"A Subway Named Mobius" is a 1950

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

short story by American astronomer

Armin Joseph Deutsch Armin Joseph Deutsch (January 25, 1918–November 11, 1969), was an American astronomer and a science fiction writer. __NOTOC__ Life and career Deutsch was born in Chicago and earned a BS from the University of Arizona in 1940 and, after wartim ...

. It imagines the results of increasing the complexity of the Boston MTA system (now the

MBTA The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (abbreviated MBTA and known colloquially as "the T") is the public agency responsible for operating most public transportation services in Greater Boston, Massachusetts. The MBTA transit network in ...

) with a new interconnection. It has been collected in anthologies since its original publication, and was nominated for a Retro Hugo Award in 2001, placing fourth in the final vote.

Plot

Shortly after the opening of a new track known as the

Boylston Boylston may refer to the following communities: ;Canada * Boylston, Nova Scotia ;United States * Boylston, Massachusetts * Boylston, New York * Boylston, Wisconsin * Boylston Junction, Wisconsin It may also refer to: * Helen Dore Boylston, au ...

Shuttle, Boston MTA train No. 86 goes missing. Whyte, the manager of the system, cannot explain its disappearance nor account for the fact that the system acts as though it was still there, drawing power and causing signals to operate automatically, sometimes miles apart. It falls to mathematician Professor Roger Tupelo of Harvard to attempt an explanation. Though not a

topologist In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing h ...

himself, he believes that the new shuttle connection caused the topological complexity of the system to increase to the point where the connectivity became infinite. The train is now running in an extra dimension of space and time. Unfortunately the one mathematician who might understand the problem, Prof. Turnbull of MIT, cannot be located and was almost certainly on the train when it vanished. Attempts to find the train are futile. Tupelo warns that closing the new shuttle will prevent the train from ever reappearing. Ten weeks pass by. Famous topologists are brought in to analyze the problem, but only manage to disagree with each other. The city prepares to defend multiple lawsuits and deal with investigations by the Federal government. One day, after cautiously resuming using the MTA himself, Tupelo realizes he is on the missing train and that no time has passed for the passengers. Stopping the train in a tunnel, he tells the driver to get him to a phone so he can contact Whyte. However it is too late. Another train has already vanished.

Publication history

"A Subway Named Mobius" first appeared in ''

Astounding Science Fiction ''Analog Science Fiction and Fact'' is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 1930. Originally titled ''Astounding Stories of Super-Science'', the first issue was dated January 1930, published by William C ...

'' in December 1950. It was first anthologized in 1952, and was republished as "Non-Stop" in '' Argosy'' in the UK in 1953. In 2001 it was nominated for a Retro Hugo Award, placing 4th.

Topology

The story's title refers to the

Möbius strip In mathematics, a Möbius strip, Möbius band, or Möbius loop is a surface that can be formed by attaching the ends of a strip of paper together with a half-twist. As a mathematical object, it was discovered by Johann Benedict Listing and Augu ...

, and the story also mentions a

Klein bottle In topology, a branch of mathematics, the Klein bottle () is an example of a non-orientable surface; it is a two-dimensional manifold against which a system for determining a normal vector cannot be consistently defined. Informally, it is a o ...

Adaptations

The story was the basis of the 1996 Argentine film '' Moebius'', with the setting changed to

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

."Moebius"
''Argentina Sci Fi'', archived from th

on March 31, 2012.

References

External links

* * 1950 short stories Boston in fiction Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Science fiction short stories Short stories adapted into films {{1950s-sf-story-stub