I got halfway through the third book before I put into words that Responsible of Brightwater is the horseshoe nail on which the world (as well as the story) depends. I got the horseshoe nail concept from Lafferty's Annals of Klepsis:
The humanly inhabited universe, according to the best — or at least the newest — mathematical theory, does have a tertiary focus, and it is there that it is vulnerable. The humanly inhabited universe, with its four suns and its seventeen planets, is an unstable closed system of human orientation and precarious balance, a kinetic three-dimensional ellipse in form, with its third focus always approaching extinction. As with any similar unstable premise-system, the entire construct must follow its third focus into extinction. This is known as the ‘Doomsday Equation’. [. . . ] The third focus of the humanly inhabited universe has been determined to be both a point and a person on the Planet Klepsis, on the surface of the planet, which is extraordinary in itself. Of the person, the human element of the anthropo-mathematical function, little is known except the code name the ‘Horseshoe Nail’, and the fact that the person is more than two hundred years old. This is an added precarious element. Actuary figures show that only one in a hundred billion humans will reach the age of two hundred years, and none will go far beyond it.
Turns out that The Ozark Trilogy (1981) predates Annals of Klepsis (1983), which dashes my initial presumptions. Just because I read the Lafferty first doesn't mean he wrote it first; I roll my eyes at myself.
I wonder if they knew each other. I should go ask her, while I still can.
Also in The Ozark Trilogy: into each generation is born one girl who is Responsible, and the world is on her shoulders. Sound familiar?
So I went looking for horseshoe nail earrings. The results were disappointing. Seems no one can bring themselves to just hang a pair of horseshoe nails from French hooks and be done with it. No, they've got to electroplate them or twist them into patterns or gussy them up with beads. I suppose that's more fun for the jeweler, but not what I was looking for.
Today's earrings: racing camels, peppers
Bedtime reading: And Then There'll Be Fireworks, Suzette Haden Elgin
The horseshoe nail is from a very old poem (which I have somehow associated in my mind with Shakespeare, but it is probably much older):
ReplyDeleteFor want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.