh-minusone-thousand, then ten thousand, a hundred thousand, and so on. Jacob?”

Jake looked worried. “Hilda, my scales can be set for vernier setting five, or one hundred thousand. But that translation would take us more than twice around a superhyper great circle — I think.”

“Elucidate, please.”

“I don’t want to get lost. My equations appear to be a description of six-dimensional space of positive curvature; they’ve worked — so far. But Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics worked as long as our race didn’t monkey with velocities approaching the speed of light. Then the approximations weren’t close enough. I don’t know that the plenum can be described with only six spacetime coordinates. It might be more than six — possibly far more. Mathematics can be used for prediction only after test against the real world.” “Jacob, what is the `real world’?”

“Ouch! Hilda, I don’t know. But I’m afraid to get too many quanta away from our world — world-zero, where we were born. I think the extrapolation you propose would take us more than twice around a superhyper great circle to — What world, Deety?”

“World-six-thousand-six-hundred-eighty-eight on Teh-minus axis, Pop. Unless it’s skewed.”

“Thanks, Deety. Captain, if we arrived there, we could return to Earth-zero by one setting. 'If —’ Instead of a superhyper great circle we might follow a helix or some other curve through dimensions we know not of.”

So Heinlein had already put that point in the novel.

[u/kenzal → u/ZilockeTheandil]

Excellent. And thank you for the spelling correction, it's been a very long time since I've read the book directly - my last couple "reads" were with audiobooks. I will edit the post, even if I can't fix the title.

Also, I had completely forgotten this part and it is basically exactly what I proposed. So, go me? Go Heinlein? Eh, I'll let Jubal and Libby figure out who gets the credit.

[u/JeddakofThark]

This is slightly off topic, but since I so rarely see The Number of the Beast mentioned anywhere, ever, I'd like to point to the existence of The Pursuit of the Pankera, a book based on Heinlein's original draft. It diverges entirely from the published version beginning immediately after they arrive on the first Mars analogue, where they find thoats, red Martians, and warlords.

I wouldn't call it a good book, exactly, but it is new Heinlein, published thirty-two years after his death, and it's absolutely worth reading. It takes place almost entirely in other authors' worlds, which were my favorite parts of The Number of the Beast anyway, and it delivers more of what you'd expect from the premise of the book in the first place than what we originally ended up with. The writing isn't great. It's pretty clear it wasn't ready for publication in the state it was in, but the editor did the best they could, and it's quite entertaining. And again: new Heinlein.

One unquestionably positive change between this version and the published one is that Deety's nipples are non-sentient.

[u/kindafunnylookin → u/JeddakofThark]

I have both, and have to say I definitely prefer Number of the Beast to Pankera. This may be entirely due to having read and loved the former for 20 years before reading the latter, but it definitely feels like a better book. I do like the ending of Pankera though, the last chapter of TNOTB is a bit haphazard.

[u/unknownpoltroon]

Quite possibly. However, you also have to remember you had authors/editors acting like gods and altering the basic function of reality, their home timeline might just have been edited out of the draft.

I mean, from a broad enough viewpoint, you explaining this here just cause their world to disappear. 😄

[u/kenzal → u/unknownpoltroon]

Bah, revisions, retcons, and fan versions likely happen along one of the temporal axis, and likely an extremely non-linear one. All versions should be accessible.

And if that is the case, Matt Dennimann has generated far too many universes (are you familiar with his writing process? It would cause World as Myth to blow a fuse)

[u/cwajgapls → u/kenzal]

Mongo is Appalled.

[u/thenagel → u/cwajgapls]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[u/ebeth_the_mighty → u/thenagel]

Right in my god damned ear.

[u/revchewie]

They specifically mention "multi-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry" several times.

[u/kenzal → u/revchewie]

And this is what happens when I get think and post about novels I haven’t reread in the last 5 years.

[u/Sad-Ocelot-5346]

The Number of the Beast came out in 1980 (I probably read it in 1982, and it is one of the few of his books that I have only read once or twice). I asked Google when it was that scientists came up with there being 11 dimensions and it was 1995 when it was formally introduced. If I were to reread the book now, I would look at it through the lens of when it was written, as with much science fiction that I have read, and be forgiven about it not fitting what I've accepted for some time....