The Last Theorem

What happens when you take Arthur Clarke's "The Wind from the Sun", toss in a chunk of Fred Pohl's Heechee Rendezvous, add some of Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise and Pohl's Man Plus, top with some Olaf Stapledon, and then hit the frappé button? You get the not-quite-a-novel-but-more-a-series-of-sketches The Last Theorem from 2008. It's not as tight as the work that either of them has done in collaboration before, and I attribute that to their working on this solely by e-mail. Interesting ideas tossed hither and yon, but they don't hang together with anything like a completely coherent plot.  That's too bad, since it's virtually the last work either of them published, and they were capable of so much better.