 |
1 to 999 (1981) |
 | Isaac Asimov |
|
When cryptologists try to break a simple code, one of the key clues is
the frequency with which letters appear. In English, the letter "a"
is one of the most frequently used letters. It is therefore... (more) |
|
 |
1963 (1993) |
 | Alan Moore |
|
A six-issue series, one of the best of the retro comics out
there. this is Moore's ingenious pastiche of Marvel comics in
the critical (for Marvel and for the world) year 1963. Strange
things... (more) |
|
|
2+2=5 (2006) |
|
| Rudy Rucker / Terry Bisson |
|
A retired insurance adjuster and a math professor who was fired for telling his students that there are "holes" in the number line pass the time by trying to break a world record for counting. To achieve... (more) |
|
|
A. Botts and the Moebius Strip (1945) |
|
| William Hazlett Upson |
|
William Hazlett Upson wrote a series of pieces for the Saturday Evening Post about a salesman for The Earthworm Tractor Company, written as a dialog of letters and memos between Alexander Botts and his... (more) |
|
|
The Adventures of Topology Man (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
Parody is easy....topology is hard!
In this short story, I made use of (and made fun of) the classic superhero comic book genre to illustrate some ideas from topology. So, we end up seeing a battle... (more) |
|
|
After Math (1997) |
|
| Miriam Webster |
|
The ghost of math professor Ray Bellwether tries to solve the mystery of
his own murder in this `first novel' by Amy Babich (Webster is just a
pseudonym). Babich has a Ph.D. in mathematics (and a Master's... (more) |
|
|
Against the Day (2006) |
|
| Thomas Pynchon |
|
This novel, set in the time frame 1890s to 1920s interleaves several
plots and styles, from boys' adventures to peacetime spies to gunslingers'
revenges. The forces of progress stomp over all the... (more) |
|
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Albert's Bridge (1967) |
|
| Tom Stoppard |
|
A radio play about a philosophy graduate student who gets a job painting the Clufton Bay Bridge. It takes him and three other workers exactly two years to paint the entire bridge, at which time they must... (more) |
|
|
Aleph Sub One (1948) |
|
| Margaret St. Clair |
|
This is a little known story by a well known author from the Golden Age of Science Fiction. The math content is high, and it's a good story, definitely belongs on your Mathematical Fiction page.
From... (more) |
|
|
And Be a Villain (1948) |
|
| Rex Stout |
|
Rex
Stout and his seventy some Nero Wolfe novels are generally regarded as
amongst the greatest mystery novels ever written. They read as fresh today
as when the series started in 1934, and they... (more) |
|
|
And He Built a Crooked House (1940) |
|
| Robert A. Heinlein |
|
A clever architect designs a house in the shape of the shadow of a
tesseract, but it collapses (through
the 4th dimension) when an earthquake shakes it into a more stable form (which takes up very... (more) |
|
|
Art Thou Mathematics? (1978) |
|
| Charles Mobbs |
|
Short story (Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, October 1978 Vol. 98 No 10) concerning the very nature of mathematical discovery. It was later rewritten in the form of a play, which the author has... (more) |
|
|
The Atrocity Archives (2004) |
|
| Charles Stross |
|
"The Laundry" is a British spy organization which is responsible for suppressing certain dangerous math research. The occult implications of mathematics became clear with Alan Turing's paper "Phase Conjugate... (more) |
|
|
Back to Methuselah (1921) |
|
| George Bernard Shaw |
|
In this not-very-stageable play in five parts, Shaw expounds on
mankind and the theory of evolution, from Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden to a paradise world 30,000 years in the future.
It turns... (more) |
|
|
Barking (2007) |
|
| Tom Holt |
|
Duncan Hughes has had a rather monotonous and trite career as an
estate and tax lawyer when suddenly werewolves, vampires, zombies,
and one impossibly alluring unicorn, along with his ex-wife and his
old... (more) |
|
|
Been a long, long time (1970) |
|
| R. A. Lafferty |
|
It's a very well-written humorous tale (as expected if you're familiar with Lafferty). The mathematical content is a literal interpretation of the six typing monkeys. The angel Boshel, as a punishment,... (more) |
|
|
The Better Mousetrap (2008) |
|
| Tom Holt |
|
The Better Mousetrap is the fifth book in Tom Holt's
series that began with The Portable Door. The first
four books told the adventures of Paul Carpenter, a fairly
boring nobody who joined the... (more) |
|
|
Bill, the Galactic Hero (1965) |
|
| Harry Harrison |
|
The famed parody of Asimov and Heinlein. Amongst other issues,
the book asks what happens to all the garbage from a one city
planet (a la Trantor from FOUNDATION)? It seems to be a losing
... (more) |
|
|
The Birds (BC414) |
|
| Aristophanes |
|
In one scene of this classic Greek play, the geometer Meton appears
and...well, it's pretty short. So why should I summarize it when I can
simply reproduce it here!
(Enter
METON, With surveying... (more) |
|
|
Borzag and the Numerical Apocalypse (2006) |
|
| Jason Earls |
|
I must warn you that I am a trained mathematician, but NOT a trained expert on literature. Among other consequences, this means that I sometimes have trouble telling the difference between brilliant,... (more) |
|
|
Calculating God (2000) |
|
| Robert J. Sawyer |
|
Though it is considerably less mathematical than Factoring Humanity, it holds together a bit better as a novel. Here, we encounter aliens who view the existence of god (a creator of the universe) as a... (more) |
|
|
Calculus and Pizza (2003) |
|
| Clifford Pickover |
|
A pizza chef teaches calculus to his restaurant patrons. Romance and hilarity ensue.
