The Last Theorem

Arthur C Clarke and Frederik Pohl

HarperCollins

Otago Daily Times, January 17th 2009

The Last Theorem by Arthur C Clarke and Frederik Pohl is also the former writer’s last novel.  As you might expect from two of the grandmasters of SF, it ticks all the appropriate boxes.  Humanity’s tinkering with nuclear weapons attracts the attention of a transcendent alien race, the Grand Galactics, who dispatch a minion race to remove this nuisance planet before it causes any trouble. 

Meanwhile on Earth, the US, China and Russia develop an EMP weapon that can immobilise the entire electronic infrastructure of a country, neutralising any opposition instantly and bloodlessly. It is against this background that Sri Lankan mathematician Ranjit Subramanian grows up and solves Fermat’s Theorem, an achievement that sees him and his family in the midst of both global and galactic events. 

Although this is ostensibly Ranjit’s story, he is the recipient rather than the initiator of events, with ‘something good’ or ‘something bad’ happening to him, repeatedly.  This is not to say his life is not an interesting one, nor that the writing is bad (it is not), and I did learn a couple of fun number-theory party tricks.  It’s just that the extraterrestrial (and home-grown) threats didn’t really resonate with the rest of the plot. Will the political superpowers exercised their weapons benignly or attempt to obtain global dominance?  Will the Grand Galactics notice humankind’s shift away from WMD and will they care? Does the reader?

Still, this is one of the most optimistic SF novels I’ve read in a while and given ongoing predictions of impeding nuclear/financial/climatic disaster, perhaps the good Doctor’s final prescription is hope.