Fu Xi

Cryptonomicon is a 1999 novel by American author Neal Stephenson. The novel follows the exploits of two groups of people in two different time periods, presented in alternating chapters. The first group is World War II-era Allied codebreakers and tactical-deception operatives affiliated with the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, and disillusioned Axis military and intelligence figures whom they encounter. The second narrative is set in the late 1990s with descendants of the first narrative's characters employing cryptologic, telecom and computer technology to build an underground data haven in the fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency, with a longer range objective to distribute Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP) media for instructing genocide-target populations on defensive warfare.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is a 1988 humorous fantasy detective novel by Douglas Adams. It is the second book by Adams featuring private detective Dirk Gently, the first being Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. The title is a phrase which appeared in Adams' novel Life, the Universe and Everything to describe the wretched boredom of immortal being Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged, and is a play on the theological treatise Dark Night of the Soul, by Saint John of the Cross.

The creative team works through the weekend on the Chevy campaign, after Chevy rejects the seventh proposal in six weeks. Ted and the CGC creatives attend Frank Gleason's funeral. Jim Cutler hires a physician to inject the creative staff with a stimulant meant to give them inspiration and enhanced energy for 24 hours. Don and Megan leave Don's children alone in the apartment, with Sally as babysitter. Sally interrupts a disheveled, African American burglar, who pretends to be their "Grandma Ida". Don recalls the time he had a chest cold and was molested by a prostitute named Aimee Swenson, who took care of him when he was sick and then stole his virginity. Don spends his time looking for an old advertisement whose images and message were inspired by Ms. Swenson and Abigail Whitman, and honing a pitch to renew his affair with Sylvia Rosen, instead of working on the Chevy proposal. He and the others who took the injection are manic but unproductive. Gleason's daughter Wendy and Stan Rizzo (whose cousin was killed three months earlier in Vietnam) seek solace for their losses by having sex; Cutler beckons Peggy to join him spying on the couple. Don finds his wife and children, the police, and Henry and Betty Francis waiting for him at home, and then collapses. The next morning, he has made some resolutions.

The I Ching, also known as the Classic of Changes, Book of Changes, Zhouyi and Yijing, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. The book contains a divination system comparable to Western geomancy or the West African Ifa system; in Western cultures and modern East Asia, it is still widely used for this purpose.