The math fun fact I remember best from college is that Charles Boole invented Boolean algebra for his doctoral thesis and his goal was to create a branch of mathematics that was useless. For those not familiar with boolean algebra it works by using logic gates with 1s and 0s to determine a final 1 or 0 state and is subsequently the basis for all modern digital computing
I’ve been listening through all of the audiobooks since December and just finished this one. I never managed to get through the whole series as a kid, so this one was a first for me and Wow.
Safe to say after this one that the safe episodic status quo has been completed shattered, I know the series does a good job with serializing most of its big elements to be regular parts of the series like the chee and the elemist and krayak etc, but this one definitely feels like the start of the end game
The short story version is called Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang
Man, I’ve had the wrong Boole in my head this whole time? Guess I have a 0 somewhere that I should have a 1