MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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Message Found in a Copy of Flatland (1983)
Rudy Rucker
(click on names to see more mathematical fiction by the same author)
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This is the story that answers the age old question: "What if Flatland was in the basement of a Pakistani restaurant in London?". The answer is scarier than you might think, especially when you realize that someone might trick you into entering Flatland yourself without your own best interests in mind. The math here is just the usual "2-dimensional slices of 3-dimensional objects" thing that we've seen many times before, but it is an interesting story well told.
First appeared in the collection The 57th Franz Kafka by Rucker and later republished in the math fiction collection Mathenauts. Moreover, as of this writing it is available for free at the author's Website.

More information about this work can be found at another page on this Website.
(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 Message Found in a Copy of Flatland
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. A New Golden Age by Rudy Rucker
  2. Spaceland by Rudy Rucker
  3. And He Built a Crooked House by Robert A. Heinlein
  4. Inside Out by Rudy Rucker
  5. The Planiverse: computer contact with a two-dimensional world by A.K. Dewdney
  6. Probability Pipeline by Rudy Rucker / Marc Laidlaw
  7. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott
  8. The Girl with the Celestial Limb by Pauline Melville
  9. Mathematicians in Love by Rudy Rucker
  10. The Mathenauts by Norman Kagan
Ratings for Message Found in a Copy of Flatland:
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:
3.33/5 (3 votes)
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Literary Quality:
3.33/5 (3 votes)
..

Categories:
GenreHumorous, Science Fiction,
MotifHigher/Lower Dimensions,
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)