Long ago, I was bewildered and intrigued to learn that there was such a thing as the 'cardinality of infinities' – which is to say that some infinities are bigger than others. The infinity of whole numbers, for instance, is ipso facto bigger than the infinity of fractions because for every one whole number there are – well, let's just say lots – of fractions in between.
It also titillates me to think that, at the opposite end of the scale, there's more than one different way of not existing. My mum exists. My late grandfather does not exist – at least not in the sense that he did thirty years ago. Unicorns also do not exist – but they don't exist in a different way to that in which my grandfather doesn't exist. And a specific unicorn doesn't exist in a different way to that in which unicorns in general don't exist.
Characters in novels don't exist in a different way, too. And, if you credit the idea that fresh parallel universes calve off from our own at every moment, what about the versions of ourselves that turned left instead of right at the traffic lights? In what way do they not exist? And is it possible that the only reason for our own, fabulously improbable existence in this moment right now is that literally every alternative possibility has been exhausted in the infinity of other universes?
Of course, a lot of this turns on a question of language: as Bill Clinton said, 'It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.' But novels are made out of language, and you can do what you like with it in them. My characters live in a universe not too far away from this one – and where ideas and things, past and present, have got just a little bit muddled up.
We all know ghosts don't exist – that nobody comes back to haunt us after death. I find that spooky: 'As I was walking on the stair I met a man who wasn't there.' Or Wallace Stevens in those haunting lines with which he ends his short poem 'The Snow Man'. Nobody's watching: nobody's ever watching.
Acknowledgements
With special thanks to all who gave me encouragement – in particular, David Miller and all at Rogers, Coleridge and White, and Michael Fishwick, who saw the point of this before it existed and without whom it probably wouldn’t. Thanks to all at Bloomsbury, Kathy Fry and particular props to Colin Midson, Ruth Logan, Sophia Martelli and Alex Goodwin. And thanks to Umar Salam, for nurturing my maths-envy.
Author’s Note
It is customary to announce on this page that all resemblances to characters living or dead are entirely coincidental. It seems only courteous to acknowledge, though, that in preparing the character of Nicolas Banacharski I was inspired by the true-life story of the eminent mathematician Alexandre Grothendieck. ‘What is a metre?’ is Grothendieck’s line. But The Coincidence Engine is a work of fiction: I don’t know any maths, and Banacharski is no more Grothendieck than Robinson Crusoe was Alexander Selkirk.
People may also complain that I have taken liberties with both the laws of physics and the geography of the United States of America. I can only respond that reality, in this book, does not exactly get off scot-free.
SL, London, September 2010
A Note on the Author
Sam Leith is a former Literary Editor of the Telegraph. He now writes for many leading publications including the Guardian and the Evening Standard. His previous books, Dead Pets and Sod’s Law, have been published to critical acclaim. The Coincidence Engine is his first novel. Sam Leith lives in London.
