feng_shui_house

Last night just before I should have gone to bed I read a Stargate Atlantis AU in which Rodney is raising his orphaned genius niece, Madison Meredith Miller, and John retires from Atlantis in order to read bedtime stories to 3-M.* One story was Melisande, in which mathematics and fantasy combine.

This intrigued me, so I googled and found that Melisande in a public domain collection of similarly delightful mathematically inclined original fairy tales, originally printed in 1901. Project Gutenberg includes the original illustrations as well as the complete text.

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nine Unlikely Tales, by E. Nesbit

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/49913/49913-h/49913-h.htm

*Ok, there was actually a lot more emo and other good stuff in the SGA fic, and it's a series, which I didn't finish reading because I got side-tracked by Melisande. I feel it would be unkind to mention it without giving a link.

Life Lived as Bell's Theorem by MrsHamill

Summary:

J.S. Bell showed that if you break up a molecule and change the spin of one electron, the spin of the other electrons originally joined will immediately change too, no matter where they are.
-- Bell's Theorem, via Scott Adams

The John and Rodney show move to Toronto and raise a child together.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/6035008

Edith Nesbit (married name Edith Bland; 15 August 1858 – 4 May 1924) was an English author and poet; she published her books for children under the name of E. Nesbit. She wrote or collaborated on over 60 books of fiction for children, several of which have been adapted for film and television. She was also a political activist and co-founded the Fabian Society, a socialist organisation later connected to the Labour Party. Edith Nesbit was born in Kennington, Surrey, the daughter of agricultural chemist and schoolmaster John Collis Nesbit. The death of her father when she was four and the continuing ill health of her sister meant that Nesbit had a transitory childhood, her family moving across Europe in search of healthy climates only to return to England for financial reasons. Nesbit therefore spent her childhood attaining an education from whatever sources were available - local grammars, the occasional boarding school but mainly through reading. At 17 her family finally settled in London and aged 19, Nesbit met Hubert Bland, a political activist and writer. They became lovers and when Nesbit found she was pregnant they became engaged, marrying in April 1880. After this scandalous (for Victorian society) beginning, the marriage would be an unconventional one. Initially, the couple lived separately - Nesbit with her family and Bland with his mother and her live-in companion Maggie Doran. Nesbit discovered a few months into the marriage that Bland had been conducting an affair with Doran, fathering a child with her and previously promising to marry her. Though they argued ferociously Nesbit did not end the marriage, choosing instead to move in properly with her husband and become friends with Doran. She then began to help support Doran and her own family financially by writing and selling sentimental poetry. Nesbit's writing career therefore truly began as a need to support another woman's child.