The Book Reader, Summer 1997, p.42
The equivalent of Spike Jones to music, this dose of irreverence is a hoot. Epstein is legit, with a Ph.D. from Harvard, widely published in quality joumals. But he just had to shake the jowls of that other -stein, Ein-, and give equal time to another scientist. A fictitious one called U.T. Zalna. His theory? Irrelativity. 'This is probably for the best, since the universe actually parts its hair somewhat differently than Einstein led us to believe.' ....Just throw caution to the relative wind and read on, as Epstein tickles. He jabs at modern physics and the extent to which it defies common sense. He wonders whether there really could be extra-dimensional burgers. Then he 'gets serious' with discourses on The Big Bore, Missing Bodies, the Mind-Body Problem, Religion and Black Holes. 'The black hole, the greatest of all swallowers of everything, spits up radiation.' He concludes with a salute to his own Zalna and ponders Bathroom Graffiti on the Foundations of Science. His concoction makes life somewhat more easy to understand. None of that curved space and relative time stuff. Although...how can he zap his theories back in time to read as a kid, to pre-date Einstein? Like the movies? Then he remembers. His theory is not only irrelative, it's irrelevant. The book is not. One physicist reader winced, got angry - then broke down laughing.
Book Description
An engaging spoof of the modern view of the universe which, as the author shows, defies common sense to the point of absurdity. It presents in straightforward language the real Albert Einstein, and the fictitious, hapless U. T. Zalna with his theory of Irrelativity. Following the new theory's universal consequences, the author shows his gift for bringing theoretical science to life. He explains in detail, often with tongue in cheek, the conservation of matter and energy, the ether, black holes, the slowing of time, time travel, matter-energy systems, religion, the foundations of science, the mind-body problem, the physically possible, the impossible, the unknown, and the sublime; and how Irrelativity effects these. The clarity of his writing, his genius for narrative, his asides and frequent offhanded quips propel us through the book. When we pause to wonder, we discover the ridiculous and smiles turn to laughter. This refreshingly light-hearted, funny, yet thoughtful and well-crafted story makes us think hard and laugh harder.
From the Publisher
Among many letters received were three from outstanding writers of science fiction. "Einstein meets Seinfeld! An oddly satisfying romp through some really weird neighborhoods of both substance and theory. Douglas Adams, take a glance over your shoulder and say hello to Robert Epstein!" (Mike Sirota, author of Bicycling Through Space and Time) "A rich mix of fact and fantasy, told in a style somewhere between Martin Gardner and Henny Youngman. Epstein spoofs Big Science while simultaneously conveying real data about the universe. A fun book." (Charles Platt author of The Silicon Man) "An infuriating book! I can't count the times I winced, got angry...then broke down laughing." (David Brin, physicist, winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards, author of Earth and The Postman)
From the Back Cover
the ideal book for people who don't already know everything about the universe. It synthesizes unequal parts of modern physics and the philosophy of science with perfectly necessary doses of wit and humor.
About the Author
Robert Epstein (Ph.D. Harvard University in 1981) is a contributing editor to Psychology Today magazine, a columnist for Disney Online, a widely-published writer on a wide range of topics (Parenting, Reader's Digest, The Washington Post, The San Diego Union-Tribune), and founder and Director Emeritus of a research institute (the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies). From 1990 to 1995 he directed the annual Turing Test of artificial intelligence, and he is currently a judge for the annual San Diego Book Awards. National University's first Research Professor and previously Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Department of Psychology, Epstein is now at work on a series of children's books that teach traditional values. The drawings are by Leo Vroman, Holland's most famous living artist- poet-scientist. A. Dreistein, the author of the Forewarning, is an alias.
Excerpted from Irrelativity by Epstein, Robert. Copyright © 1997. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
From Chapter 1: To Newton-that's Isaac, by the way, not Fig-everything was absolute. Time, space, everything. Time just moved along absolutely on its own, even if you weren't wearing a watch. And space just sat there, absolutely Euclidean. Something had to be done. Enter Albert Einstein. In "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Krper," an unorthodox essay published early in the last century-unorthodox because it contained neither references nor footnotes, a serious faux pas among tenured professors and other less tenacious scholars-Einstein made things palatable again. To Einstein, everything was "relative," and this has nothing to do with your self-indulgent cousin in Toledo, about whom, consequently, nothing more will be said. (If you're carrying a lot of family baggage that's going to keep you from focusing on important matters like the nature of the universe, please read some other book.) The universe isn't a barracks, said Einstein. It's more like a game of cricket: not disorderly exactly, but confusing as hell. For example, as long as you remember to call 637-1234 in the morning, and as long as you're wearing a good Swiss quartz, you can be reasonably certain as the day progresses that your watch is giving you the correct time for you. But if your significant other goes to work via the freeway, while you take the back roads in order to pick up a couple of Egg McMuffins because you missed breakfast again, by the time you both get home, his or her watch will be a few picoseconds slower than yours. Although, of course, his or her watch still gives him or her the correct time for him or her, and dammit if he or she won't let you know it, too, especially after a long day fending off unwanted sexual advances. Different, but valid, time frames for each domestic partner? Here were the makings of a remarkably individualistic, not to mention egalitarian, concept of the universe. In scientific laboratories around the world, closet feminists broke out the champaign; the Theory of Relativity was a hit. But why do our partners' watches show different times? The explanation for the discrepancy hinges on Einstein's vision of the universe as a geometrico-dynamic system. But since most of us struggled to get even a C in high school geometry, and since "dynamic" means little more to most people than that someone is a good dancer, only a few very cerebral folk ever understood why Einstein made the predictions he did. This is probably for the best, since the universe