Now here is a super-hero in the making.  “But I knew that I had some special talents others lacked.  For example, if you drew a line, I could always draw another line that would divide it into the golden ratio: 1.618.”  One wonders if “math-man” could slice his enemies into the same parts with his light saber.  He can also “tell at a glance” whether a numerical sequence was divergent or had a summation formula.  That would have been helpful to me in Calc class, but out there in the multiverse?  It makes me want to diverge from my current project and investigate whether infinite series are actually apparent in nature.  Any ideas?  Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem is packed full of little cool discrete ideas in addition to the overwhelmingly amazing imaginary worlds he has created.

Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is fantasy not sci-fi, but if you follow physics far enough you’ll stumble into metaphysics and that’s where the gods live.  So maybe Gaiman’s book was not just a distraction, it was a detour taking me on a journey the long way around to the place my own writings have sent me.  Gaiman’s gods are down and out wanderers discarded by the more enlightened American descendants of the gods’ ancient believers.  I got lost in the ectometaverse in my first series when I contemplated how a time traveler could meet himself; there had to be a place where those two consciousnesses were connected.  In my new series, which begins with Perturbations of the Reality Field, the gods have punished any species that dares to think about traveling faster than the speed of light.  Thou shalt not go supraluminal!  I try to use physics and mathematics as the ladder to an expanded reality, Gaiman just walks right in.