Arthur Clarke - The Last Theorem

In that conclusion, however, they were not entirely right.

A true and final proof of Fermat’s theorem came at last at almost the end of the twentieth century. It happened in the years 1993 to 1995, when a British mathematician named Andrew Wiles, working at Princeton University in the United States, published a final, complete, error-free, and definitive proof of Fermat’s 350-odd-year-old conjecture. The problem had been solved.

Hardly anyone, however, was satisfied.

In the first place, Wiles’s proof was ridiculously long—one hundred fifty densely written pages. Worse still, there were parts of it that no human being could read—and thereby confirm that they were error-free. Only a computer program could check them. Worst of all, Wiles’s proof could not have been the one that Fermat claimed, because it relied on proofs and procedures that had not been known to Fermat or anyone else anywhere near that time. So, many great mathematicians refused to accept it….

Including, as we have just seen, one truly superb, if fictitious, one. We are speaking of one whose home was far from Fermat’s in both time and space, namely the one named Ranjit Subramanian, whom this book has been about.

Both SIR ARTHUR C. CLARKE and FREDERIK POHL have won large numbers of awards for their work. Both have been declared “Grand Masters of Science Fiction” by SFWA, the formal organization of science-fiction writers, and both have collaborated with a number of other writers over the years. They have, however, never before collaborated on a novel together.

Childhood’s End

Rendezvous with Rama

2010: Odyssey Two

The Songs of Distant Earth

2061: Odyssey Three

3001: The Final Odyssey

Hammer of God

A TIME ODYSSEY ( with Stephen Baxter )

A Time Odyssey: Time’s Eye

A Time Odyssey: Sunstorm

A Time Odyssey: Firstborn

Gateway

Beyond the Blue Event Horizon

The Last Theorem is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2008 by The Estate of Arthur C. Clarke

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Clarke, Arthur C. (Arthur Charles), 1917–2008.

The last theorem / Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl—1st ed.

p. cm.

1. Mathematicians—Fiction. 2. Physicists—Fiction. 3. Fermat’s last theorem—Fiction. 4. Space vehicles—Propulsion systems—Fiction. 5. Sri Lanka—Fiction. I. Pohl, Frederik. II. Title.

PR6005.L36L37 2008 823’.914—dc22 2008021262

www.delreybooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-50968-0

v3.0