MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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Quarantine (1977)
Arthur C. Clarke
(click on names to see more mathematical fiction by the same author)
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Contributed by "William E. Emba"

For safety's sake, all organic life on the planet Earth has been wiped out by automatic defenses. The investigator looking into this regrettable turn of affairs in an otherwise promising species discovers that the trigger was "six operators", whose permutations and combinations were so great that they threatened to overwhelm all available computational resources for magnitudes of time far greater than the history of the universe.

This very short story was written as part of a scheme to print a series of SF stories on postcards which apparently never panned out. It was first published in ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE #1 (with an introduction longer than the story).

More information about this work can be found at www.research.ibm.com.
(Note: This is just one work of mathematical fiction from the list. To see the entire list or to see more works of mathematical fiction, return to the Homepage.)

Works Similar to Quarantine
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. The Pacifist by Arthur C. Clarke
  2. All the Universe in a Mason Jar by Joe Haldeman
  3. Freemium by Louis Evans
  4. Another Cock Tale by Chris Miller
  5. Flower Arrangement by Rosel George Brown
  6. The Snowball Effect by Katherine Maclean
  7. Probability Pipeline by Rudy Rucker / Marc Laidlaw
  8. The Higher Mathematics by Martin C. Wodehouse
  9. Ms Fnd in a Lbry by Hal Draper
  10. The Tale of the Big Computer (aka The End of Man?) by Hannes Alfven (writing as Olof Johannesson)
Ratings for Quarantine:
RatingsHave you seen/read this work of mathematical fiction? Then click here to enter your own votes on its mathematical content and literary quality or send me comments to post on this Webpage.
Mathematical Content:
1.67/5 (3 votes)
..
Literary Quality:
3.33/5 (3 votes)
..

Categories:
GenreHumorous, Science Fiction,
Motif
TopicComputers/Cryptography,
MediumShort Stories, Available Free Online,

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Exciting News: The total number of works of mathematical fiction listed in this database recently reached a milestone. The 1,500th entry is The Man of Forty Crowns by Voltaire. Thanks to Vijay Fafat for writing the summary of that work (and so many others). I am also grateful to everyone who has contributed to this website. Heck, I'm grateful to everyone who visited the site. Thank you!

(Maintained by Alex Kasman, College of Charleston)