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The Circle of Zero
The Circle of Zero
If there were a mountain a thousand miles high and every thousand years a bird flew over it, just brushing the peak with the tip of its wing, in the course of inconceivable eons the mountain would be worn away. Yet all those ages would not be one second to the length of eternity.
Book Excerpt
'Do you suppose,' I asked suddenly, 'that anyone exists twice on the same earth? Reincarnation in the sense of the Hindus?'
He laughed scornfully. 'The age of the earth is somewhere between a thousand million and three thousand million years. What proportion of eternity is that?'
'Why--no proportion at all. Zero.'
'Exactly. And zero represents the chance of the same atoms combining to form the same person twice in one cycle of a planet. But I have shown that trillions, or trillions of trillions of years ago, there must have been another earth, another Jack Anders, and'--his voice took on that whining note--'another crash that ruined Jack Anders and old de Neant. That is the time you must remember out of lethargy.'
'Catalepsy!' I said. 'What would one remember in that?'
'God knows.'
'What a mad scheme!' I said suddenly. 'What a crazy pair of fools we are!' The adjectives were a mistake.
'Mad? Crazy?' His voice became a screech. 'Old de Neant is mad, eh?
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An aging scientist postulates that in an eternal universe, everything that can possibly happen has already happened an infinite number of times. Following financial ruin in 1929, he employs hypnosis seeking a successful strategy from previous existence.
Another creative story from Stanley Weinbaum.
Another creative story from Stanley Weinbaum.
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Set in 1929, a disgraced professor and a ruined stockbroker combine to wrest the secrets of the future from the memories of the past, and recover their lost wealth.
An interesting philosophical/mathematical approach to predicting the future--if you buy it. The writing was good, and the characterizations reasonable. I especially liked when the professor slipped from rational arguments into complete gibberish and his daughter came and put him to bed.
An interesting philosophical/mathematical approach to predicting the future--if you buy it. The writing was good, and the characterizations reasonable. I especially liked when the professor slipped from rational arguments into complete gibberish and his daughter came and put him to bed.
01/19/2014
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