actually parts its hair somewhat differently than Einstein led us to believe and, without question, far better than Einstein ever did. As the newer history books correctly show, the concept of a geometrico-dynamic universe is not especially new. Einstein was known as its champion for most of the 20th century, but the concept was first developed when Einstein was just a boy, still puzzled by the intricacies of the three-word sentence. In 1890, W. K. Clifford, in a talk before the Royal Society to which no one but the timekeeper paid any attention, committed a Royal Sin: He ran over time. (He was thus the only person in 240 years to do so, a fact that the Guinness Book of Records has been sorely lax in its responsibility to record.) The timekeeper compounded the error by losing his composure-by British standards, anyway. He looked squarely at the speaker and slowly, but distinctly, mouthed the words, "OUT...OF...TIME." That was a great moment in the history of science-and, indeed, in the history of theatrics in general. For Clifford, rather than throwing up, as so many of his colleagues would have done, simply ad lib'ed a couple of good closing lines, using as his theme the rather unlikely possibility that our ability to measure time is limited by the geometry of the space in which we happen to be standing. Said Clifford: Ahem. And, in closing, I hold that (1) small portions of space are in fact of a nature analogous to little hills on a surface which is, on the average, flat; and, in fact, that the ordinary laws of geometry are not valid on the little hills; (2) that this property of being curved or distorted is continually being passed from one portion of space to another after the manner of a wave; (3) that this variation of the curvature of space is what really happens in that phenomenon which we call the motion of matter; and (4) that these local changes in space affect in predictable ways our ability to record the passage of time, which is why we have great difficulty in detecting these local variations. Thank you. This means that the laws of nature will appear constant to each observer within his or her own frame of reference, that matter doesn't really matter, that energy is hardly worth mentioning, and that space is absolute but interesting. The timekeeper, unfortunately, was not a physicist and so was unaroused, and, as I mentioned, nobody else was tuned in. (Indeed, several people were wheezing rhythmically, suggesting various states of sleep.) So the genius and elegance of the message, not to mention the split-second timing of the improv, were lost, except to a few quaint historians of science, to whom nobody listens either. True, Einstein came up with the idea again, and he gave it a much better run than Clifford had, but even Einstein hadn't seen the full implications of the concept. It wasn't until Zalna's brilliant insights in the late 1990s that a geometrico-dynamic theory of the universe really came into its own-that is to say, really made anybody any money.
From Chapter 2: Zalna's life and death are as bizarre as his theory of the universe, so a brief summary is called for. U. T. Zalna-"you," to his associates, such as they were-was born on a dark and stormy night under the constellation Gemini-the sign of both multiple personality and schizophrenia. The moon, to boot, was full. His father was a professional gambler who spent six months in Las Vegas each year milking tourists of their hard-earned cash and the other six months on vacation. Preferably, he said, "in the slammer." That way he could rest up at government expense while his winnings accumulated 12 percent interest in municipal bonds. He is now in his 90s, robust, retired, and very wealthy. When I called him for chips of wisdom about his son, he replied, as is his custom, "F--- off." Zalna senior wasn't home very much, which was probably to our benefit, since he wouldn't have been the best role model. Young Zalna was raised principally by his high-school science teacher and next-door neighbor, a Mrs. Krupnick. She was married to a former M.I.T. professor of physics, who gave up academe to become an iron worker because, he said, it was "cleaner." Mrs. Krupnick had young Zalna doing genetics research in her basement when he was 12. This led to his first publication in Nature, London's bastion of good Science, when he was just 13. (Neither the reviewers nor the editors at Nature had been aware of Zalna's age, of course. Months after the article was published, shortly after his age came to light, two of the magazine's senior editors were found entangled in a bathroom stall, impeccably dead, as only English editors know how to be.) Zalna's unusual upbringing left him scarred in some ways. As an adult, he was, as one biographer put it, "a blend of the conventional and the absurd-with the conventional very, very difficult to detect." It has been established beyond doubt, for example, that while working on a fellowship at Oxford, where he was doing early foreskin research which, in other people's hands, led to the cure for cancer, he regularly stole cars. Said an associate, "He liked the geometry of stolen cars better than that of owned cars. He said they 'vibrated better to the vector stream of the universe and that they saved on insurance.'" He never married and is said never to have slept with a woman, and-it will come as no surprise to the modern psychohistorian- geometry seems to be the key here, too. Whether it was the geometry of the female form in general, or, as a jealous colleague once suggested, it had to do with some deficiency in the geometry of his bodily parts, will never be known for sure. The only clue we have is a rather cryptic remark made to a reporter a few years ago by a young woman who worked near Port Authority in New York City, where she is reported to have earned her living by poking things into apertures. Handi Andi, as she was called, claimed to have been Zalna's research assistant. "Da guy," she said, "was as crooked as a fish." Mrs. Krupnick had pointed Zalna in the right direction by telling him to aim for something "really big." After high school, and with intermittent and generally unfruitful schooling at Harvard University, Drake University, Hampshire College, Drake University, and Harvard University-not necessarily in that order-he began his brilliant laboratory career. For fourteen years he darted about capriciously-and, of course, I don't mean "capriciously" in the lay sense of the word, which is to say, "in a manner that scientists or anyone else for that matter can't possibly understand," but rather in a technical sense, meaning "in a manner that scientists or anyone else for that matter can't possibly understand yet"-from one prestigious laboratory to another, working on cancer at the Weizmann Institute, the nuclear dilemma at M.I.T., and, finally, the common cold at the Salk Institute. But none of these things really inspired him. Junk food provided the answer.
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