(more) |
|
|
Cardano and the Case of the Cubic (2005) |
|
| Jeff Adams |
|
This parody of early 20th century "Hard Boiled Private Detective" novels is instead a short story about 16th century mathematician Gerolamo Cardano.
Its opening paragraphs clearly set the tone:
It... (more) |
|
|
The Cat in Numberland (2006) |
|
| Ivar Ekeland (author) / John O'Brien (illustrator) |
|
This picture book uses the idea of a hotel with infintely many rooms for introducing some advanced concepts about numbers and infinity to children. The hotel, run in the book by "Mr. and Mrs. Hilbert",... (more) |
|
|
The Center of the Universe (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
This short story was intended to serve two different purposes. On the one hand it is a glimpse into the lives and interactions of mathematics graduate students. And, on the other, it addresses the philosophical... (more) |
|
|
The Chair of Philanthromathematics (1908) |
|
| O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) |
|
Jeff Peters and Andy Tucker, con men in
the O. Henry stories collected in this volume, are a bit
uncomfortable after scoring a really big scam. So they
... (more) |
|
|
The Circle of Zero (1936) |
|
| Stanley G. Weinbaum |
|
Thanks to Vijay Fafat for pointing out this story (with only a little math in it). A character speculates that the laws of probability predict that anything will happen in an infinite amount of time,... (more) |
|
|
Coconuts (1926) |
|
| Ben Ames Williams |
|
The story is a very nicely written tale of one man, Wadlin, whose only passion in life is mathematics - numbers, puzzles, Diophantine equations ("indeterminates"), statistics. As the author describes... (more) |
|
|
Cryptonomicon (1998) |
|
| Neal Stephenson |
|
This "cult" novel of mathematics, computer science, espionage and
warfare follows a mathematician through World War II and his grandson
through the creation of a (less than ordinary) silicon valley start-up
company.... (more) |
|
|
The Cyberiad (1967) |
|
| Stanislaw Lem |
|
I was perusing your site and I happened to think of a great addition to your list. It's by Polish philosopher Stanislaw Lem and called "The Cyberiad". It's about the adventures of two super "inventors"... (more) |
|
|
The Dark Side of the Sun (1976) |
|
| Terry Pratchett |
|
This humorous science fiction novel tells the tale of Dom Salabos, who believes he is destined to become "Chairman of the Board of Widdershins and heir to riches untold", but his allies familiar with p-math... (more) |
|
|
De Impossibilitate Vitae and Prognoscendi (1971) |
|
| Stanislaw Lem |
|
This is a philosophical discourse (intended as a parody, but I swear
I've read serious papers that were very much like it) in which the
author argues that probablity theory makes no sense since it is... (more) |
|
|
A Deadly Medley of Smedley (2003) |
|
| Feargus Gwynplaine MacIntyre |
|
Paradox Patrol officer Julie Anne Callender, with the help of her brother
Gregorian and her uncle Newgate, track down yet again the timecrime master
of evil Smedley Faversham (and atrocious punmeister)... (more) |
|
|
Delicious Rivers (2006) |
|
| Ellen Maddow |
|
This collage of absurd and entertaining scenes at a NYC post office (and the music and choreography to which they are performed) were all inspired by the mathematics of Penrose Tilings. In particular,... (more) |
|
|
A Deprogrammer's Tale (2000) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
This spoof presents the attempts of math professors to convince students to become math majors and the subsequent interest of those students in math as if it were a religious cult. Told from the point... (more) |
|
|
The Devil a Mathematician Would Be (1962) |
|
| A.J. Lohwater |
|
This clever short story that captures the feeling of a math problem that "gets under your skin" was printed in
The Mathematical Magpie
and was said to have been "collected" by A.J. Lohwater. Well, I... (more) |
|
|
The Devil and Simon Flagg (1954) |
|
| Arthur Porges |
|
Mathematicians know the feeling of trying to prove something you
really believe to be true, but has never been proven. There is
pleasure in doing this, like solving a puzzle, but also frustration
and... (more) |
|
|
The Devil You Don't (1970) |
|
| Keith Laumer |
|
The devil (who is not such a bad guy after all) seeks help from a quantum physics expert to fight off some aliens (who are not so evil either) that happen to disrupt the "Randomness Field". This disruption... (more) |
|
|
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) |
|
| Douglas Adams |
|
Douglas Adams is best known for his wacky Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy series. But his two Dirk Gently novels, while
maintaining Adams' characteristic high wackiness, also carry
... (more) |
|
|
Do the Math: A Novel of the Inevitable (2008) |
|
| Philip Persinger |
|
A math graduate student becomes an intern for a math professor famous for his `theory of inevitability' but ends up also helping his wife (an even more famous author of romance novels) write a book using... (more) |
|
|
Donald in Mathmagic Land (1959) |
|
| Hamilton Luske (director) |
|
Disney's Donald Duck takes an adventure to a land where mathematics
"comes alive". (Animated short.)
