Arthur Clarke - The Ghost from the Grand Banks

The useful hint on octopus allergies (e.g., what to do if you find one in the toilet) comes from Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Philippe Diole’s Octopus and Squid: The Soft Intelligence (Cassell, 1973).

And here I must put on record something that has mystified me for many years. In this book, Jacques asserts that though his divers have played with octopuses (very well: octopodes) hundreds of times, they have never once been bitten—and have never even heard of such an incident. Well… the only time I caught one, off the eastern coast of Australia, it bit me! (see The Coast of Coral , Harper Row, 1956). I am quite unable to explain this total breakdown of the laws of probability.

According to Omni magazine, the question described in Chapter 13 was actually set in a high school intelligence test, and only one genius-type pupil spotted that the printed answer was wrong. I still find this amazing; skeptics may profitably spend a few minutes with scissors and cardboard. The even more incredible story of Srinivasa Ramanujan, mentioned passim in the same chapter, will be found in G. H. Hardy’s small classic, A Mathematician’s Apology , and more conveniently in Volume 1 of James Newman’s The World of Mathematics.

For a crash course in offshore oil drilling operations, I must thank my longtime Sri Lankan friend Cuthbert Charles and his colleagues Walter Jackson and Danny Stephens (all with Brown Root Vickers Ltd.) and Brian Redden (Technical Services Division Manager, Wharton Williams). They prevented me from making (I hope) too many flagrant errors, and they are in no way responsible for my wilder extrapolations of their truly astonishing achievements—already comparable to much that we will be doing in space during the next century. I apologize for awarding their kindness by sabotaging so much of their handiwork.

The full story of 1974’s “Operation JENNIFER” has never been told, and probably never will be. To my surprise, its director turned out to be an old acquaintance, and I am grateful to him for his evasive but not unhelpful replies to my queries. On the whole, I would prefer not to know too much about the events of that distant summer, so that I am not handicapped by mere facts.

While writing this novel, I was amused to encounter another work of fiction using the Glomar Explorer , though (luckily!) for a very different purpose: Ship of Gold , by Thomas Allen and Norman Polmar (Macmillan, 1987).

My thanks also to sundry CIA and KGB acquaintances, who would prefer to remain anonymous.

One informant I am happy to identify is Professor William Orr, Dept. of Geological Science, University of Oregon, my erstwhile shipmate on the floating campus SS Universe. The plans and documentation he provided on Glomar Explorer (now languishing in Suisun Bay, California, between Vallejo and Martinez—you can see her from Highway 680) were essential inputs.

The discovery of major explosive events on the seabed, referred to in Chapter 33, was reported by David B. Prior, Earl H. Doyle, and Michael J. Kaluza in Science , vol. 243, pp. 517-9, 27 January 1989, under the title “Evidence for Sediment Eruption on Deep Sea Floor, Gulf of Mexico.”

On the very day I was making the final corrections to this manuscript, I learned that there is now strong evidence that oil drilling can cause earthquakes. The October 28, 1989, Science News cites a paper by Paul Segall of the U.S. Geological Survey, making this claim in the October 1989 issue of Geology.

The report on the Neolithic grave quoted in Chapter 34 will be found in Nature , 276 , 608, 1978.

Ralph C. Merkle’s truly mind-boggling paper “Molecular Repair of the Brain” first appeared in the October 1989 issue of Cryonics (published by ALCOR, 12327, Doherty St., Riverside, CA, 92503) to whom I am grateful for an advance copy.

My thanks to Kumar Chitty for information on the U.N. Law of the Sea Convention, directed for many years by the late Ambassador Shirley Hamilton Amarasinghe. It is a great tragedy that Shirley (the hospitality of whose Park Avenue apartment I often enjoyed in the ’70s) did not see the culmination of his efforts. He was a wonderful persuader, and had he lived might even have prevented the U.S. and U.K. delegations from shooting themselves in the foot.

I am particularly grateful to my collaborator Gentry Lee ( Cradle , the Rama trilogy) for arranging his schedule so that I could concentrate all my energies on the latest of my “last” novels…

Very special thanks to Navam and Sally Tambayah—not to mention Tasha and Cindy—for hospitality, WORDSTAR, and faxes…

And, finally: a tribute to my dear friend the late Reginald Ross, who besides many other kindnesses introduced me to Rachmaninoff and Elgar half a century ago, and who died at the age of 91 while this book was being written.

The literature on the Mandelbrot Set, first introduced to the non-IBM world in A. K. Dewdney’s “Computer Recreations” ( Scientific American , Aug. 1985, 16-25), is now enormous. The master’s own book, The Fractal Geometry of Nature (W. H. Freeman, 1982), is highly technical, and much is inaccessible even to those with delusions of mathematical ability. Nevertheless, a good deal of the text is informative and witty, so it is well worth skimming. However, it contains only the briefest references to the M-Set, the exploration of which was barely beginning in 1982.

The Beauty of Fractals (H-O. Peitgen and P. H. Richter, Springer-Verlag, 1986) was the first book to show the M-Set in glorious Technicolor, and contains a fascinating (and often amusing) essay by Dr. M. himself on its origins and discovery (invention?). He describes later developments in The Science of Fractal Images (edited by H-O. Peitgen and Dietmar Saupe, Springer-Verlag, 1988). Both these books are highly technical.

Much more accessible to the general—though determined—reader is A. K. Dewdney’s The Armchair Universe (W. H. Freeman, 1988). This contains the original 1985 Scientific American article, with updates and information on software available for personal computers. I have been very happy with MandFXP, from Cygnus Software (1215 Davie St., P.O. Box 363, Vancouver BC, V6E 1N4, Canada), and have used this extensively on my AMIGA 2000. While making a TV documentary, “God, the Universe, and Everything Else” for U.K.’s Channel 4, I had the rare privilege of showing Stephen Hawking some beautiful “black holes” I had discovered, while expanding the set until it would have filled the orbit of Mars. Another supplier of M-Set software (for MAC and IBM) is Sintar Software (1001 4th Ave., Suite 3200, Seattle, WA 98154).

Needless to say, there are Mandelbrot “fan magazines,” containing hints on speeding up programs, notes from explorers in far-off regions of the set—and even samples of a new literary genre, Fractalfiction. The newsletter of the field is Amygdala , edited by Rollo Silver, who also supplies software (Box 111, San Cristobal, NM 87564).

Undoubtedly the best way of appreciating the set is through the videotapes that have been made of it, usually with accompanying music. Most celebrated is “Nothing But Zooms” from Art Matrix (P.O. Box 880, Ithaca, NY 14851). I have also enjoyed “A Fractal Ballet” (The Fractal Stuff Company, P.O. Box 5202, Spokane, WA 99205-5202).

Strictly speaking, the “Utter West” of the M-Set is at exactly-2, not -1.999… to infinity, as stated in Chapter 18. Anyone care to split the difference?

I do not know if there have been any cases of Mandelmania in real life, but I expect to receive reports as soon as this book appears—and waive all responsibility in advance.