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The Adventure of the Russian Grave (1995) |
 | William Barton / Michael Capobianco |
|
17 years after the death of Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes comes across some loose ends
involving Moriarty. Following these clues down into eastern Siberia with
Watson, a set of mathematical calculations... (more) |
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Arcadia (1993) |
 | Tom Stoppard |
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Stoppard's critically successful play includes long discussions of topics of
mathematical interest including: Fermat's Last Theorem and Newtonian
determinism, iterated algorithms, the second law of thermodynamics,
Fourier's... (more) |
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Blowups Happen (1940) |
|
| Robert A. Heinlein |
|
A mathematician discovers that his formulas predict that an important
new power station poses an extremely grave risk to humanity, and he
must convince others of the danger.
reprinted in THE PAST THROUGH TOMORROW.
At least temporarily available in HTML format at webscription.net.
(more) |
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The Book of Worlds (1929) |
|
| Miles J. Breuer |
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Another story of 4-D from Miles Breuer, this time with Prof. Cosgrave who builds a "hyper-stereoscope" that can combine 3-dimensional views ("geometrical stereograms") from different angles into a 4-D... (more) |
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The Chimera Prophesies (2007) |
|
| Elliott Ostler |
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A mathematician known only as ``#6'', while trying to come up with a model that would predict probabilities for different human behaviors, finds that in fact he can very nearly predict the future with... (more) |
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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) |
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Dark as Day (2002) |
|
| Charles Sheffield |
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Alex Ligon, though unbelievably rich, chooses to work voluntarily at a government
agency where his predictive models for the future of the human race (based,
he claims, on the principles of statistical... (more) |
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The Dark Side of the Sun (1976) |
|
| Terry Pratchett |
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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) |
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Foundation (1951) |
|
| Isaac Asimov |
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In this book and its prequels/sequels, we see humanity guided by the
work of fictional "mathematician, Hari Seldon, who works out the rules
of psychohistory and makes a secret chart that the humankind... (more) |
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Galactic Rapture (2000) |
|
| Tom Flynn |
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On a future Earth whose major export to other planets is the Christian religion, mathematician Fram Galbior is a hero for his formula which allows the prediction of the appearance of ``Tuezi''. These... (more) |
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The Gimatria of Pi (2004) |
|
| Lavie Tidhar |
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More ``numerology'' than mathematics, this short story is based on the idea that the decimal expansion of π has predictive value. For example, it is portrayed as predicting the assassination of Yitzhak... (more) |
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Improbable (2005) |
|
| Adam Fawer |
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A probability expert suffering from epilepsy (with hints of schizophrenia) is in over his head with gambling debts to the Russian mob and a beautiful, renegade CIA agent before discovering that he has... (more) |
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In The Country of the Blind (1990) |
|
| Michael Flynn |
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Sarah Beaumont escaped from the modern American ghetto to become a successful journalist, programmer and real estate investor. However, while investigating an idea for developing her latest real estate... (more) |
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In the Courts of the Sun (2009) |
|
| Brian D'Amato |
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A modern descendant of the Mayans and his former mentor (a game theorist) realize that the famous Mayan prediction that the world will end in the year 2012 is based on some seemingly reasonable math, and... (more) |
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The Investigation (1959) |
|
| Stanislaw Lem |
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In investigating a bizarre case of missing -- and apparently resurrected bodies -- an investigator at Scotland Yard consults mystics, philosophers, and (most significantly to the book as well as to this... (more) |
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Journey into a Dark Heart (1998) |
|
| Peter Hoeg |
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This story appears in the collection Tales of the Night made up of stories by Hoeg that are all set on the evening of March 19, 1929. In this one, a depressed young Danish mathematician takes a train... (more) |
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Mad Destroyer (1930) |
|
| Fletcher Pratt |
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The story is about a mathematician/astronomer who has discovered an exact solution to the multi-body problem in gravitation i.e. a formula which can easily calculate the positions and velocities of N... (more) |
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Manifold: Time (2000) |
|
| Stephen Baxter |
|
After hearing a (rather bogus sounding) mathematical proof that
civilization is headed for disaster, mathematician Cornelius Taine
"sets in motion" this unusual science fiction novel that takes us
through... (more) |
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Mathematicians in Love (2006) |
|
| Rudy Rucker |
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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) |
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The Measure of Eternity (2006) |
|
| Sean McMullen |
|
The beautiful servant of an even more beautiful courtesan leaves the palace in an ancient city and finds a beggar proudly shouting "I have nothing" in many different languages. Yet, this beggar seems... (more) |
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Nachman at the Races (1999) |
|
| Leonard Michaels |
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In Michaels' third Nachman story, we learn that the UCLA mathematician enjoys attending horse races -- apparently his only emotional outlet besides his mathematics research. There is discussion of the... (more) |
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Notes from the Underground (1864) |
|
| Fyodor Dostoevsky |
|
Part I
involves an unnamed rather crazed and unreliable narrator
(generally known as "the Underground Man") raving and rambling
against life, the universe, and everything. A few... (more) |
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Out of the Sun: A Novel (1996) |
|
| Robert Goddard |
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Harry Barnett (first introduced in the novel Into the
Blue) investigates the circumstances that lead to
his son's accident. The son, 33 year old math genius, lies in a coma
and the accident is somehow... (more) |
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The Power of Words (1845) |
|
| Edgar Allan Poe |
|
A very short work (two-pages long!) in
which two angels discuss the divine implications of our ability to
mathematically determine the future consequences of an action, especially
wave propagation.... (more) |
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Psychohistorical Crisis (2001) |
|
| Donald Kingsbury |
|
In the far future, a group of "psychohistorians" controls the fate of humanity using the mathematical theory of "the founder" in this unauthorized "sequel" to Asimov's Foundation series. Kingsbury's lengthy... (more) |
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The Rock (1996) |
|
| Robert Doherty |
|
"Five people--including an Australian Air Force computer operator, a Mexican engineering professor, a New York housewife, a Colombian Special Forces officer, and an English mathematician--are invited to... (more) |
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Shooting the Sun (2004) |
|
| Max Byrd |
|
Historical mathematicians Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage play supporting roles in this novel about an expedition into uncharted Indian territory to capture the first photograph of a solar eclipse at... (more) |
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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) |
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The Star (1897) |
|
| Herbert George Wells |
|
Although some of the science is a bit off -- for example, the idea that the
rotation of planets has something to do with their ability to orbit the sun
or that the "star" formed by the collision of Neptune... (more) |
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Statistician's Day (1970) |
|
| James Blish |
|
An aging novelist and Nobel Prize winner gives what he knows is
his last interview. But rather than take questions, he has rather
pointed ones of his own, based on his twenty years of statistical
analyses... (more) |
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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) |
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A Very Good Year (1984) |
|
| Jack C. Haldemann II |
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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) |
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The Year of the Jackpot (1952) |
|
| Robert A. Heinlein |
|
A statistician notices trends in everything from war and famine to women unexpectedly stripping off their clothes in public. He concludes that the year 1954 is going to be an exceptionally bad year. ... (more) |
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