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Loading... The Last Theoremby Arthur C. Clarke
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  pauliharman | Jan 25, 2010 |  Valashain | Dec 5, 2009 | What has happened to science fiction? The mainstay of my teenage reading, I marvelled at the soaring intellects that showed how technology and science can make us gods or devils. I travelled in a universe (in many universes!) where to be alive was often a multiple-choice question and where the human race (me, actually) could interact with anything and everything. How the mighty are fallen! What were Clarke and Pohl thinking of when they wrote (and I think it is called ‘writing’ in some universes) ‘The Last Theorem’? Let me summarise this book: a guy thinks of something that makes him famous so he can travel around and be rich; meanwhile, aliens come to destroy the Earth (their motivation unrelated to our hero), but change their minds at the last minute and we all live happily together with humans eventually ruling the universe. Am I missing something? Is this post-modern fiction, or ironic, or something I don’t understand? Fiction as an extract from ‘Hello’ magazine? I kept waiting for his to start and to go somewhere, to get to the heart of the story, and suddenly I had finished it. They may be old-hat, but you alwys know where you are with a ray-gun. (  ) pierthinker | Oct 24, 2009 | A solid work of mainstream fiction disguised by an alien invasion McGuffin. (  ) scififan42 | Oct 14, 2009 | A novel apparently begun by the late Sir Arthur and completed by veteran SFer Pohl. As a result of the old atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons, could there now be extrasolar aliens en route to Earth on a sterilization mission?! fpagan | Jan 20, 2009 | 
 This is a genuine Frederik Pohl and Arthur C. Clarke novel. It's a worthy addition to both men's works. And, best of all, it's a chance to sit down one more time with a pair of old, old friends and find them just as sharp, witty, and wise as they ever have been.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0345470214, Hardcover)Two of science fiction’s most renowned writers join forces for a storytelling sensation. The historic collaboration between Frederik Pohl and his fellow founding father of the genre, Arthur C. Clarke, is both a momentous literary event and a fittingly grand farewell from the late, great visionary author of 2001: A Space Odyssey.The Last Theorem is a story of one man’s mathematical obsession, and a celebration of the human spirit and the scientific method. It is also a gripping intellectual thriller in which humanity, facing extermination from all-but-omnipotent aliens, the Grand Galactics, must overcome differences of politics and religion and come together . . . or perish. In 1637, the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat scrawled a note in the margin of a book about an enigmatic theorem: “I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.” He also neglected to record his proof elsewhere. Thus began a search for the Holy Grail of mathematics–a search that didn’t end until 1994, when Andrew Wiles published a 150-page proof. But the proof was burdensome, overlong, and utilized mathematical techniques undreamed of in Fermat’s time, and so it left many critics unsatisfied–including young Ranjit Subramanian, a Sri Lankan with a special gift for mathematics and a passion for the famous “Last Theorem.” When Ranjit writes a three-page proof of the theorem that relies exclusively on knowledge available to Fermat, his achievement is hailed as a work of genius, bringing him fame and fortune. But it also brings him to the attention of the National Security Agency and a shadowy United Nations outfit called Pax per Fidem, or Peace Through Transparency, whose secretive workings belie its name. Suddenly Ranjit–together with his wife, Myra de Soyza, an expert in artificial intelligence, and their burgeoning family–finds himself swept up in world-shaking events, his genius for abstract mathematical thought put to uses that are both concrete and potentially deadly. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone on Earth, an alien fleet is approaching the planet at a significant percentage of the speed of light. Their mission: to exterminate the dangerous species of primates known as homo sapiens. (retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:39:37 -0500) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
All of the Clarke cliches are firmly in place - Sri Lanka, space elevators, religion bashing, hyper powerful alien custodians. In places it felt like ACC was phoning in his greatest hits. In contrast, the personal, character relation aspects of the story are beautifully written and in places rather moving.
What lets the book down is a lack of connection between the protagonists and the theme of the book. There IS NO 'last theorem', the key protagonist's mathematical skills have no bearing on the direction the story takes, or its outcome.
It's as if one writer said 'Fermi' and the other heard 'Fermat' and the mistake wasn't noticed until too close to publication to change anything!