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.
THE FOURTH POSTAMBLE
The Authors
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.
ALSO BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE
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
ALSO BY FREDERIK POHL
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
Arthur C. Clarke, The Last Theorem
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