The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier

The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier is translated from the French by Adrianna Hunter. Jenny wrote a very compelling review of the book, so I ordered it from the library immediately.

In this book, it's March 2021 and a plane encounters some turbulence. It lands and everyone's fine and then in June the exact plane lands again with the same passengers on it. We meet some of those passengers and how this event changes their lives. 

In general, I really liked this book. I liked that it raised interesting questions and I really liked the way it looked at how governments would react in this sort of emergent situation. But my biggest complaint about the book seems to be a common one: the first passenger we meet is the most interesting one and we don't hear from him very often throughout the book, even though he's what really got me into the book!

It's also sort of interesting because the book takes place in 2021, but the pandemic doesn't get a mention. That seemed weird to me. Oh, well. 

3.5/5 stars - I bet it would be an excellent book club read. There's lots to talk about!

Line of note:

He had hundreds of ginko trees planted all along the banks so that he can gaze at them and meditate. He's always been fascinated by these primitive trees. Their ancestors existed millions of years before even the dinosaurs appeared, and will outlive the human race. A plant version of memento mori. (page 241)

Things I looked up:

Annemasse (page 9) - a city in France on the Swiss border

Fields medal (page 106) - a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years

Gromov's non-prological theories (page 108) - non-squeezing theorem, also called Gromov's non-squeezing theorem, is one of the most important theorems in symplectic geometry. It was first proven in 1985 by Mikhail Gromov. The theorem states that one cannot embed a ball into a cylinder via a symplectic map unless the radius of the ball is less than or equal to the radius of the cylinder.

What's sympletic geometry, you ask? I don't know because the Wikipedia definition dares to use the term symplectic manifolds in its definition. I refused to do further research.

Markov chain (page 116) -  a process describing a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event

Kendall notations (page 116) - the standard system used to describe and classify a queueing node

Lebensraum (page 133) - the territory that a state or nation believes is needed for its natural development, especially associated with Nazi Germany

radome (page 146) - a plastic housing sheltering the antenna assembly of a radar set especially on an airplane

modafinil (page 162) - a prescription wakefulness-promoting agent used to treat excessive sleepiness caused by certain sleep disorders

Grothendieck's topoi (page 163) - categories that behave like sheaves on topological spaces

What does that mean? Search me. 

Abel prize (page 165) - a prize that recognizes pioneering scientific achievements in mathematics - it's  administered by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters on behalf of the Ministry of Education and Research and given out yearly

Romain Gary (page 324) - a French novelist, diplomat, film director, and World War II aviator. He is the only author to have won the Prix Goncourt (a prize in French literature) twice (once under a pseudonym)

Hat mentions (why hats?):

He'll wear gloves, a hood, a hat, and glasses...(page 8)

There was a hi-hat on page 347, but it's not in the spirit of the thing. 

******************

Would you read a book about issues with flying? A science fiction book told in a contemporary world and time?