{"id":467,"date":"2009-01-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T22:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=467"},"modified":"2024-12-31T13:36:44","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T00:36:44","slug":"the-last-theorem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2009\/01\/17\/the-last-theorem\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last Theorem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Arthur C Clarke<\/strong> <strong>and Frederik Pohl<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>HarperCollins<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, January 17th 2009<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The Last Theorem<\/em> by Arthur C Clarke and Frederik Pohl is also the former writer\u2019s last novel.\u00a0 As you might expect from two of the grandmasters of SF, it ticks all the appropriate boxes.\u00a0 Humanity\u2019s 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.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">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\u2019s Theorem, an achievement that sees him and his family in the midst of both global and galactic events.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Although this is ostensibly Ranjit\u2019s story, he is the recipient rather than the initiator of events, with \u2018something good\u2019 or \u2018something bad\u2019 happening to him, repeatedly.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It\u2019s just that the extraterrestrial (and home-grown) threats didn\u2019t really resonate with the rest of the plot. Will the political superpowers exercised their weapons benignly or attempt to obtain global dominance?\u00a0 Will the Grand Galactics notice humankind\u2019s shift away from WMD and will they care? Does the reader?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Still, this is one of the most optimistic SF novels I\u2019ve read in a while and given ongoing predictions of impeding nuclear\/financial\/climatic disaster, perhaps the good Doctor\u2019s final prescription is hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arthur C Clarke and Frederik Pohl<br \/>\nHarper Collins<br \/>\nOtago Daily Times review January 17th 2009<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[88,90,370,91,18,407],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-88","tag-arthur-c-clarke","tag-fiction","tag-frederik-pohl","tag-odt","tag-speculative-sci-fi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1411,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions\/1411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}