THE MATHEMATICAL MAGPIE

This is a more ambitious sequal to Fantasia Mathematica and, like the former work, it contains short stories, aphoriams, poetry, as well as expository prose. Mr. Fadlman has compiled the places casually over a period of four years with those readers in mind who, like himself, are ""fascinated by the subject without really knowing much about it"". Contributors include it. Allen Smith, Mark Twain, Richard Hughes, James Blish, Astmov, Bertrand Russell, Samuel Beckett, J.L. Synge, Robert Graves and Lewis Carrott. Each of course, has called from the broad sprawl of the most basic of sciences for his central theme. Although Ben Ames Willams' classic Cocoanuls is a very clever exception to the rule, Mr. Fadlman would have done well to exclude those pieces which amount to no more than extended math problems with intermittent dialogue (usually very bad, at that). Among the best is Isaae Astmov's The Feeling of Power in which a technician living during the computer age astounds the scientific world by multiplying, dividing, adding, and subtracting on paper. Mr. Fadlman, who introduces the pieces makes too rare a commodity of himself. A good gift item.