I used this video in my 6th grade
classroom. The kids enjoyed watching
... (more) |
|
|
The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (1963) |
|
| Norton Juster |
|
This picture book describes the love story of two geometrical
figures. It was also made into a cartoon by Chuck Jones (available on YouTube).
I have loved this book ever since my wonderful
mathematical... (more) |
|
|
A Fable for Moderns (1955) |
|
| Lord Dunsany |
|
A bank employee becomes bored with the restrictions of arithmetic and decides to let his mathematical computations enjoy the freedom of "modern" poets and artists. Although he loses his job at the bank,... (more) |
|
|
Family Ties (Episode: My Tutor) (1985) |
|
| Jace Richdale (Screenplay) / Sam Weisman (Director) |
|
I'm writing to bring your attention to a television episode for
possible addition to your mathematical fiction website. The television
show is "Family Ties" and the episode is entitled, "My Tutor".... (more) |
|
|
The Favor (1994) |
|
| Donald Petrie (Director) / Sara Parriott (Writer) / Josann McGibbon (Writer) |
|
A romantic comedy in which a woman married to a math professor wonders what it would have been like to have been with her old boyfriend and so convinces her girlfriend to sleep with him and report back.... (more) |
|
|
The Fermata (1994) |
|
| Nicholson Baker |
|
This book is certainly more about sex than it is about mathematics. However, I find the one mathematical passage in it so hilarious that I have to include it here.
The premise of the book is that the... (more) |
|
|
Fermat's Last Tango (2000) |
|
| Joanne Sydney Lessner / Joshua Rosenblum |
|
Fermat's Last Tango is an intelligently written, hilarious fantasia
based on Andrew Wiles' 1993 proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. The main plot consists of a love triangle between Daniel
Keane... (more) |
|
|
Flatterland: like Flatland, only more so (2001) |
|
| Ian Stewart |
|
In this "sequel" to Flatland, popular
mathematics writer Ian Stewart lets us accompany the granddaugther of the
original "A. Square" who starred in original classic, as she learns about
fractal dimensions,... (more) |
|
|
Four Brands of Impossible (1964) |
|
| Norman Kagan |
|
In the futuristic 1980's, a math student graduates from multiversity and gets a job with a megacorporation which is trying to do the impossible, literally. Along with his friends (a psychologist and an... (more) |
|
|
The Four-Color Problem (1971) |
|
| Barrington J. Bayley |
|
A story written in a psychedelic, stream-of-consciousness style a la William S. Burroughs concerning the discovery of previously unknown countries on the Earth whose existence provides a counter-example... (more) |
|
|
Futurama (1999) |
|
| David S. Cohen (David X. Cohen) / Ken Keeler / Jeff Westbrook |
|
Another Matt Groening cartoon TV show (like the Simpsons) that includes many mathematical "in jokes". The website simpsonsmath.com/futuramamath includes discussion of these jokes and the mathematical... (more) |
|
|
G103 (2006) |
|
| Oliver Tearne (director) |
|
This short film "shows a surreal day in the life of a mathematics undergraduate" taking the math course G103 at the University of Warwick. In fact, the Website makes it sound as if it is an informational... (more) |
|
|
The Gangs of New Math (2005) |
|
| Robert W. Vallin |
|
This humorous short story about a brawl in a pub of mathematicians appeared in the November 2005 issue of Math Horizons magazine. There is quite a bit of "mathematical name-dropping" in the form of quick... (more) |
|
|
Genghis Khan and 888 (2005) |
|
| Jason Earls |
|
As one might guess from the title of the literary journal in which it was published ("Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens #4"), this story is a bit strange. According to the author, it is absurdist... (more) |
|
|
The Geometrics of Johnny Day (1941) |
|
| Nelson Bond |
|
Old MacDonald had a firm, and in that firm he had a young mathematician who wanted to win his daughter's hand in marriage. MacDonald was skeptical:
""Ye want a job, eh? And just what is it that ye... (more) |
|
|
The Gigantic Fluctuation (1973) |
|
| Arkady Strugatsky / Boris Strugatsky |
|
This is an oddly funny story about a man who becomes the "focus point of all miracles in the world", a "gigantic fluctuation". He somehow appears to attract extremely improbably but possible statistical... (more) |
|
|
The Givenchy Code (2005) |
|
| Julie Kenner |
|
You've got to love the tag lines for this book: "A heel-breaking adventure in code-breaking that will bring out the math geek and the fashionista in you". "Cryptography is the new black".
A woman with... (more) |
|
|
Goldman's Theorem (2009) |
|
| R.J. Stern |
|
Hired by the little-known "University of Northern Vermont", Professor Goldman does not seem to be living up to his promise as a great math researcher. Under pressure from his superiors, he claims to have... (more) |
|
|
Gravity's Rainbow (1973) |
|
| Thomas Pynchon |
|
In this novel "there's "mathematicians'
graffiti" and a lot of musing on the Poisson-curve. See, for ex. page 140 in
the Pengiun 20th century classics edition.
