Фланн О'Брайеннің есімді ғалымы – Де Селби

Fictional character originally created by Flann O'Brien

De Selby (spelled "de Selby" in The Third Policeman and "De Selby" in The Dalkey Archive) is a fictional character originally created by Flann O'Brien for his novel The Third Policeman in which the nameless narrator intends to use the proceeds of murder and robbery to publish his commentaries on de Selby – a savant who theorizes, among other things, that the earth is actually shaped like a sausage.

Described as an eminent "physicist, ballistician, philosopher and psychologist", de Selby is known for his paradoxically non scientific beliefs and personality. De Selby serves as an unseen character in The Third Policeman, where he is discussed at length in references and footnotes which tenuously link his unorthodox theories and areas of research to the plot. (In one footnote, he attempts to dilute water; in another, he posits that night is caused by the accumulation of "black air".) O'Brien's novel The Dalkey Archive focused on de Selby himself. In The Dalkey Archive, de Selby develops a substance ("D. M. P.") capable of extracting all oxygen from an airtight enclosure, thus disrupting the sequentiality of time, incidentally making it possible to produce fine mature whiskey in a week. De Selby vows to use the substance to destroy the world in the name of God. As discussed in Irish Philosophy, de Selby believed human existence was "a succession of static experiences each infinitely brief" and "a journey is a hallucination" which he demonstrated by travelling from Bath to Folkestone by means of picture postcards of the supposed route, barometric instruments, clocks and a device to regulate gaslight to simulate sunlight at various "times" of day. Another theory of de Selby's was that mirrors held the secret to eternity, claiming a huge array of parallel mirrors allowed him to see his own face as a boy of twelve. Wilson later included Professor de Selby as the main character in his short story "The Horror on Howth Hill" where de Selby has a conversation with J. R. "Bob" Dobbs. Irish musician Hozier referenced De Selby in the tracks De Selby (Part 1) and De Selby (Part 2) on his 2023 album Unreal Unearth.