Time permitting, I would like to engage the question brought up by Mark Rose of how exactly Zoline's "The Heat Death of the Universe" (HDU) fits in with the sf canon, but that probably won't happen. First, though, let's get right down to entropy, shall we?

The text tells us that Sarah (if I may be so bold as to refer to her on a first name basis) fights a constant "desperate/heroic" (207) battle against entropic forces. I find these two terms appropriate and tend to think of them synonymously. Despite what I think our general tendency is (i.e. that heroic implies righteousness and hence imminent victory), it's the desperate battles that give the opportunity for heroism - the fight against incredible odds and so forth. Also, being heroic almost necessarily implies impending doom/death/failure. Would Hector not be somewhat less heroic if he was a match for Achilles? Classical heroes (which are still our models for heroism, like it or not), with very few exceptions, did not grow old - more often than not, they died in some 'glorious' way (e.g. Hercules throws himself atop his own pyre, Achilles is cut down through Trojan subterfuge, Samson dies in the act of bringing the temple down upon his enemies, Arthur is mortally wounded in the final battle against Mordred (in some versions), Quijote collapses while attempting to embark on a final sortie, Cu Chullainn fights alone against an army of opponents, Obi Wan falls to Vader in an act of self-sacrifice, and the list goes on). It boils down to this: to be a hero means losing. And let's face it, Sarah is definitely fighting a battle she cannot win. In Sarah's case, her very attempts to bring order to her house (and, by association, to her life in general) undermine what she tries to accomplish. In her near manic attempts to "index, record, bluff, invoke, order, and placate" (208), she "writes notes to herself all over the house; a mazed script larded with arrows, diagrams, pictures; graffiti" (207). The self-consciously imposed order causes a move to increasing entropy.

Sarah's fruitless attempts to order her life are reflected in the structure of the story - the numbered paragraphs. The numbers give the illusion of strict order without imposing any real order on the story. While everything is superficially sequential, the story lacks a solid organization and jumps around quite a bit; we get bits of Sarah's life out of chronological order (it is even left ambiguous whether or not many of the biographical nodes occur on the same or different days), and these bits are broken up even further by the insertion of thermodynamic laws and Sarah's own cosmological musings. So the numbers denoting the paragraphs indicate an attempted imposition of order on an essentially (and necessarily) disordered system. [It occurs to me that HDU would make an interesting hypertext if put in digital format.]

A further emphasis on the inherent disorder of the story appears in the form of "facts" that the reader is presented with. Besides the "facts" of thermodynamics, we are given "facts" about Sarah Boyle (although who exactly presents these "facts" remains uncertain), such as in paragraph 9. "Sarah Boyle is a vivacious and intelligent young wife and mother, educated at a fine Eastern college, proud of her growing family, which keeps her busy and happy around the house" (206). This detached "fact," however, is continually subverted by our glimpses into Sarah's own mind. "The thought of ordering the house on Dada principles balloons again . . . The goldfish would die, the birds would die, we'd have them stuffed; the dog would die from lack of care, and probably the children-all stuffed and sitting around the house, covered with dust" (210-11). Sarah imagines the death of pets and even her growing family (of which she is so proud) with a great deal of cold detachment. Not only doesn't she seem horrified by such morbid musings, she appears to relish them, to chuckle with inward glee at the prospects of both freedom to do as she pleases (important to an intellectual woman stuffed unceremoniously into the thankless job of a glorified housemaid who not only cleans windows but diapers) and the associated freedom from order.

I think it important that when Sarah goes on a consumeristic bender and purchases one of every cleaning product in the supermarket she actually adds to the entropy that she so nominally fights. The cleaning products are, ostensibly, intended to aid her in the losing battle against household disorders (e.g. mildew, roaches, bacon grease, toilet bowls, dust), but the act of purchasing this inordinate number of cleansers only illustrates how close Sarah is to breaking down. No matter how many products she buys, the entropy will grow, and Sarah realizes this; she knows what she is up against. Her maniacal laughter illustrates this knowledge.

When Sarah finally caves in, it is easy to see her break down as a descent into insanity, but I don't think this is the case. Sarah is all too sane. She recognizes the hopelessness of the battle and, instead of fighting to the very end (as Mr. Churchill might have her do), she joins the other side. If entropy is inevitable, and if all attempts to curtail it are for naught, then why not speed up the process? Fighting entropy is useless and a pointless waste of energy; becoming an entropic agent is easy. Like most things in (what we consider to be) nature, Sarah takes the path of least resistance.

[This final scene, when Sarah begins hurling random kitchen objects about, reminds me of a strikingly similar scene in Philip K. Dick's _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep_. In it, the character of John Isidore speaks of kipple, the useless objects that fill up empty or neglected spaces. "No one can win against kipple," Isidore states, "The entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization" (Dick 58). Late in the novel, Isidore runs around his apartment smashing things. He, who was for so long the warrior in a limited battle against kipple (in his apartment), becomes the agent of kippleization.

Do you have anything to add, Wub-ster?]

Something I think we need to keep in mind is the essential difference between entropy and chaos. Typically, most folks probably link the two, but they differ in significant ways. Chaos implies randomness, unpredictability. Chaos necessarily indicates a thing that lacks stability. Entropy is a move towards the stabilization of a system. Yes, that's right, disorder is a more stable thing than order. Order is difficult to maintain, while disorder seems to be the 'natural' state of things - the state towards which systems naturally tend. It takes a great deal of energy to maintain a relatively stable system, such as the human body. Think about it - you have to eat a whole lot in relation to your body size to maintain thermal equilibrium; you have to spend at least a quarter of every day sleeping to rest those organs that are so rapidly breaking down (and, on occasion, collapsing); when you don't do these things, you tend to feel like a lump of old whale droppings.

Hoo boy! This is sticky stuff, and I really want to go on some more, but my discussion of Zoline and the sf canon will have to wait at least a few days because I've gotta go.

There's crime to fight.

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