measure his food and stop when he had eaten The Serbian 100-dinar bill features Nikola Tesla, enough cubic centimeters. Tesla never married, his favorite motor, and the equation that defines probably because he could never find a girl like dear ^{the scientific unit of measurement, the} “^tesla.” old Mom — an illiterate genius who could hand-tie three knots in a human eyelash. Tesla was not recklessly improvident. He was This year — 150 years after his birth — Tesla still probably as good at finance as most engineers, enjoys the reputation of a man ahead of his time. but World War I wrecked his prospects for attaining Tesla’s sesquicentennial finds him a 21st-century great wealth. It seems the war proved to Tesla that household name. Tesla coils, transformer coils that the human race was crazy. In the darker years after beautifully spit giant writhing sparks, are his signa- the Great War, Tesla scarcely pretended to be normal. ture mad-science toy. The tesla (T) is an interna- He still dressed in his Broadway-dandy uniform — tional scientific unit of measurement, good for the his tailored black Prince Albert coat, top hat, and ages. A sports car and a rock band carry Tesla’s spotless white gloves — but his tics, phobias, and name, while about a million goofy New Age cranks delusions took free rein. In the real world, he simply are still enthralled by Tesla’s musings. went through the motions. Tesla gave some pro-Tesla was certainly a genius, but not a “neglected, nouncements in the press, he opened his fan mail, forgotten genius” — that is a myth. It seems that but he could no longer be bothered to construct almost everybody who met Tesla knew at once, on huge wireless power-towers on Long Island, create some deep primal level, that he was freakishly smart. death rays for the U.S. Navy, or build magnetically It took people a while to figure out that Tesla was levitating ultra-high-speed global airships. beyond the aid and comfort they could offer. Tesla could still see these wonders in his mind’s Although he was a paranoid hypochondriac, Tesla eye, probably down to the paint flecks and serial lived until his mid-80s. And he wasn’t the picture numbers. But spinning deep within his own mental of misery. Tesla always had an excellent opinion of bowl, he no longer bothered to climb over the rim. himself and his own doings. He had little money Tesla’s spinning egg toy is a truly superb proof because he was basically unemployable. He ignored of concept. It came from a time in Tesla’s existence the profit motive and never did boring grunt-work when he had a pressing need to prove his concepts under duress. Medals, honors, doctorates, banquets, to the outside world. With the passing of years, that publications, and patents arrived in heaps for Tesla. need passed. There is one other smooth bronze egg Romance had no relevance for him. Besides his in the Tesla Museum in Belgrade. It is entirely spheri-mother, brother, and maybe his father, no human cal, polished and unblemished, stagily lit, and poised being ever impressed him much. Though he may on a pedestal. Some siftings are sealed inside of it well have invented the remote-control drone, Tesla — black ashes. That’s Nikola Tesla, egghead inventor. was no robot: he was a living being of wild passions He’s still in there. and eerie psychic extremities. Tesla had a sense of humor — enough of one to recognize that Mark

Twain was a genius and a man he could befriend.

Bruce Sterling ( bruce@well.com) is a science fiction writer and part-time design professor.

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