Well it's easily a good enough title to submit with - sounds good, I think. Fibonacci's fairly well known, as mathematical concepts go. Whether an editor would think it's a drawback that some people who might want to ask for it in a shop wouldn't know how to pronounce it and therefore not, I don't know...

Still trying to work out the phsyiology of said self-fertilising, mind you. This

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adele-Mary-Flanagan/dp/0747535051/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217289024&sr=8-1

is an interesting take on the hermaphrodite idea.

Emma

I don't quite follow you. Having both sets of fully functional organs and a natural desire. Could you stop yourself self-fertilising?

I don't know about women's bodies. I am assuming the above being true, you would spend your entire adult life being pregnant.


<Added>

Or read my book
"Self-Fertilising for Dummies"
ISBN 555-1-8000

the egg that should have split to produce different sexed identical twins

You cannot have differently sexed identical twins. They are both either one sex or the other, unless they were non-identical twins where the cells fused to become a cimera, in which case they would have two different sets of DNA, and their offspring would not be identical.

There are genetic anomolies that can lead to hermaphroditic characteristics, although rarely ar both sets of sexual organs fully functioning, and if they were, they would not be able to accidentally self-impregnate themselves, at least, not without the aid of a turkey baster.

As for the title, mathemeticians would probably understand it, but since they would make up only a tiny proportion of potential readers the publisher would probably change it. I doubt an Agent would understand it.


- NaomiM

they would not be able to accidentally self-impregnate themselves, at least, not without the aid of a turkey baster.

That's what I was thinking. And they wouldn't be permanently pregnant if they breastfeed - it suppresses ovulation. As do a lot of other things, including testosterone.

As I understand it, (Naomi, you may well tell me I'm wrong) because all human foetuses are anatomically female unless and until a certain DNA-induced series of testosterone surges forces anatomical rearrangements, it would be more-or-less impossible to have both male and female gonads and other organs operating properly, because the change from one to the other is a single process: the further you go towards the male arrangements, the more of the female arrangements have been destroyed to make them.

Amazing what you learn on a Drama degree...

Emma

However, saying that, Emma, I find that Sci-fi writers are a law unto themselves. If Dr Who can be cloned to produce a girl, and Hollywood can make a film about two non-idential conjoined twins, then I guess the general public will swallow anything.



- NaomiM

Gosh, this conversation has taken an unexpected turn!

But meanwhile, I'd just like to agree with Naomi and Emma that titles aren't worth agonising over. Everyone knows they get changed, so no-one looks much at them. Maybe if you had a great one it could be a teeny plus point, but my experience of having what I thought was a great one was that it still got changed - and it just hurt more when that happened.

Having some ideas - as well as perhaps some ideas of the sort of thing you definitely wouldn't want - is a good idea, because the author can always throw ideas into the pot. Maybe your working title - or another of your lown ideas - will end up being chosen. But it's marketing people (who haven't read the book), in consultation with the editor, who make the actual decision. Authors just have to learn to live with that.

Rosy

But it's marketing people (who haven't read the book), in consultation with the editor, who make the actual decision.

But you can, in the end, dig your toes in (and marketing people do quite often read the book in my experience, or at least on my principle that most booktrade and journalists have read about 2/3rds of what they say they've read of your book): it is fundamentally an editorial decision, however much input other departments have. You just have to be willing to take the consequences, such as Tesco saying they won't buy it with that title, and the fact that if the book doesn't do as well as hoped* the title will be blamed. If you haven't insisted on a title everyone else hates, they'll blame the cover, but that's not your responsibility.

Emma

*far, far more common, it seems, that doing as well or better: as Betsey Lerner says, 'All books are swans to their editors, at least till the sales figures come in*