Ananke (mythology) - Modern Literature

Modern Literature

The word "Ananke" is featured in Victor Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris, written upon a wall of Notre-Dame by the hand of Dom Claude Frollo. In his Toute La Lyre, Hugo also mentions Ananke as a symbol of love.

"Ananke" is the title of a science fiction short story by Stanislav Lem, in the series of the Tales of Pirx the Pilot. Ananke is the key to the solution of a disastrous spaceship accident. Ananke is used in the meaning of force and obsession.

Norbert Wiener, in his book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, presents Ananke as the personification of scientific determinism, contrasted with Tyche as the personification of quantum indeterminacy, in the often-quoted sentence:

"The chance of the quantum theoretician is not the ethical freedom of the Augustinian, and Tyche is as relentless a mistress as Ananke."

In Kelly McCullough's "Ravirn" series, Ananke is a prominent figure in all the books under the guise of Necessity.