(Okay, I'll admit it. I have not... (more) |
|
|
Gulliver's Travels (1726) |
|
| Jonathan Swift |
|
If you are lucky enough to find an unabridged version of
Swift's classic book, you will be able to read (among descriptions of
the people of many other unbelievable countries) about the people of
Laputa.... (more) |
|
|
Hilbert's Hotel (1999) |
|
| Ian Stewart |
|
Another take on the idea (attributed to lectures by David Hilbert) that the bizarre properties of the countably infinite can best be presented through the analogy of a hotel. Here, Mr. and Mrs. Smith... (more) |
|
|
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) |
|
| Douglas Adams |
|
Everyone ought to read this trilogy of four (or is it five now?) books that brilliantly combine science fiction with the drollest of British humor. Despite my high regard for it, I've not added it to... (more) |
|
|
The Holmes-Ginsbook Device (1969) |
|
| Isaac Asimov |
|
A scientist recounts how, stung by his former professor
hogging all the credit for figuring out a way to safely
light cigarettes and girlwatch at the same time, he and
... (more) |
|
|
I of Newton (1970) |
|
| Joe Haldeman |
|
In this short story a mathematics professor accidentally summons a demon
by cursing while working on a problem involving integration. The devil
brags
that he is able to disprove Fermat's last theorem,... (more) |
|
|
L' idée fixe du Savant Cosinus (1899) |
|
| Christophe -- Georges Colomb |
|
This humorous and profusely illustrated French book is considered to be an early example of what we might today call a "comic book".
Cosinus is a mathematician who
desperately wants to travel around... (more) |
|
|
The Imaginary Number (1956) |
|
| Yizhak Oren |
|
In this peculiar and humorous story, a complete stranger
shows up at physicist Benjamin's door, with an imaginary
tale of their childhood friendship, marriage to twin sisters,
and his deed to certain... (more) |
|
|
In Good King Charles's Golden Days (1939) |
|
| George Bernard Shaw |
|
Considered by many to be Shaw's worst play, this late example of his
witty writing may be of special interest to visitors to this site. It
takes place at the home of Sir Isaac Newton where he is joined... (more) |
|
|
The Indefatigable Frog (1953) |
|
| Philip K. Dick |
|
A parody of science utilizing the old "Zeno's Paradox". Originally appeared in Fantastic Story Magazine (July 1953) and republished
recently in The Ascent of Wonder. (more) |
|
|
The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells (Episode: The Truth about Pyecraft) (2001) |
|
| Chris Harrald (Script) / Clive Exton (Script) / Herbert George Wells (story) |
|
Please correct me if I'm mistaken here, but it seems that the 2001 TV miniseries The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells took the story ``The Truth about Pyecraft'', which has no math in it, and made the main... (more) |
|
|
Infinities (2002) |
|
| John Barrow |
|
This play, written by Cambridge cosmologist John Barrow, has been produced and performed in Italy (Milan and Valencia). It is made up of five separate vignettes several of which touch on the deep mathematics... (more) |
|
|
Inside Out (1987) |
|
| Rudy Rucker |
|
The story itself is quite disturbing IMO but has the usual zaniness of his other writings. Features quarks as "hypertoroidal vortex rings/loops of superstring", a "cumberquark", "hypertorii with fuzzy... (more) |
|
|
The Integral: A Horror Story (2009) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
This story, which he claims is an attempt to emulate Stephen King, is different from many of Adams' others. This may explain why it was published for the first time in his 2009 collections Riot at the... (more) |
|
|
Into Thin Air (2000) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
This was the first of Colin Adams' ``Mathematically Bent'' columns for the Mathematical Intelligencer, published back in Vol.22, No. 1, 2000. It combines many of the analogies between mountain climbing... (more) |
|
|
Izzy at the Lucky Three (1996) |
|
| Eliot Fintushel |
|
There are two kinds of weird: good weird and bad weird. This story
is the third kind. I mean, what can you say about a story in which the
Yiddishe mystic Izzy encounters
the demon spirit who created... (more) |
|
|
The Jester and the Mathematician (2000) |
|
| Alan R. Gordon |
|
A short historical fiction piece involving Leonardo of Pisa ("Fibonacci"). Interesting story which features Fibonacci talking briefly about his rabbit-series/sequence, his abacus-duel with Pisa's foremost... (more) |
|
|
Journey to the Center of Mathematics (2006) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
A parody of the classic Jules Verne tale, which reads like what Woody Allen would have written if he had taken math instead of philosophy at NYU:
The next day, we booked travel on a steamer across the... (more) |
|
|
A Killer Theorem (2007) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
Mangum, P.I. returns in this mystery in which the unproven Gauss' Last Lemma is wielded as a murder weapon. Apparently, a certain approach to proving it is so enticing that merely showing it to mathematicians... (more) |
|
|
The Killion (1982) |
|
| Ian Frazier |
|
Fans of Monty Python will recall the joke so funny that anyone who reads it dies laughing. Frazier brings us the mathematical analogue: a number so big that it kills anyone who tries to think about it. This is the only mathematical story in the funny collection called "Dating your Mom".
(more) |
|
|
The Law (1947) |
|
| Robert M. Coates |
|
In this story, the "law of averages" ceases to apply (so that, for instance, everyone in Manhattan decides to drive across the Triborough Bridge on the same evening). As a result, it is necessary for... (more) |
|
|
Le théorème de Travolta (2002) |
|
| Olivier Courcelle |
|
The adventures of a young mathematician
trapped in the curious and delirious world of a
mathematical congress. A cross between
David Lodge and Groucho Marx.
