Computers and the Imagination: Visual Adventures Beyond the Edge

Art and science are conflated in Pickover's new discipline of ``scientific visualizations,'' demonstrated here in a colorful sampler for math hobbyists and puzzle fans, containing computer-generated palindromes, Fibonacci-based structures, artificial spider webs and fractal palaces of wonder. Here is mathematics' beauty made visible, with super computers and a kind of cybernetic aesthetic. Pickover's short, sometimes puzzle-like presentations will give computer-literate readers the eerie feeling of being present at the creation of a mathematical world where imagination finds its tool in the scientific revolution. Pickover is the author of Computers, Pattern, Chaos, and Beauty. (Sept.)