Cavendish displayed a lifelong fascination with one of the hardest of the “hard” problems, the nature of infinity. In an age which saw the birth of calculus as well as revolutionary developments in cosmology, a consistent theory of infinity was generally regarded as an illusory goal. Cavendish tackled this vexing scientific problem, which represented a radical departure from the cosmological and theological consensus of the 1660s; it anticipates a new worldview which emerged toward the end of the century, in which biblical revelation was eventually subordinated to empirical science, the Copernican hypothesis triumphed over rival theories, and the notion of a plurality of worlds became commonplace rather than shocking. From the playful speculations of the 1650s, Cavendish’s confident analysis of the nature of infinity had evolved into an essential ingredient in her prescient “theory of everything.”

A major twenty-first-century fiction, Haruki Murakami’s novel 1Q84 confirms the continuing force of global magical realism. Our analysis centers on a crucial question for magical realist texts: What does their magic achieve? This epic love story chronicles the separation and ultimate reunion of Tengo and Aomame in twentieth-century Tokyo. In its course, the novel’s 'proximate magic' uses magical events and phenomena to draw isolated people together within the city: Tengo writes a story containing two moons and then he and Aomame see two moons in the sky; Tengo sleeps with Fuka Eri and Aomame becomes pregnant, disturbing habitual ideas of space and identity as many magical realist fictions do. This interpersonal magic, together with magical intersections of separate worlds (including – on a metafictional level – the conflation of separate texts) addresses the problem of the separation between inhabitants of a megalopolis, remedying the alienation they experience. Such cultural work needs magic to overcome these strongly divisive social forces.