I believe it has not been translated
into english (but should)
(more) |
|
|
The Legend of Howard Thrush (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
I always have enjoyed the American folk tale, a medium in which one pretends to be speaking earnestly and in all sincerity about a history so ridiculous that it it simply cannot be taken seriously. There... (more) |
|
|
life.exe (2006) |
|
| Jason Rogers |
|
This work of fiction is not strictly narrative. It is hard to say what is happening since the characters live in the world of "the matrix". Not like the Wachowski Bros.'s epic trilogy of films (though... (more) |
|
|
Little People (2002) |
|
| Tom Holt |
|
Tom Holt is generally considered one of the masters of
comic fantasy. His humour is apparently too British,
though, since he hasn't had an American publisher for
quite some time. The British-only... (more) |
|
|
The Long Chalkboard (2006) |
|
| Jenny Allen / Jules Feiffer (Illustrator) |
|
Allen's book is a collection of three short-short stories spread
out over book length with illustrations on every page, in the usual
style of children's literature, complete with charmingly simple... (more) |
|
|
Luck be a Lady (2009) |
|
| Dean Wesley Smith |
|
A seriously bizarre story about how
Laverne, the Goddess of Luck, has gone missing, and superheroes Poker
Boy, Front Desk Lady, and Screamer go looking for her, only to discover
that the Bookkeeper... (more) |
|
|
Mangum, P.I. (2004) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
A parody of the hard-boiled private detective genre in which ``P.I.'' stands for ``Principal Investigator'', a phrase familiar to anyone who has applied for a research grant. In this hilarious story,... (more) |
|
|
Math Curse (1995) |
|
| Jon Scieszka / Lane Smith (illustrator) |
|
In this children's picture book, the main character finds that "anything can be a math problem" when her elementary school teacher puts a math curse on her. For example:
Unfortunately for me, LUNCH... (more) |
|
|
Math Patrol (1977) |
|
| TV Ontario |
|
"Math Patrol was a 15-minute long educational TV series produced in the late 1970s by TV Ontario about the adventures of a secret agent named "Sydney" who dressed up as a kangaroo with a blue trenchcoat.... (more) |
|
|
Math Takes a Holiday (2001) |
|
| Paul Di Filippo |
|
Saint Hubert and Saint Barbara, the two patron saints of mathematics,
pay a visit to a devout Catholic mathematics professor who has been
praying for a mathematical miracle to silence his mockers.... (more) |
|
|
Mathematical R & D (1979) |
|
| Paul J. Nahin |
|
This short short story, published in the professional journal
IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems describes a
talk by the (fictional) famous mathematician Professor Osgood. Greatly
limited... (more) |
|
|
Mathematically Bent (2000) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
Geometer and knot-theorist Colin Adams (Williams College, MA) has been writing this short, mathematically-wise and bitingly funny column in the quarterly issues of The Mathematical Intelligencer since... (more) |
|
|
Mathematicians in Love (2006) |
|
| Rudy Rucker |
|
Together, two math grad students who are both in love with the same girl prove a theorem which characterizes all dynamical systems (from the stock market to the motion of particles) in terms of objects... (more) |
|
|
The Mathematicians of Grizzly Drive (1988) |
|
| Josef Skvorecky |
|
A detective story, in the "hard boiled" genre, featuring Eve Adam, a sexy nightclub performer who solves crimes in her free time. In this story, she visits a house where mathematicians gather to entertain... (more) |
|
|
The Mathematics of Magic (1940) |
|
| L. Sprague de Camp / Fletcher Pratt |
|
The "Enchanter Stories" by de Camp and Pratt are a very popular series of SF/fantasy stories whose protagonist, Harold Shea, is able to travel to other universes using symbolic logic. "The Mathematics... (more) |
|
|
The Mathenauts (1964) |
|
| Norman Kagan |
|
In the future presented by this story, only those with a knowledge of
advanced mathematics can travel through space as a Mathenaut;
by "abstracting" (thinking of the space around you as nothing other
than... (more) |
|
|
Mathmakers (1978) |
|
| TV Ontario |
|
Canadian television show (circa 1978) about making a television show.
Humorous story lines illustrate mathematical concepts.
"The program was developed and produced by TVOntario in 1978. Each
episode... (more) |
|
|
MathNet (1987) |
|
| Childrens Television Workshop |
|
A children's TV show in which mysteries are solved using
mathematics. The suspects and victims always ask the investigators
"Are you the police?" To which they reply "No, we're
mathematicians!"... (more) |
|
|
Message Found in a Copy of Flatland (1983) |
|
| Rudy Rucker |
|
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... (more) |
|
|
Midtown Pythagoras (2007) |
|
| Michael Brodsky |
|
Michael Brodsky is a deconstructionist's dream writer, which for most people,
simply means utterly unreadable. His many novels, stories, and plays inhabit a
world where meaning is just past the reader's... (more) |
|
|
Monday Begins on Saturday (1966) |
|
| Arkady Strugatsky / Boris Strugatsky |
|
In this parody of the activity at Soviet research thinktanks, mathematics underlies the "science" of magic. Math is rarely discussed in depth and a knowledge of Russian fairy tales helps the reader to... (more) |
|
|
Monster (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
A story about group theory, plagiarism, the untapped potential of a collaboration between mathematics and marketing, the bleak financial future of academia, and the Monster.
