review of
Margaret Ball's Mathemagics
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 12 - December 4, 2021

For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1379868-tripping-balls

My previous encounter w/ "Chicks in Chainmail" novels were 3 by Esther Friesner: Majyk By Accident, Majyk by Hook or Crook, & Majyk by Design. Maybe they weren't really Chicks in Chainmail novels but Friesner is the editor of 6 "Chicks" anthologies:

Chicks in Chainmail (1995)
Did You Say Chicks?! (1998)
Chicks 'n Chained Males (1999)
The Chick is in the Mail (2000)
Turn the Other Chick (2004)
Chicks and Balances (2015)

SO, that justifies writing about her before even getting into the bk currently being reviewed. Maybe I shd review Mathemagics by not writing about it or its author at all! That wd be different. Aren't you tired of all those same old, same old reviews? I cd just write about the weather.. or about how I shd really get around to replacing my shoelaces. Or, I cd write about how, as I've gotten older, I have more & more of an annoying tendency to drop out smaller words, prepositions & articles (most commonly).

"Nor could she just slash and hack her way through parent-teacher meetings, as she earnestly desired when confronted with administrators who tried to tell her her child belonged in program for the emotionally disturbed because she showed too much initiative." - back cover blurb

There're many things that endeared this bk to me. For one thing, it was like a rave, it came w/ its own drug dealer. Really. I mean I got a paper cut from flipping the pages, speed reading, I read about 100pp a second, & I started tripping balls. Then I discovered I had elephantiasis & that's why I tripped. Over my balls, y'know. What a reality check.

OK, I was fibbing - don't underestimate fibbing: remember, Eve was created from Adam's fib. Actually, what I was about to say before I so rudely interrupted myself, is that I lllooovvvveee this bk b/c Ball (tripping balls, right?) has her chapter headings be mathematical. I did that too, in my Paradigm Shift Knouckle Sandwich & other examples of P.N.T. (Perverse Number Theory) (written at the beginning of 2008 but not published until 2017: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book2017Paradigm.html ) but Ball did it before me in 1996. That essentially makes her a goddess in my world. ANYWAY, chapter 1 is Chapter e to the power of zero. That means that she, as a mathematician much more knowledgable on the subject than I am, thinks that "e to the power of zero" = 1. I, on the other hand, being a HERETIC, think that it's an indeterminate form w/ no solution. That means that, right off the bat, the Ball's in the other court. Or something. Too bad. There goes "goddess" status, she's demoted to being a mere human.

The setting:

""We've found that the services of a professionally trained counselor are invaluable at stressful times like this."

"She closed the door before I could tell her that the only stressful thing about this interview was having to wait in this little box of a room while my groceries cooked by solar heat in the car trunk. It was a flimsy door, too; in my home reality of Dazan I'd simply have put my foot through it, then stood on the woman's throat until she fixed what was probably her mistake in the first place. But Dennis really liked me to conform to his people's behavior standards, and after the third time he'd had to bail me out I'd promised to act like a Paper-Pusher woman unless Stella or he were in actual physical danger." - p 10

Aahhhh.. Daydreams of physical violence - when all else fails, destroy thine enemy. Personally, I've made a vow to myself to never kill anyone. It's a challenge. I'm anti-war but not a pacifist. Ball really has fun having her character be able to wreak harm on her various persecutors. I can relate. The world wd be better off if we cd send guilt-tripping bureaucrats to a different dimension where they'd only make others of their own kind miserable.

""We haven't seen much of you here, Ms. Konneva" she said. "You didn't come to the Back-to-School Parents' Party, did you? Or drive on any of the field trips this year?"

""I study during school hours," I told her.

""Oh," she said. "How nice for you. Still, most really concerned parents make some effort to appear for important school functions."" - p 12

Wweellllll, she did qualify it by saying "most". I reckon that those other concerned parents realize that this type of manipulative speech is characteristic of the truly malevolent people that we, sadly, have to waste our time watching out for & fending off.

