Abstract
Kasmana:The protagonist, Robert Stoney is a british mathematician who worked on German
codes during WW II, was greatly affected by the death of a close friend, and was later
persecuted for his homosexuality. If that sounds familiar, it should, since it is
the true story of Alan Turing, a real life mathematician who is a favorite of authors
of science fiction due to his important role in creating computers and because his
real death seems so unjust (and unsatisfying as a story). So, here again (see also
Tangents) we see a "reality" in which Stoney (Turing) does not die young, but instead
is offered an opportunity to save his timeline with information brought by an admirer
from another universe, and to debate with another character who is an equally poorly
disguised version of C.S. Lewis.The mathematical physics of loop quantum gravity is
quite explicitly described (and attributed by Stoney, with a mention of its real discoverer
only in an appendix.) And the debate involves a very nice description of Gödel's theorem
and its implications (or lack thereof!) for the possibility of machine intelligence.
Like the story Singleton, this one uses the idea of some characters who are not split
into multiple "Everett universes" (many-worlds interpretation of QM) each time they
face a decision.