This story talks about... (more) |
|
|
Ms Fnd in a Lbry (1961) |
|
| Hal Draper |
|
Hal Draper took a break from his life's work of promoting Marxism,
and wrote one science fiction story. The information explosion, and
associated storage and retrieval problems, is humorously examined
in... (more) |
|
|
Mulligan Stew (1979) |
|
| Gilbert Sorrentino |
|
An avant garde novel, or a parody of one, presented in the form of a collection of letters, notes, papers and other writings. Includes Cardano's formula, plus a full length parody of a mathematics research... (more) |
|
|
Narrow Valley (1966) |
|
| R.A. Lafferty |
|
This is a madcap story about a tract of land which is topologically folded through a shamanic incantation. Contains descriptions of some physical effects but explicitly states that the topological defect... (more) |
|
|
Naturally (Double Whammy) (1954) |
|
| Fredric Brown |
|
Fredric Brown, a prolific and acclaimed writer of mystery
and science fiction stories and novels, was an extraordinary
master of the short-short. "Naturally" is a one-pager about
Henry... (more) |
|
|
A New Golden Age (1981) |
|
| Rudy Rucker |
|
In this story, and in our world as well, mathematicians lament the
fact that legislators cannot sufficiently appreciate mathematics and
that this adversely affects the funding of their science. To address
this... (more) |
|
|
No-Sided Professor (1946) |
|
| Martin Gardner |
|
We all know that among the surprising things you learn when you first
make a Mobius strip is
the fact that out of a two sided piece of paper you can make an object
with only one side. Why should this... (more) |
|
|
Numberland (1987) |
|
| George Weinberg |
|
The co-author (with John Schumaker) of STATISTICS: AN
INTUITIVE APPROACH, and practicing psychotherapist, tells
a charming little fable about Numberland.
Peace, harmony,... (more) |
|
|
Numbers Don't Lie (2005) |
|
| Terry Bisson |
|
This novel is actually just a compilation of three Wilson Wu short stories ("The Hole in the Hole", "The Edge of the Universe" and "Get Me to the Church on Time") which were previously published in Asimov's... (more) |
|
|
Numbers in the Dark (La notte dei numeri) (1990) |
|
| Italo Calvino |
|
A boy looking around the huge office building where his mother works meets an old accountant who now works with computers but reveals to him an undiscovered arithmetic error made back in one of the company's... (more) |
|
|
Nymphomation (2000) |
|
| Jeff Noon |
|
A math professor's theory of ``nymphomation'' (described in the book as a way for numbers to mate) is used to develop a lottery game called "Domino Bones" that entirely takes over the city of Manchester,... (more) |
|
|
Odile (1937) |
|
| Raymond Queneau |
|
A humorous semi-autobiographical novel by this famous, French, surrealistic author.
Queneau seems to have had some training as a mathematician and was friends
with several leading French mathematicians.... (more) |
|
|
Off Day! (1953) |
|
| Al Feldstein (writer)/ Jack Kamen (artist) |
|
Believe it or not, this Weird Science story is essentially a lecture on the law of large numbers.
A very worried college professor tells his class he's just witnessed the failure of one of the most... (more) |
|
|
|
|
The Pacifist (1966) |
|
| Arthur C. Clarke |
|
Clarke, one of the all-time biggest names in serious science
fiction, took time to write a series of humorous science
fiction tall tales. The stories are narrated by one Harry
... (more) |
|
|
The Papers of A.J. Wentworth, B.A. (1949) |
|
| Humphry Francis Ellis |
|
This is a humorous book about A J Wentworth, school master at a British school, who teaches Algebra to 11-13 year old children. The entire novel has a touch of Wodehouse to it as it follows the bumbling... (more) |
|
|
Paul Bunyan versus the Conveyor Belt (1949) |
|
| William Hazlett Upson |
|
A clever "twist" on the usual Mobius band story.
Answers the age old question: How can you win lots of money betting
against poor saps who don't understand topology?
I use this story with children... (more) |
|
|
The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) |
|
| Norton Juster / Jules Feiffer (Illustrator) |
|
This "Alice in Wonderland"-esque children's book follows our hero,
Milo, to the fantasy world through his toy tollbooth. One of the
lands he visits is very "mathematical". We meet the dodecahedron,... (more) |
|
|
PopCo (2004) |
|
| Scarlett Thomas |
|
Alice was raised by her grandparents, a mathematician and a cryptographer, and now uses what she learned from them to make mathematical puzzles for children. Her employer, the giant toy company "PopCo",... (more) |
|
|
Problems for Self-Study (2002) |
|
| Charles Yu |
|
The life of a mathematical physicist -- from earning his PhD, through marriage, fatherhood and into a midlife crisis -- presented in the form of homework exercises from a math book.
