Infinity Over Zero

Infinity Over Zero: Meditations on Maximum Velocity is the first feature length book by Cole Coonce. Part literary journalism and part historical novel, the 2002 book describes, in first and third person, the history of the Land Speed Record and the pursuit of breaking the sound barrier in an automobile. The non-linear account is punctuated by numerous philosophical discussions (many of them on manifest destiny and the nature of infinity) which the author suggests may be a potential portal to a parallel universe.

Although tracing the history of the Land Speed Record from its inception in the 19th century, the preponderance of the manuscript deals with the sport's activity in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s; as metaphor, the book chronicles the tragic death in 1962 at the Bonneville Salt Flats of driver Glen Leasher in the Infinity land speed racer, and the author's search in the Year 2000 for the remains of the disintegrated vehicle in a Wendover, Utah junkyard.

Concurrent to the book's search for "Infinity," Coonce also meticulously documents the epic and death-defying battles in the 1960s between Art Arfons and Craig Breedlove who traded claims of the fastest man on the planet in their jet-powered racers. (Breedlove being that decade's ultimate victor after becoming the first man to travel , and .)

After extensive interviews with the builders of the Blue Flame rocket car and its triumphs and travails in claiming the Land Speed Record in 1970, the book culminates in a first person account of the 1997 battle for the first supersonic LSR between Breedlove and Andy Green in Richard Noble's Thrust SSC. When Green ultimately punctured the sound barrier at to claim the first and only verifiable supersonic Land Speed Record, Coonce likened the moment to Creation, a metaphysical phenomenon in automotive history that could be mathematically expressed as "Infinity Over Zero."

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