Three responses to the responses on the Mobius Sci Fi question.....DMD _________________________________ Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 08:56:00 -0500 (EST) From: Jack Morava Subject: Re: scifi query I don't know about the Moebius subway, but in the early seventies my wife and I encountered a projective plane in the Institute Woods in Princeton. At least, that's what we think happened: we went for a walk after tea, crossed the suspension bridge, and got ourselves good and lost. After bushwhacking around for a while, we eventually found a path that brought us back to Fuld Hall, without crossing the river again. We considered the possibility that we had encountered a wormhole, but observed no gravitational distortion... _____________________________________________ Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 15:07:58 +0100 (MET) From: Frank Neumann Subject: Re: scifi query I guess, the story Larry refers to is "A subway named Moebius" by A. J. Deutsch. It can be found, for example, in the collection of "mathematical fiction stories" by C. Fadiman: Fantasia Mathematica. There is a second reprint of this collection published by Springer (still available, I guess, at least a year ago...). The movie made out of the story was called "Moebius". It is an argentinian movie and the story is moved from the Boston subway to the one in Buenos Aires. Frank Neumann ______________________________________ Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 09:22:03 -0500 (EST) From: "Douglas C. Ravenel" Subject: Re: 3 on Sci Fi Mobius > > Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 13:24:40 +0100 (CET) > From: Larry Smith > Subject: Re: scifi query > > The title is "A Train Called Moebius" and it takes place in the Boston > Metro. It was even filmed a decade or two ago. The author escapes me at > the moment, but if you ask Don at Uncle Hugos SF Bookstore in > Minneapolis(best SF bookstore I know: www/unclehugo.com) I am sure he will > be able to tell you. The original was only a short thin, maybe 20 pages. I > probably can find it this evening if I look hard enough at home. > > Larry > > It's called " Subway Named Moebius" by A. J. Deutsch. It is in the anthology "Fantasia Mathematica" edited by Clifton Fadiman. See for more information. About thre story: "When the MBTA (Boston's Public Transportation authority) introduces a new line, the topology of the network become so complex that a train vanishes...lost in some fourth dimensional properties of the network. The mathematics in this story is not always accurate. In particular, I disagree with the statment that a Mobius strip always has one singularity and a Klein bottle has two. (In fact, the standard versions of these topological curiosities are non-singular manifolds.) The author is confusing the "twisting" required to make these objects from two-sided 2-dimensional objects with singularity. Apparently, this story was made into a movie! Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica. " About the 1996 film: Title: Moebius Gustavo Mosquera Year: 1996 Call Number: mf45 In this Argentinian film, a mathematician discovers a bizarre explanation for the disappearance of a train in the labrynthian Buenos Aires subway system. (I have not received any confirmation of this, but I presume this movie is based on the short story "A Subway Called Moebius" that takes place in Boston. I'll try to get more info soon....-ak) Doug Douglas C. Ravenel, Chair |918 Hylan Building Department of Mathematics |drav@math.rochester.edu University of Rochester |(716) 275-4413 Rochester, New York 14627 |FAX (716) 273-4655 Personal home page: http://www.math.rochester.edu/u/drav/ Department of Mathematics home page: http://www.math.rochester.edu/ Math 142 home page: http://www.math.rochester.edu/courses/current/MTH142/ Faculty Senate home page: http://www.cc.rochester.edu:80/Faculty/senate/