We first meet... (more) |
|
|
Professor Morgan's Moon (1899) |
|
| Stanley Waterloo |
|
A young mathematician asks for the hand of a senior mathematician's beautiful (and clever) daughter, but is refused on the grounds that his inability to support her financially was a mathematical certainty.... (more) |
|
|
A Proof of God (2004) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
A mathematician is approached by a seemingly crazy old man who claims to have a proof of the existence of God, but later it seems that he might not be so crazy after all in this hilarious spoof from Adams'... (more) |
|
|
Pythagoras's Darkest Hour (2007) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
A humorous short story from the author of Mathematically Bent which tells the true story of the discovery of the Pythagorean Theorem. Well, actually, perhaps it isn't exactly true...but it is so good,... (more) |
|
|
Quanto scommettiamo ("How much do you want to bet?") (1965) |
|
| Italo Calvino |
|
The story is about two beings, living since the beginning of the universe (one of them, the protagonist of the book, is "old Qfwfq" - it's not a misprint -, a mysterious being that claims to have witnessed... (more) |
|
|
Quarantine (1977) |
|
| Arthur C. Clarke |
|
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... (more) |
|
|
Quicksilver: The Baroque Cycle Volume 1 (2003) |
|
| Neal Stephenson |
|
This long novel from the author of Cryptonomicon does for 17th Century mathematics what that earlier novel did for the 20th century. Namely, it deifies some great historical mathematicians (this time... (more) |
|
|
Recess (Episode: A Genius Among Us) (2000) |
|
| Brian Hamill |
|
This episode of Disney's Saturday Morning cartoon "Recess" is clearly a parody of the film "Good Will Hunting". I hope this doesn't lower anyone's opinion of me...but I personally liked it better than... (more) |
|
|
Red Zen (2007) |
|
| Jason Earls |
|
A man travels to another planet in an attemp to resolve a bizarre memory problem in this absurdist science fiction novel. As in his other works, Earls includes tidbits of computational number theory.... (more) |
|
|
Refund (1938) |
|
| Fritz Karinthy (original) / Percival Wilde (English Adaptation) |
|
A former student demands that his tuition be refunded because he feels his education was worthless, but loses his bid when he is tricked by the mathematics master.
This entry refers to the 1938 adaptation... (more) |
|
|
|
|
Robbins v. New York (2008) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
The author of the Mathematical Intelligencer's "Mathematically Bent" column has a talent for making me laugh, and this piece which has the US Supreme Court justices debating higher math and modern physics... (more) |
|
|
Rucker - A Life Fractal by Eli Halberstam (1991) |
|
| John Allen Paulos |
|
Like Lem's De Impossibilitate Vitae and Prognoscendi , this is a work of fiction that takes the form of a book review. (As Paulos explains in his introduction, "Reviewing [a] book which hasn't been written... (more) |
|
|
Rumpled Stiltskin (2004) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
Do you remember the old Fractured Fairy Tales segment on Rocky and Bullwinkle in which classic stories were updated with a twist? This is just like those. The old Grimm's Brother tale is retold, but... (more) |
|
|
She Wrote the Book (1946) |
|
| Oscar Brodney (writer) / Warren Wilson (writer) / Charles Lamont (director) |
|
A modest and shy female math professor develops amnesia and completely changes her behavior when she comes to believe she is the author of steamy romance models. According to Burkard Polster and Marty... (more) |
|
|
Simpsons (Episode: Homer3) (1995) |
|
| John Swarzwelder / Steve Tomkins / David S. Cohen |
|
In this segment from an episode of "The Simpsons" cartoon, Homer finds a
portal to the third dimension while trying to hide from his
sisters-in-law. This is a joke on the fact that they are usually... (more) |
|
|
The Simpsons: Girls Just Want to Have Sums (2006) |
|
| Matt Selman |
|
In this episode from the 17th season of the hit cartoon The Simpsons, the principal of Bart and Lisa's school makes a sexist comment (clearly a reference to the controversial comments from Harvard President... (more) |
|
|
The Sinister Researches of C.P. Ransom (1951) |
|
| Homer C. Nearing Jr. |
|
"[D]escribed on the cover as a science fiction novel, which is two
mistakes in three words...it is [mathematical fiction], and it is a
collection of short stories that originally appeared in The Magazine
of... (more) |
|
|
Sir Cumference and the... (1997) |
|
| Cindy Neuschwander |
|
These are pun filled picture books.
I thought surely you would have these classic children's math tales
listed. I read them to my 6th graders with a phony English accent and
they are just riveted... (more) |
|
|
A Slight Miscalculation (1971) |
|
| Ben Bova |
|
This is a story of a mathematician who found a way to predict
earthquakes. He finds out that there will be a major earthquake
in California (where he lives). After checking this prediction
using CalTech's... (more) |
|
|
Slightly Perfect / Are you with it? (1941) |
|
| George Malcolm-Smith (Novel) / Sam Perrin (Script) / George Balzer (Script) |
|
Eggheaded actuary Milton Northey Haskins quits his job upon learning that his company has lost money due to his misplaced decimal point and he joins a carnival in the 1941 novel Slightly Perfect. This... (more) |
|
|
Spaceland (2002) |
|
| Rudy Rucker |
|
Yet another Flatland "sequel" in which silicon valley genius Joe Cube (an obvious reference to characters A. Square and A. Cube in Abbott's original) gets caught up in a war between four-dimensional beings... (more) |
|
|
Stand-In (1937) |
|
| Tay Garnett
|
|
Leslie Howard plays a typical Hollywood mathematical genius: emotionless, conceited, and convinced that everything can be understood through mathematics. (Well, one out of three isn't bad!) It takes a trip to Tinsel Town and a beautiful actress to make him see the errors of his ways.
