Bridging Distance

[bibliogramma]

Distances, Vananda Singh

There’s an image that’s not all that uncommon in science fiction, that of the being who physically and mentally connects with, inhabits or is inhabited by, perceives and encompasses, some aspect of space-time that other beings cannot access or comprehend. Often this ability gives these special being abilities to make otherwise impossible connections, bridge gaps between representation and understanding, navigate sapcewarps, see theoretical relationships, patterns, causalities,totalities, because of this multi-faceted kind of synesthesia.

Anasuya, the protagonist of Distances, has such a gift. When she is submerged certain fluids, she can perceive and explore complex mathematical formulae when expressed in chemical solutions, aided by tiny symbiont organisms in her body, transforming the chemical notations into transcendent vistas that she can somehow travel inside of – and then record her perceptions in holographic form via nanites for others to analyse.

This gift is one of many abilities shared by her people, who live a semi-aquatic existence on the shores and in the coastal waters of one region of her world. Unlike most of her people, she has left the sea and travelled to a stone city in the desert where people not her own have built, among others, a temple to mathematics. It is here that the technology that permits her unique way of seeing mathematically-described spaces and relationships to be recorded and used by others was developed.

It is also to this stone city that a team of mathematicians from the planet Tirana have travelled in search of help in solving an immeasurably complex mathematical problem that describes a previously unknown geometric space. Anasuya is asked to help them, but in the process, she discovers a secret that will change life on both their planets.

Distances, physical, emotional, and conceptual, how they are perceived, how they wound, and how they can sometimes be bridged, play a large part in the themes and imagery of the book. Both Anasuya and the Tirani delegation have travelled far to meet in this city that is alien to them both. Woven into the story are various accounts of myths and events that are centred on creating and covering distances. And Anasuya’s work leads directly to a change in the understanding of distances itself, and in the distances she has kept between herself, her creativity, her past and the people around her.

It’s a profoundly poetic work, and one that continues to resonate at levels that I don’t know how to express in words.