The next chapter is the set squared of the square root of 2. The square root of 2 is an irrational number but not a transcendental number. Anyway, the chapter heading is most simply expressed as "2". Hence, this is the 2nd chapter. The same logic is throughout: in other words, it's not like we get to chapter 3 & have the solution of the heading result in giraffe or something else other than 3.

Our hero(ine) is having a love affair w/ a human. I, personally, am no so sure I'm not done w/ humans. Any humanoid ETs out there browsing Earth signals looking for some good times? Consider me.

"Our bedroom had been about the size of one of Zolkir's prison cells before Dennis moved in his collection of classic science-fiction paperbacks. Now, with floor-to-ceiling shelves lining three walls, it was more like a walk-in closet. Sasulau, my sword, hung in her sheath from one bedpost, and the rest of my old fighting gear was stashed under the bed in a cardboard box from the Container Store. I shucked my Paper-Pushers costume, hung the jeans and shirt on a handy bookcase, knelt on the floor and fished around under the bed for the box.

""That's a beautiful sight to greet a man after a hard day of eight-grade math," said an appreciative voice behind me." - pp 21-22

I might add that I pefer female "humanoid ETs" capable of having sex w/ me. I'm very fond of traditional sexual activities but I'm open to other possibilities - as long as they excite my motivating DNA.

"It was one of Salla's classmates who saved my butt that day. The kid was called "hyperactive" and "difficult" on Paper-Pushers'; what that meant was that he noticed absolutely everything that was going on around him and insisted on discussing it. At the top of his voice. When he noticed that Vordo was flickering with the activation of a magic shield every time I tried to land a blow, he discussed that in a loud clear voice." - p 25

In the wonky spirit of this review, I'm going to interpolate something completely irrelevant here: I've been on 1. a spree of watching female reporter movies from the 1930s & 1940s. There's a feminism to them that appeals to me. I've watched all the Torchy Blane movies, e.g.. 2. I've been watching a collection of mad scientist movies. This has led to watching Bela Lugosi movies. I have to admit that I can only bear these for a few minutes at a time. Still, under those conditions, I'm enjoying them. Some of them have intrepid women reporters. Right now, I'm watching "The Corpse Vanishes". I think I've even seen it before but I remember so little of it that I'm watching it again anyway. Ordinarily I don't watch movies twice. This one has a woman reporter played by the actress Luana Walters. This got me interested in her. She acted in quite a few 'Grade B' movies. It seems to me that she deserved better than that. I was sad to read that she died from alcoholism at age 50. This is the kind of thing that I actually get upset about. Silly me.

Ahem.

But back to the novel under scrutiny. Specifically, the hero(ine)'s daughter.

"Salla shrugged. "Yeah, I hadda go to her office one afternoon last week. She's always asking these dumb questions, like, you know, she goes, how do you feel about puberty, and aren't you confused about boys, and really gross stuff about like private things, you know? And I go, like, I'm just a little kid, ma'am, I don't know what you're talking about."" - p 27

I don't think I used that many speech crutches when I was her age, did you?

Then there's "Chapter [π]": I asked myself what the brackets signify, I probably knew at some point. I went to the relevant end-note on p 339, apparently the brackets mean: the greatest integer less than or equal to what they enclose. In the case of π, that means 3. Hence this is Chapter 3. Chapter 2 cd've been [e], but it wasn't. Any of the chapters cd be [x] but then that wd confuse things, wdn't it?, b/c it wdn't solve to the chapter number but wd instead hint in the direction of solving for x w/o actually doing so.

Now, one of the villains in this bk uses mathemagics & uses a formula that I don't think I can write out properly here & wch has no end-note explaining it. I'll quote the appropriate passage & write out the formula as best I can:

"["]Why, a simple extrapolation from the figures in your last mailing tells me that your expected return on mailings can be increased exponentially with a probability of p(sub "t")(s|r,n),s=0—n."" - p 41

I reckon this is a mathematician's joke, perhaps a formula for bullshit. Later, the very same villain, thinking about the very same person he's trying to use for his personal advancement:

"Mikhalleviko had not needed to activate his Truth Function (Alt-F10-S-[f(x)], the manual said, but failed to say what x was supposed to be)" - p 63

I didn't try this on the machine I'm typing this review on b/c I'm afraid it'll make the funnier parts of the review disappear.

