Journal Entry 1 by BellaMack from St Helens, Tasmania Australia on Monday, November 19, 2007

The Memory of Whiteness (1985) describes a grand musical tour of the 33rd-century solar system, beginning on Pluto at the bleak outer edge, visiting various moons, asteroids and planets, and climaxing in the blinding light and heat of a futuristic power station orbiting close to the Sun's solar-flare zone. All these places are habitable thanks to technologies spawned by the Unified Field Theory of physicist Holywelkin, whose other gift to posterity was his mysterious Orchestra--a fantastic amalgam of over 150 instruments controllable by a single player. Past Orchestra Masters simply played classical music, but the new master is a visionary who thinks he sees Holywelkin's original purpose: to explore his revolutionary Ten Forms of Change equations through music, and reach a devastating insight about the universe. The interplay of music and mathematics (as in Douglas Hofstädter's Gödel, Escher, Bach) is persuasive and resonant. Meanwhile, plots, deceptions, conspirators, cultists, and sabotage attempts dog the Grand Tour as it spirals inward through the system.... Gripping thriller elements alternate with elegant philosophical speculation and slightly cutesy asides to the "dear Reader". Strange and fascinating. - David Langford

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Far in the future of the human race, the brilliant mathematician Holywelkin discovers a new physical theory that allows us to understand particle physics and build the amazing "whitsuns" which in turn let us to colonize the entire solar system. If that were not enough, he also spent his final years as a musician and composer, inventing the remarkable instrument known as "Orchestra". As this book unfolds, the current "maestro" begins to discover that these two interests (Holywelkin's mathematical physics and his music) are not unrelated. In fact, they are intertwined in a way that only the members of the mysterious "Grey" cult seem to understand. The description of Holywelkin's theory is interesting (though, by necessity, not very detailed). Historical background is provided that includes real results (such as the Kaluza-Klein theory) making the theory seem not only interesting but even plausible. There is also much discussion of mathematical determinism -- the question of whether a mathematical theory could entirely predict the future and what the consequences of such a result would be. - Alex Kasman