Zero Degrees of Separation
By:
December 6, 2010
Over at Gearfuse, HILOBROW’s Matthew Battles points out that the “Six Degrees of Separation” meme can be traced back even beyond Kevin Bacon fans circa 1994, all the way to Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy’s 1929 story, “Chain Links.”
I’ve never read this story (thanks, Matt!), but I have mentioned Karinthy’s work a few times, before. In a post about Radium Age robot fiction, for example, I noted that Karinthy’s Voyage to Faremido: Gulliver’s Fifth Voyage (1916) takes place on a planet ruled by intelligent machine-folk, who regard organic life as a loathsome disease of matter. And Karinthy rated a mention in a post about the amazing blog A Journey Round My Skull — which takes its name from an autobiographical novel by Karinthy.
My to-do list for 2011: Read “Chain Links.” And everything else by Karinthy!