The writing style of this bk is very accessible & entertaining. Nonetheless, there's plenty of math interspersed that's probably hilarious to mathematicians. Alas, I only understand a few of the jokes. Here's my poor attempt at expressing one of them w/o using the proper math notation:

""Sin(x) = 1 ÷ cosec(x),"" - p 83

I decided to educate myself ever-so-slightly & found this: "Secant, cosecant and cotangent, almost always written as sec, cosec and cot are trigonometric functions like sin, cos and tan." ( https://revisionmaths.com/advanced-level-maths-revision/pure-maths/trigonometry/... ) SO, at least I learned that "cosec" = cosecant & that the equation is probably trigonometry. To further translate the equation into 'natural speech' I get: The sine of x equals 1 divided by the cosecant of x. I suspect that if I knew the solution to this I'd get the punchline but it's possible that the author just threw some trig in for the fun of it. Anyway, I enjoyed it. & that's not all! The effect of this particular example of "mathemagics":

"A moment later, a shredded conglomeration of greenish-brown shapes, thicker than fog but thinner than pea soup, wobbled into the hall, walking as they moved. "The lack of opportunities for people in the lower class can cause frustration, depression, and even despair," they moaned.

""Tan(x) = sin(x) ÷ cot(x)!" Lavvu Lherkode snapped.

"The greenish-brown shapes flickered and changed to a nasty purplish-orange that oozed into all the parts of the hall where the shape hadn't been and left the original space clear. "Yet, in an open society such as the United States it is . . . easy for a person to move from one class to another."" - pp 83-84

''"Tan(2x) = 2 tan(x) ÷ 1 - the tangent squared(x)," Lavvu Lherkode said." - p 84

""Tan(2x) = 2 sin(x)cos(x)"" - p 84

I obviously don't hang out w/ the right people b/c none of my friends are this witty.

""cos(2x) = cosin squared(x) - sin squared(x)"" - p 85

''"Tan(2x) = 2 tan(x) ÷ 1 - the tangent squared(x)" - p 85

I hate to say it (NOT) but the mathemagician already tried that one to little avail. But I'm getting a HEAD of myself.

""Er—did you wish to suggest an alternative line of textbooks?" the board member inquired.

"Boatwright drew himself up. "The Bible is God's textbook," he said, "and it's the only one we need. It's not just a good idea—it's God's idea."

Mikh recognized that phrase; it had been on one of the posters in Boatright's office.

""In witness thereof, I am asking you, Lord, to cause these salacious, sinful, and Satanist books to vanish utterly. Cut out this moral cancer from the body of our nation! May the Lord God Jehovah remove all sinful books from this room!" Boatright thundered, raising his hands above the table loaded with textbooks." - p 72

Any story having a pompous hypocritical money-grubbing fundamentalist as the bad guy can't be all bad. I don't want to give away what this is all about b/c this was one of the most fun ideas in the bk for me. Nonetheless, here's another relevant quote:

"The offices of the American Values Research Center, although not nearly as luxurious as Duke Zolkir's great hall, had at least the advantage of not being covered with the residue of dissolving social studies textbooks." - p 86

There's stereotyping &/or poking-fun-at-stereotyping galore.

"It was all Cathy Harper's fault, really, for putting this outlandish material in the collection of readings. Grail legends and African stories and Polynesian "mythology"—as if a bunch of half-naked brown-skinned people with flowers in their hair could come up with anything to compare with the great literature of Europe!" - pp 97-98

Sally has trouble in school for a reason many of us are familiar w/: She's smarter than the teachers & she goes further than what they require - hence, they're not swift enuf to realize that that's what's happening. Here's an example of Sally's feminism:

""Among the Hopi Indians, for instance, Spider Woman creates the first people and goes on the first quest, when she looks for somebody who can give them the gift of speech."" - p 100

""at the moment I think I could live quite happily without seeing any men again."

