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