Perhaps the Ci-ty dreamed of an-other, en-emy city, float-ing across the sea to invade the es-tuary . . . or of waves of darkness . . . waves of fire . . . Perhaps of being swallowed again, by the immense, the si-lent Mother Con-tinent? It's none of my business, city dreams. . . . But what if the Ci-ty were a growing neo-plasm, across the centuries, always chang-ing to meet exactly the chang-ing shape of its very worst, se-cret fears?

After graduating from high school in 1953 at the age of 16 Pynchon studied engineering physics at Cornell University but left at the end of his second year to serve in the U. In 1958 Pynchon and Cornell classmate Kirkpatrick Sale wrote part or all of a science-fiction musical Minstrel Island which portrayed a dystopian future in which IBM rules the world (Gibbs 1994). In 1957 he returned to Cornell to pursue a degree in English.

After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s he began composing the novels for which he is best known: V. Hailing from Long Island Pynchon served two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University.