""Ha," said Norah. She leaned against a tree and breathed deeply. "Wait till you've been celibate as long as I have. After my ex took off for California I cried and ate chocolates until I looked like this, and now I can't have a meaningful relationship because I'm not willing to take my clothes off in front of another adult."

""You have to take your clothes off to have a meaningful relationship?" I asked, momentarily distracted." - p 135

Ha ha!

Then along comes the simplest chapter numbering yet: "3 squared 1". (p 155) Everyone knows that 3 squares is a crowd & that if you add another person who may or may not be a square there's no guarantee that there'll be any sex. The "square root of 121" (173) is pretty simple too. You just take the square root of the 2 "1"s & ignore that "2" in the middle. Put the 2 results die-by-side together, & Voila!

There's a fair amt of a type of humor that probably gets at least a chuckle out of people who attend SF Cons.

"The camera zoomed in for a close shot of the books behind Daddy Bob: rows and rows of Dragonspatula and Star Trek books. Becky sneered. Jason had recently introduced her to real science fiction. Heinlein and like that." - p 161

I might just make an exception to my not generally reading the SF series & read those "Dragonspatula" books. Unfortunately, they may only manifest cook bks in alternate universes instead of romance novels.

"The slight touch of the thing's fingers sent chills through Sikarouvanna's body. But it withdrew almost at one, slipping off the blade of her shortsword like a wraith. "Why, you're only a girl!" it cried, stamping one foot and tossing its mane of raven curls. "Where's the Hero? He's supposed to appear by Chapter Two at the latest."" - p 166

I enjoy the ongoing poking fun at the educational system. I reckon the author has had some experience along these lines & is happy to get her 'revenge' in writing.

"The large red "D—" scrawled across the front of Salla's paper was visible to the whole class as Fishbeck handed it back.

"Salla's face turned red and she scowled at the paper. "What's wrong with the structure?"

""I'm sure you can read my comments," Fishbeck said, "since you love reading so much."

""Too many paragraphs," Salla read aloud, "ten points off. Too many sentences in each paragraph, ten points off. Citing references you haven't read, twenty—I have so read them!"" - p 176

The genius of the autodidact is incomprehensible to the mediocrity of the untertan.

""The mathemagical formula that transfers people and things between realities. See, you can think of a Fourier transform as taking something from the time domain to the frequency domain. It's not exactly clear that the frequency domain has to exist in our reality; it's just an analytical way of looking at these things. And the inversion, of course, is a Laplace transform."" - p 236

Oh, really?! Sounds French to me.

"In mathematics, a Fourier transform (FT) is a mathematical transform that decomposes functions depending on space or time into functions depending on spatial or temporal frequency, such as the expression of a musical chord in terms of the volumes and frequencies of its constituent notes. The term Fourier transform refers to both the frequency domain representation and the mathematical operation that associates the frequency domain representation to a function of space or time." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_transform

"Time domain refers to the analysis of mathematical functions, physical signals or time series of economic or environmental data, with respect to time. In the time domain, the signal or function's value is known for all real numbers, for the case of continuous time, or at various separate instants in the case of discrete time. An oscilloscope is a tool commonly used to visualize real-world signals in the time domain. A time-domain graph shows how a signal changes with time, whereas a frequency-domain graph shows how much of the signal lies within each given frequency band over a range of frequencies." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_domain

For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1379868-tripping-balls ( )

Almost made me want to spend more time studying math. Almost. ( )

Entertaining even if you don't get the math jokes; hilarious at times if you do. Don't let the chapter numbering system put you off. I felt I got to know Riva and Dennis, Becky and Salla. Dingbat Boatright, not so much, although I might have met him in this Universe already.

May you never have a personal experience in Outer Yark. ( )

I've actually read this book several times and I really love it. It's hilarious, but also deals well with some serious issues. I honestly wish she'd written some sequels, but as far as I know, this is the only one (other than the stories in the Chicks in Chainmail anthologies). ( )

I had a hard time getting into this - It wasn't difficult, but the writing was a bit.... Lacking. I understand that this book was making a bit of fun of the whole fantasy genre, but it crossed the line of cute and smart, and just became annoying. ( )