Carol de Chellis Hill

But Amanda had been born in a river of electrons. Where the river ended and the marsh began it was difficult to tell; where the tadpole ended and the frog began it was difficult to tell; where the Bible's "begats" ended and history began was difficult to tell Amanda was awash in history, science, and explanations; time had clicked on in her mind in a totally different orbit from Hotchkiss. Her eyes held prisms he had only dreamed of.

August is re-read month for me, and I re-read The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer which I first read in the 1980s. I had forgotten almost everything about this book except that I had really enjoyed it, but luckily someone posted a successful request for it on Name that book, or a similar board elsewhere. All I would have been able to write in a Name That Book post would have been "it was science fiction and the there was a woman scientist, and she had a cat. Not an ordinary cat, maybe magical or kind of Shrodingery". Although it was published in the mid-1980s, it seems to me to have much more of a 1970s vibe, having a psychedelic, hippy, environmentalist streak a mile wide.

This is an extremely odd book. I enjoyed the first part of the book, in which Amanda roller-skates around the NASA campus while preparing for the first manned trip to Mars, teaching occasional physics classes to high school students and worrying about her narcoleptic cat (whose name is Schrodinger), her romantic relationships, and why a Frankenstein's monster keeps appearing in her kitchen. The book becomes tediously quirky once Amanda and 342 are in space and interacting with Rastus and the Ooze, but from Chapter 68 onwards it gets a whole lot better. I really enjoyed the final few chapters of the book and realised why I liked it so much the first time I read it.… (mais)

It was in a row of books sitting on the floor of the back room in a used book store east of Chicago that I first encountered this book. My field of study at the time was Ceramics, and I intended to minor in Physics. How could you go wrong? As I read the book the first time, my brain exploded in a thousand different directions, all humming to new and strange tunes.

Mostly because of Frankenstein in the closet. As a broom.

The cat is wonderful, Amanda Jaworski is flawed and brilliant and brave and capable of living in the extremes and the story is cosmically warped. I love it because of Frankenstein. The scenes with he and Amanda are the stuff of science and theory and the absurdities of life.

I was not as thrilled with the end of the book as the rest of it, and over the years have learned to take that disappointment and challenge myself to do better. I have not yet succeeded. Two copies of this book have found their way into my library. One of them left many years ago, bequeathed to a friend who very much appreciated the humor in this decidedly feminist novel.

It is not light reading, though it does approach many of the basics (if you can call them that) of quantum physics in language that presumes that you will understand it, so you do.… (mais)

Amanda Jaworski is an astronaut who has already been to Saturn. She is passionate about every aspect of her life. Men (she has two), her job (teaching and space travel), and her cat (Schrodinger, the comatose cat) all orbit around her as she prepares for a trip to Mars. Hill has the ability to weave "science talk" about subpartical physics, the second law of thermodynamics, swallowing molecules, spacenapping (as opposed to kidnapping) and "the Great Cosmic Brain" (which incidentally, created Earth) while telling a humorous story about a woman whose biggest problem used to be love.… (mais)