(more) |
|
|
The Story of Yung Chang (1900) |
|
| Ernest Bramah (Ernest Bramah Smith) |
|
Before the invention of multiplication tables, a Chinese idol merchant must
sell his wares individually, even if someone wishes to purchase a large
amount, since he has no way to determine how much money... (more) |
|
|
The Strange Case of Mr. Jean D. (1983) |
|
| Joao Filipe Queiro |
|
Published in the Mathematical Intelligencer magazine (Math.Intell. 5, 3 78-90 (1983)) this is the story of a mathematician who has a nightmare: Pi is rational! (Thanks to Nuno Crato for the suggestion.) (more) |
|
|
Stranger than Fiction (2006) |
|
| Marc Forster (Director) /
Zach Helm (Screenplay) |
|
An employee of the IRS who is obsessed with counting and performing mental computations begins to hear the voice of a woman narrating his life. He soon learns that he is a character in a novel and that... (more) |
|
|
The Tachypomp (1873) |
|
| Edward Page Mitchell |
|
I can't believe this story is as old as it is! First published in
Scribner's Magazine in 1873, it is only dated by its sexism and its
contradition of Einstein. In order to win the hand of the beautiful
Abscissa... (more) |
|
|
The Tale of the Big Computer (aka The End of Man?) (1966) |
|
| Hannes Alfven (writing as Olof Johannesson) |
|
"Alfven, the Swedish physicist and astrophysicist who was
awarded the Nobel prize for his development of plasma physics
and magnetohydrodynamics (but is perhaps better remembered
... (more) |
|
|
A Tangled Tale (1886) |
|
| Lewis Carroll |
|
A collection of ten mathematical puzzles in story form by the famous author/mathematician Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll).
"The reason I answered 3 for "Mathematical Content" is that all the math... (more) |
|
|
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels (2007) |
|
| Jasper Fforde |
|
As Vijay Fafat points out, the eponymous heroine of this series of humorous, fantasy mysteries has a daughter who is a math prodigy. Among other things, in this novel she finds a counter-example to Fermat's... (more) |
|
|
To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998) |
|
| Connie Willis |
|
Travelling through time, as we all know, is a dangerous business. One small change in the past and you could mess up the future! In this science fiction novel, Willis proposes a (vaguely mathematical)... (more) |
|
|
Topsy-turvy (Sans Dessus Dessous) (1889) |
|
| Jules Verne |
|
The members of the Gun Club want to use a giant cannon's recoil to change the Earth's rotation axis, so they can exploit the presumed coalfields at the North Pole. An unfortunate side effect is that... (more) |
|
|
Tracking the Random Variable (1991) |
|
| Marcos Donnelly |
|
Ronald Barr is a statistician with a knack for identifying hidden variables. For example, it was he who recognized that by offering chicken soup and hot chocolate in the automatic coffee machine, his... (more) |
|
|
Train Brains / The Runaway Train (Donald Duck) (1956) |
|
| Carl Barks |
|
Donald Duck's nephews -- Huey, Dewey and Louie -- are trying to earn a merit badge in engineering for the Junior Woodchucks by working out a complicated problem involving toy trains.
"We'll never be... (more) |
|
|
Twisters (1988) |
|
| Paul J. Nahin |
|
A medical doctor stumbles onto a dangerous trap in this short story which
was published in Analog (Vol CVIII No 6, May 1988). The twisted
donuts sold by the new shop he passes on the way to work turn out to be
Klein bottles (a topological oddity like the Mobius strip). (more) |
|
|
Uncle Georg's Attic (2002) |
|
| Ben Schumacher |
|
This short story appeared in the September 2002 issue of "Math Horizons",
published by the Mathematical Association of America. In it, some kids
look through an attic containing lots of stuff belonging... (more) |
|
|
Unreasonable Effectiveness (2003) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
"Unreasonable Effectiveness" reminds me of a classic Arthur C. Clarke style
short story. It has exactly enough mathematics done correctly and a twist that
boggles the mind at the end. To be fair... (more) |
|
|
A Very Good Year (1984) |
|
| Jack C. Haldemann II |
|
A very short fantasy-like story about Statistics. A senior statistician for Dept of Acccident Prevention describes how the law of averages appears to have failed when applied to mortality rates. In particular,... (more) |
|
|
The Visiting Professor (1994) |
|
| Robert Littell |
|
Lemuel Falk, a ``randomnist'' from the Steklov Institute in Russia
gets a visiting position at a chaos research institute in Upstate New
York in this academic farce. He meets a drunkard who studies... (more) |
|
|
|
|
What Are the Odds? (2006) |
|
| Justin Spitzer (writer) / Matthew Tritt (director) |
|
Two extremely nerdy strangers who keep running into each other in New York City are surprised to learn that they both "study applied mathematics" and are attending the same conference on "stochastic processes... (more) |
|
|
Year of the Rat (2009) |
|
| Kristine Kathryn Rusch |
|
A story of two brothers who
use mathematics, one to prove, one to disprove God, and fortunately have
their big sister to resolve things.
One of two mathematical stories in Denise Little's anthology Intelligent Design. (See also Luck be a Lady).
(more) |
|
