Krugman on Charles Stross' Neptune's Brood

[james_davis_nicoll]

I’m reading an advance copy of Charlie Stross’s Neptune’s Brood. (Hey, I have connections!) And it is the best thing by far written on the subject to date, partly because it is, as far as I know, the only thing written on the subject to date.

Comments

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

I hope this isn't one of those things where "That lost account has been earning compound interest for centuries, and is now worth more than the GDP of the world! Let's go claim the account!"

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Since it's a Stross story, I expect things are more complicated than that.

However, I wish to add that [SPOILER, after-horse-has-left-the-barn style, FOR MACK REYNOLDS'S 1956 "STORY COMPOUNDED INTEREST"] I thought Mack Reynolds's 1956 story "Compounded Interest" was a fine story at the time that I read it, around 1970. I am sorry if you have seen the idea too often.

I know Douglas Adams [NOT REALLY MUCH OF A SPOILER FOR A THROWAWAY JOKE IN THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY] used it as a throwaway joke in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in 1978, but I can't recall encountering other instances.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

You're forgetting Wells' The Sleeper Awakes (1910), where the compound interest from the eponymous sleeper's bank account has caused the complete restructuring of society around the monumental wealth wielded by the state in trust on the Sleeper's behalf.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

A classic which, I blush to admit, I have not read.

The twist in the Mack Reynolds story [ANOTHER SPOILER FOR "COMPOUNDED INTEREST"] is that the bankers' mysterious customer pbyyrpgf gur cebprrqf gb cnl sbe na awesomely expensive gvzr znpuvar, jvgu juvpu ur vagraqf gb ivfvg cnfg praghevrf naq vafgehpg the bankers ba ubj gb vairfg uvf zbqrfg vavgvny pncvgny. So that's stealing two ideas from H. G. Wells.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Isn't there also one version of this named something like ``John Smith's Dollar'', where after forty generations the initial dollar has come to world-menacing proportions?

(Oh, there it is: John Jones's Dollar, by Harry Stephen Keeler.)