Adjacent stories: 0000 — Prolegomena

Dear reader,

So, I take it you are one of the people who start reading a book on page 1, before or very shortly after having bought it. In this particular case, you will be glad you did. Please bear with me for just a brief moment.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Michael Praetori, and I am not the author of this book nor am I a literary critic or even a writer. My connection to the book you are holding in your hands is a different one: Some months ago, I was sent a manuscript accompanied by a letter. In this letter, Gregor Samsa, the editor, explained the purpose of the aforementioned package. I have to preface his explanation by saying that I am a physicist. I have studied complex dynamic systems, taking both theoretical mathematical and empirical perspectives. I shall not bore you with the details, but the relevance of my research over several decades will become apparent soon. Gregor requested that I provide, what he called, a scientific review of the manuscript and pointed out the reasoning behind his unusual request to me. This has been my first review – I believe this is the term used in this industry – of a work of fiction, and in all likelihood, it will remain my only venturing out into this realm. As an avid reader, I do have a certain degree of familiarity and appreciation of fictional literature, but I would never lay any claim to having genuine professional expertise in this realm. Gregor assured me early on in our correspondence that this expertise was also not needed. 

I do apologize for my intrusion at the beginning of this book, because I realize you would much rather like to read what the author has to say; and he does say things so much better. Yet, the publisher thought it opportune that I shed some additional light on the fabric of this book by way of introduction. Therefore, I beg your patience and would invite you, dear reader, to have a close look at the book’s title. Gregor was obviously not interested in my take on the Stories; rather, he elicited my response to the concept of Adjacent and adjacency in general. Specifically, he was keen to understand better the validity of the scientific premise underpinning this book’s structure and perspectives. I am using the plural wisely here: perspectiveS. At first glance, the book appears to consist of a multitude of different stories. Each has its own characters and perspective. Some characters have a second or even third appearance, but it might be difficult – for the non-scientist – to ascertain a pattern of these recurrences and to overlay the various perspectives in and of these stories. And this is where complex dynamic systems research is assumed to be very useful. 

In laymen terminology, a system consists of multiple interacting and interrelated components. The interaction and relationships of individual and clusters of components display certain patterns, which can be observed and hence discovered. A dynamic system moves over time; it is essentially a process. This implies that your connected air conditioning and heating devices at home are not the dynamic system, but the process of heating and cooling by and of itself is. Of course, changing the ambient temperature of a space is not a complex process, is not a – complex – dynamic system. We speak of complexity when many interacting variables are involved in the system. It is their frequent interactions – think of them as bouncing of each other like billiard balls just thrown onto the table – that induce their change during many of the iterations of the system, adding layers upon layers of complexity. I will end my excursion into physics here, as this needs to suffice as a necessary and theoretical explanation.

As in physics, as in the book, it is not uncommon for us to find it hard or even impossible to directly observe a certain single component of the system or a character in a story and to not impact, influence, or even change the component in the system, the person in real life, or the character in a story with our observation. Especially when the system component we intend to observe is very small, like an atomic particle, shall we say, the energy of our observation is often greater than that of the particle. The influence can be immense, and we cannot necessarily trust what we observe to have been the same, before we observed it. In this case, what can be done to ensure appropriate and informative observation with transparent and replicable results? It is here where I marveled at the book’s consistent approach.

Gregor, the editor at the publishing house, assured me that I am not spoiling your future reading pleasure by revealing that the Adjacent Stories evidently only have one and exactly one main character. The inherent tension of me talking about one main character and, in the same breath, about many characters in many stories is intensified by the fact that the main character does not make an appearance in any of the stories. The reader has to assume it is a he and this he appears to be of some significance. Yet, the author claims in the very first story that he finds it impossible to observe said main character.

Dear reader, if I have not lost you at this stage of my elaboration, it will be apparent to you now that knowledge items and experience from science in general and physics in particular can be transferred into humanistic endeavors. In physics, we are well familiar with minute particles and obscure phenomena that are difficult or even impossible to observe and therefore difficult to understand. It does not seem to matter why they are so hard to understand; it matters what approach can be employed to gain a better understanding. In science, the necessary approach has been labeled multiple triangulation. We observe two or more, let us just say by way of example, particles over time. These repeated observations of carefully selected particle pairs let a scientist draw probabilistic yet solid inferences and at times conclusions about the unobservable third particle. Thus, it is possible to gain an unbiased understanding of this third particle over time.

You see where this excursion into science is going. The author, in my opinion, carefully selected a substantial set of characters over time, as a matter of fact, over several decades of both the twentieth and the twenty-first century. In each of the Adjacent Stories, he pays close attention to one of them in their interaction with others and in their temporal and local contexts. This way, I would submit, the reader gains a better understanding of the apparently elusive or perhaps deliberately obscured main character. After careful reading, I certainly did.

Please allow me to conclude these “words before the book”, my prolegomena, with a more personal remark. Not only are the Adjacent Stories firmly grounded in a scientific paradigm, judging from my own reading experience, it is a great pleasure to uncover each character’s story – some of them are funny, others are historically illuminating, and a few are simply thought-provoking – and to unravel the story of the main character, without his story ever being told. In addition to being a scientist, I became a detective as the first reader of this book.

So without further ado, I would like to wish you, dear reader, enjoyable hours with the book you are holding in your hands. Now that you have worked your way through this introduction, you will not regret having started your journey into the Adjacent Stories. 

Respectfully submitted,

Michael Praetori, Professor emeritus