Bounded Rationality

They're the golden couple of Santa Fe. With his vast wealth, Molloy has launched an innovative foundation. His new wife, Judith Greenwood, is an internationally known scientist, who works at the famous think-tank, the Santa Fe Institute, pursuing the sciences of complexity. They've found each other late in life, and their love story is the envy of everyone in town. Santa Feans yearn to be invited to the famous long table Molloy and his wife host every Sunday night, or to their monthly salon, for the best talk, the best food, and the best wine. Sure to be at these evenings are some of the couple's closest friends, the "starchitect" Leandro Torres, known worldwide for his prize-winning buildings; the influential gallery owner, Nola Holliman; and the beautiful trilingual legal translator, Lucie Marchmont. Yet each of these enviable men and women conceals a tragic personal story. When 9/11 occurs in faraway New York City, these privileged Santa Feans are deeply affected, and must struggle to keep their secrets hidden. An intergenerational struggle erupts, where fathers and sons, and even grandfathers, intrude on each other's lives. As everyone negotiates the catastrophic autumn of 2001, two deaths, plus a nearly fatal car accident, intensify already raw emotions. Though each of these friends suffers deeply, and seeks consolation in very different ways, it is above all Molloy and his wife, the golden couple, who are forced to confront the cruelest meanings of the poem they've loved and read together, "Paradise Lost." PAMELA McCORDUCK is the author or coauthor of nine published books, three of them novels. "Bounded Rationality" is the second in a projected series of Santa Fe Stories, a trilogy whose first book is "The Edge of Chaos," also published by Sunstone Press. Her "Machines Who Think," a history of artificial intelligence, was honored the year of its publication by the New York Public Library; and was reissued in 2004 in a 25th anniversary edition. She has recently written and lectured on "the singularity," that future moment when computers might be more intelligent than their human creators. Among her other books are "The Universal Machine," a study of the worldwide intellectual impact of the computer, and "Aaron's Code," an inquiry into the future of art and artificial intelligence. With Nancy Ramsey, she wrote "The Futures of Women," four scenarios for women worldwide in the year 2015. She has consulted, and constructed future scenarios, for numerous firms in the transportation, financial, and high-tech sectors. She has appeared on CBS, CNN, and Public Television, and CNN devoted a two-part series to "The Futures of Women." She divides her time between New York City and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Includes Readers Guide.