MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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The Siege Of The "Lancashire Queen" (1906)
Jack London
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Contributed by Vijay Fafat

Describes how the capture of illegal shrimp-poachers becomes a problem of triangular geometry and relative speeds of chase. In particular, the pirates, trapped on a ship, the chasing posse and the point on the shore where escape can take place form an equilateral triangle and the posse's sail boat goes twice as fast as the row-boats of the pirates, thus bifurcating the chase route into two zones: a. the segment over which the pirates can move without the posse having to react and yet keeping their escape impossible and b) the segment, which once reached by the poachers, guarantees their escape. The story is part of the book, “Tales of the Fish Patrol” and available for download here.

More information about this work can be found at www.readbookonline.net.
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Works Similar to The Siege Of The "Lancashire Queen"
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason
  2. The Shadow of the God by Charles Newman Hall
  3. Young Archimedes by Aldous Huxley
  4. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  5. Geometry in the South Pacific by Sylvia Warner
  6. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  7. Royal Highness (Königliche Hoheit) by Thomas Mann
  8. A Doubter's Almanac by Ethan Canin
  9. Account Unsettled [Crime Impuni] by Georges Simenon
  10. Round the Moon by Jules Verne
Ratings for The Siege Of The "Lancashire Queen":
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:
1/5 (1 votes)
..
Literary Quality:
5/5 (1 votes)
.

Categories:
GenreAdventure/Espionage,
Motif
TopicGeometry/Topology/Trigonometry,
MediumShort Stories, Available Free Online,

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Exciting News: The 1,600th entry was recently added to this database of mathematical fiction! Also, for those of you interested in non-fictional math books let me (shamelessly) plug the recent release of the second edition of my soliton theory textbook.

(Maintained by Alex Kasman, College of Charleston)