In The Originist, by Orson Scott Card, a genius scientist is trying to figure out a very thorny problem, but cannot seem to find an answer or even know where to start. His wife advises him to go to the Galactic Library and talk to its indexers. These are people who spend their days creating links between all of the different documents in the library's collection - they read a part of one book, and when it reminds them of a concept in another book they create a link. To help out this scientist...

Actually, The Originist is Orson Scott Cards attempt to write a story into another authors series. The story took place on the planet Trantor. The genius scientist in the story was a friend and co-worker of Hari Seldon, the star of Asimov's Foundation series. The story takes place as the Foundation is being established on Terminus, before the Galactic Empire fell. My first impression of Everything2 was that it reminded me of those indexers, and I was about to attempt to search the web for the story when I stumbled on this node.

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