conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a description for a book titled Mathematicians in Love about Bela's, Bela, Paul with the genre: Literature & Fiction, United States
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author cleverly pulls off a romantic comedy about mathematicians in love. Following 2004's <I>Frek and the Elixir</I>, this even zanier excursion into alternative versions of Berkeley, Calif., is set in university towns called Humelocke and Klownetown, full of quirky, charming life-forms human and otherwise and ruled by a god who's the female jellyfish-creator of Earth. All this seethes around Bela Kis; Bela's roommate, Paul Bridge; and Bela's girlfriend, Alma Ziff, who ping-pongs between them in a sometimes acute, sometimes obtuse love triangle. Bela and Paul struggle for their Ph.D.s under mad math genius Roland Haut by inventing a paracomputer "Gobubble" that predicts future events. While most of the mathematical flights may stun hapless mathophobes, the author's wild characters, off-the-wall situations and wicked political riffs prove that writing SF spoofs, like Bela's rock music avocation, "beats the hell out of publishing a math paper." <I>(Dec.)</I> <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a plot for a book titled Mathematicians in Love about Bela's, Bela, Paul with the genre: Literature & Fiction, United States
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Mathematicians in Love: Bela and Paul are working towards their PhDs under the direction of a mad math genius named Roland Haut, they invent a para-computer called "GoBubble" that predicts the future.\nThey are both involved in a love triangle with Alma.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first four paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Mathematicians in Love
  Although he was a Heritagist, our local congressional candidate, Van Veeter, was no extremist; he was a logical computer guy, seemingly quite honest. His reasons for wanting to be a congressman had to do with some quirk of corporate tax law that had particularly outraged him. He'd begun his career by patenting some clever new chip designs, and had built up a successful company called Rumpelstiltskin, making specialized chips for cell phones and other wireless devices. Recently Rumpelstiltskin had been using its sky-high stock to acquire several other companies. According to Veeter, there was one particularly obstreperous tax law relating to his maneuvers that had made him decide to go to Washington and debug the system. A lot of people seemed to like the idea of a geek debugging DC. There was even talk of having Veeter replace Ramirez on the national ticket for November. But first, of course, he'd have to win the Humelocke election today.
  As I imagined yet another Heritagist victory, I seemed to hear a downward beep like a character dying in an arcade game, and a stomach cramp hit me. Coffee, pizza, stress. I darted into the student center for a pit stop. While I was washing up, I looked in the mirror, working on my self-esteem.
  I liked what I saw. Bela Kis. Being three-quarters Hungarian and one-quarter Chinese, I have this nice warm skin color. I've been bleaching my thick, blunt-cut hair since high school. I have virile dark stubble on my jaw. I'm fit-looking, thanks in part to having taken up surfing in Santa Cruz. I play electric guitar well enough to have been in a little college band called E To The I Pi. And this particular day, I was wearing an orange plaid golf shirt and purple bell-bottoms which looked good on me.
  In short, you'd never have guessed I was a math student. Maybe if I'd been all robotic and Martian and autistic like the others, then it would have been easier for me to prove the Morphic Classification Theorem. On the other hand, perhaps a truly radical proof could only come from a suave surf dog like me.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: four more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: We made a pit stop just south of SF in the gritty beach town called Corona. I visited a cash machine by a Monogrub burger place. I really did have a million dollars in my bank account now. I withdrew my daily maximum, three hundred bucks. And then I tanked up my car while Paul got some supplies. "I'm taking Alma surfing in Big Sur today," I told him as the squinty whale lumbered back onto the highway. "I'll drop you off in Palo Alto."
  He gave me a haughty look. "I'm beyond this Earth's academic games. The hypertunnel changes everything. I'll come to Sur with you and we'll make a tunnel we can travel through."
  I half-suspected he was trying to spook me. "You think the cone shell came through the tunnel and stayed?" I said, firmly keeping my eyes on the foggy road. Steep cliffs dropped to the Pacific on my right.
  The ultimate adventure. And a release from my guilt. The cliffs had leveled out; a meadow sloped down to the sea on our right. The squinty whale's headlights were carving white cones into the fog. I checked the rearview mirrors. No sign of a flying cone shell alien. Was Paul spinning wild plans just to get another shot at my girl?
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last five paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The mathematics of Earth-3 is fierce, nondocile, and gnarlier than the math of Earth-1. The subtle insight that makes our old proof wrong was somehow unthinkable in those other worlds. More things are possible here.
  As this sank in upon me during the days to come, I felt a sense of liberation. Did I really want to live in San Jose? No. I realized I want to live in the South Pacific, in a place like the La Hampan Nanonesia.
  Fortunately Alma is up for the adventure. We'll have a Santa Cruz beach wedding in August, and then we'll leave for the Earthly paradise of Micronesia. I've found a teaching position at Palau Community College, and Alma's landed a job selling ads for the Palau Horizon, a weekly newspaper. She's thinking of becoming a dive-guide as well. Our future's unpredictable.
  I'm liking it on Earth-3. In a nondocile world like this one, it's as if every single object can have free will. I love the way that feels. And I believe what the jellyfish god said: this is the best of all possible worlds.
  There's still bad news in the paper, of course, and sometimes I quarrel with Alma. But that's in the nature of things. A rapidly flowing stream has ripples; chaotic motions have sharp turns; societies have pockets of pain; your moods change unpredictably; the old die to make room for the young; whaddaya, whaddaya.