The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

After which, the astral doctor goes on to a mathematical analysis of the “surface of God,” with the conclusion that “God is the tangential point between zero and infinity—” a concept which might be of use to some learned doctors currently embroiled in an effort to determine God’s viability.

Of course, all that (except the physics lessons and conclusions about God) is just the plot. The book is built out of forty-one “chapters,” some containing a eulogy, critique, polemic, or outright backstab, aimed at Jarry’s associates and enemies, and other prominent figures of the time; and each is a separate entity, containing a discourse or comment or allegory on art, science, politics, religion, metaphysics, literature . . . and, of course, ‘Pataphysics (which is the science).

Leaving Dr. Faustroll (and possibly his creator) to further examinations of infinity and The Infinite, we discern a mote on the space horizon, which grows and—no, it is not a bird, not a man, not Superman—but the spaceliner coming in from New Earth . . .