The Tachypomp

by Edward Page Mitchell

A young mathematician wants to marry the lovely Abscissa Surd, but her father says he must first prove himself worthy. Professor Surd will only allow the protagonist to marry his daughter if he can either accomplish perpetual motion or faster-than-light travel. “The Tachypomp” is a short story for the mathematically-minded. Though first published anonymously in 1874, science-fiction scholar Sam Moskowitz rediscovered and republished it - along with Mitchell’s other forgotten work - in 1973, thus restoring him to his rightful place in contemporary sci-fi discourse.

Genres: Science Fiction, Classics

Audible Audio

Published June 10, 2019

About the author

"Edward Page Mitchell (1852–1927) was an American editorial and short story writer for The Sun, a daily newspaper in New York City. He became that newspaper's editor in 1897, succeeding Charles Anderson Dana. Mitchell was recognized as a major figure in the early development of the science fiction genre. Mitchell wrote fiction about a man rendered invisible by scientific means ("The Crystal Man", published in 1881) before H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man, wrote about a time-travel machine ("The Clock that Went Backward") before Wells's The Time Machine, wrote about faster-than-light travel ("The Tachypomp"; now perhaps his best-known work) in 1874, a thinking computer and a cyborg in 1879 ("The Ablest Man in the World"), and also wrote the earliest known stories about matter transmission or teleportation ("The Man without a Body", 1877) and a superior mutant ("Old Squids and Little Speller"). "Exchanging Their Souls" (1877) is one of the earliest fictional accounts of mind transfer. Mitchell retired in 1926, a year before dying of a cerebral hemorrhage.

The gradual rediscovery of Mitchell and his work is a direct result of the publication in 1973 of a book-length anthology of his stories, compiled by Sam Moskowitz with a detailed introduction by Moskowitz giving much information about Mitchell's personal life. Because Mitchell's stories were not by-lined on original publication, nor indexed, Moskowitz expended major effort to track down and collect these works by an author whom Moskowitz cited as "the lost giant of American science fiction".

Mitchell's stories show the strong influence of Edgar Allan Poe. Among other traits, Mitchell shares Poe's habit of giving a basically serious and dignified fictional character a jokey name, such as "Professor Dummkopf" in Mitchell's "The Man Without a Body". Since Mitchell's fictions were originally published in newspapers, typeset in the same format as news articles and not identified as fiction, he may possibly have used this device to signal to his readers that this text should not be taken seriously."

-- Wikipedia

Reviews

[Forked Radish · Rating 4 out of 5]

The tachypomp ("Tachu, quickly, and pempo, pepompa, to send.") can't work, as described, because there is no infinite/infinitesimal duality. This world is quantized sine qua non. But it could reach the speed of light. Wiki is wrong (once again) when it says that time dilation and length contraction would be preventative as these wouldn't affect the tachypomp itself, but only those observing the tachypomp, via relatively. Read your Einstein Wiki editors!
Note: The speed of light is obtainable, relativistic length contraction would result in a Planck length contraction and an absolute zero time dilation. This, however, has absolutely no effect whatsoever on the object, or vehicle and its passengers; believe it or don't. QM, unlike old fashioned Newtonian mechanics, allows for reaching the speed of light, 100%.

[Emma Ghiz]

I, like the narrator, am too dumb to understand the Tachypomp

[Tony Ciak · Rating 4 out of 5]

strange, scifi, short story, weird math, enjoyed it!