One character in the novel was a woman who developed a way to make the Y2K correction in all the databases of the world. As a result, she became a very wealthy woman who designed the landscaping at her home, including a small lake, using the Mandelbrot Set, or M-set for short.

This was our first encounter with the M-set, fractals, and the problem posed by using only two digits to denote a date. The author, either Asimov or Clarke, encountered those concepts much earlier. The general public became quite aware of the Y2K dilemma and took great pains to prepare for what could have been a terribly chaotic disaster. No one person became rich from solving the problem, but many, many tech jobs were created to stave off the disaster.

As for the fractals and the M-set? Just check out the great art on this and the pages that follow!