The Infinite Man

I wonder "what were they thinking" about more American SF from the 1970s than any other period. By "they" I mean both author and publisher. Case in point: this novel.

There are some interesting hard SF concepts tossed out. (1) A search for the spontaneous creation of neutrons, as posited by Hoyle's now-defunct steady state theory of the universe, reveals that all new matter is being created inside one man. (2) The old theories of the universe were true. it's the universe that has changed. Once there was a geocentric universe with light shining through holes, then later a simple Newtonian model, then the one we see now. (3) PI becomes a rational number, 12 years before Carl Sagan imagined someone embedding a message in the digits of PI. show more (4) At one point in the story, the moon disappears briefly, then the sun for a number of minutes, then the moon again, then the other planets. A timetable of these events is presented. It's a mini-mystery with a neat solution. This is all far-out but fun.

Then there's everything else. This reads like a bad caricature of 1970s acid trip movies. Everyone "digs" things, women are all "chicks", people "freak out" every other page. This would spell doom for the best of plots. But this is a plot where God -- who doesn't seem very bright for all his omnipotence -- is hiding inside our hero, while his destructive opposite manipulates things to lead to eventual destruction. There's a cult trying to find and free our hero who wear all their clothes inside out (a topological transformation) and pronounce all proper names backwards. At one of their meetings, a woman rides a roller coaster in the form of a Moebius strip, stripping while she goes. The book ends with several pages of simple but cryptic diagrams exolaining what happens to the universe.

The Science Fiction Encyclopedia politely notes "Galouye's last novel, The Infinite Man (1973), was less successful." Yes, indeed.

Not recommended. show less

Interesting ideas, bad story, or rather almost no story, that goes nowhere.