Riemann space

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

   Yet she knew, head down, stumbling along over the cinderbed
 and its old sleepers, there was still that other chance. That it was 
all true. That Inverarity had only died, nothing else. Suppose, 
God, there really was a Tristero then and that she had come 
on it by accident. If San Narcisco and the estate were really 
no different from any other town, any other estate, then by 
that continuity she might have found the Tristero anywhere 
in her Republic, through any of a hundred lightly-concealed 
entranceways, a hundred alienations, if only she'd looked. 
She stopped a minute between the steel rails, raising her head 
as if to sniff the air. Becoming conscious of the hard, strung 
prescence she stood on---knowing as if maps had been flashed 
for her on the sky how these tracks ran on into others, others, 
knowing they laced, deepened, authenticated the great night 
around her. If only she'd looked. . . . 


"The Crying of Lot 49", page 148
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Monte Davis" <monte.davis at verizon.net>
 While Riemann provided or inspired much of the toolkit for general relativity, 
what AtD plays with is the Manick Speculation that followed: all sorts of 
people who didn't bother to get anything out of the math beyond "maybe 
there are MORE DIMENSIONS!" used them as escape routes from the 
seemingly tight "box" of mainstream science a la Euclid->Newton->Maxwell, 
Gibbs & Boltzmann. All you needed was the fact that mathematicians and 
scientists were *talking about it* to legtimize a claim that extra dimensions 
are the playground of the (real or desired) mysteries of time, spirit, life force, 
or any other ghosties and goblins you like.