Gravity's Rainbow

[Otto]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Maas" <tyronemullet at hotmail.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2004 11:06 AM
Subject: Gravity's Rainbow
>

> And so dear reader, what does gravity's rainbow the phrase mean to you, no
> cribbing from Weisenberg or Fowler or any of that ilk, please. Steve Maas
>

Great idea to start the reading this way!

But your "no cribbing"-remark makes me ask: what do W. & F. say about it
that you don't want to hear?

To me it has no "fixed" meaning, it means everything that any possible
reader might read into it.

Science versus Belief

What it means to me right now is that it combines the realms of science and
belief. We know that the rainbow is just an optical illusion, but we know as
well its biblical meaning when the Lord promised Noah at the end of the
great flood never to drown mankind again. But he did not promise that he
would not burn us in nuclear fire. Or that one day we might be able to do it
ourselves by rockets.

Even if the rainbow is only an illusion it follows some scientific laws, for
example it has the mathematical figure of a parable. This it has in common
not only with the way ballistic missiles move but with life as well as it
seems:

"Among a parabola life like a rocket flies,
Mainly in darkness, now and then on a rainbow"
Andrei Voznesensky -- Parabolic Balad

Rocket-engineer Wernher von Braun had the dream to overcome gravity, to get
to the land "over the rainbow" by technical means, but with this he opened
Pandora's box which enabled us to destroy mankind.

"If our world survives, the next great challenge to watch out for will
come - you heard it here first - when the curves of research and development
in artificial intelligence, molecular biology and robotics all converge.
Oboy. It will be amazing and unpredictable, and even the biggest of brass,
let us devoutly hope, are going to be caught flat-footed."
NYT, October 28, 1984, Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite?

Otto