Arthur C. Clarke's "The Wall of Darkness" - what's the point?

On Mar 16, 12:14*pm, wrote:
I just got done reading this story and was a bit perplexed at the end too.. I think, as a user posted above me, that this is more of a mood piece focusing on the philosophy of our existence and our search into "the great unknown." I took it as more Shervane representing our general quest for knowledge. His teacher stating that what is seen on the otherside will drive one mad refers moreso to the frustration that ensues when the answers we find are more confusing, unexplainable, and sometimes less climactic than the questions and ideas we initially set out for and hoped to find. By traveling to the other side of the Wall of Darkness, Shervane hoped to be awakened and enlightened beyond his human ignorance. Through his quest, he was seeking order, meaning, and patterns in our, essentially, existential chaos. As he finds out, like most humans do, there are no patterns we can see with our narrowminded thinking and no clear cut answers as to why we are here, and what happens when we cease to exist. Essentially,it is a journey we will all take alone throughout our lives as Shervane did in the story.
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Thanks for bringing this thread up again which I hadn't seen when it
first appeared. I didn't know Clarke had written such a story with
such a highly abstract mathematical topic at its focus. As the others
mentioned, I think Clarke just wanted to write a story based on the
topological concept of a "one-sided" surface.

Bob Clark

Robert Clark wrote:

Thanks for bringing this thread up again which I hadn't seen when it
first appeared. I didn't know Clarke had written such a story with
such a highly abstract mathematical topic at its focus. As the others
mentioned, I think Clarke just wanted to write a story based on the
topological concept of a "one-sided" surface.

I thought I was familiar with all of ACC's science fiction, but I must have
overlooked this one. I've just read it - a most interesting storyline.
Thanks to the OP for mentioning it.

--
Nige Danton - Replace the obvious with g.m.a.i.l

what is the difference between a M-strip and a K-bottle?

On Apr 2, 8:02*am, 1treePetrifiedForestLane
wrote:

what is the difference between a M-strip and a K-bottle?

An M-strip!

- b

On Apr 1, 3:02Â*pm, 1treePetrifiedForestLane
wrote:
what is the difference between a M-strip and a K-bottle?

Here's a good description:

Klein bottle.
"In mathematics, the Klein bottle (pron.: /ˈklaɪn/) is an example of a
non-orientable surface; informally, it is a surface (a two-dimensional
manifold) in which notions of left and right cannot be consistently
defined. Other related non-orientable objects include the Möbius strip
and the real projective plane. Whereas a Möbius strip is a surface
with boundary, a Klein bottle has no boundary (for comparison, a
sphere is an orientable surface with no boundary)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle

See also:

Möbius strip.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip

Another distinction is that the Möbius strip can be fully realized
in 3-dimensional space while the Klein bottle can not. The image
usually shown for the Klein bottle is just the projection of it into 3-
dimensional space.
It's like how the common picture of the tesseract is just the
projection of this 4-dimensional cube into 3-dimensional space:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract


Bob Clark

as Bill pointed it out, a Kbottle can be cut into two Mstrips,
but they are really the same thing, if the ideal of "compactness"
is modified. that is, there is a standard way
to parameterize the Mstrip, which arbitrarily limits it
to being a strip, half a unit wide on both sides of the generating
circle.

if it is an infinite surface, it has an irreducible self-intersection,
same as the Kbottle, although this is usually handwaved-away
with some stuff about "4dness."

anyway, you can "do" an Matrip with an old bike tube,
in more than one way. or, maybe it's the Kbottle manifestation.