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And Be a Villain (1948) |
 | Rex Stout |
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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) |
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Been a long, long time (1970) |
 | R. A. Lafferty |
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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) |
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The Catalyst (1991) |
|
| Desmond Cory |
|
Mathematics professor John Dobie gets caught up in a truly mind-boggling
mystery when one of his former students, his wife's best friend, and then
his own wife wind up dead, and the police consider him... (more) |
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The Center of the Universe (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
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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) |
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The Circle of Zero (1936) |
|
| Stanley G. Weinbaum |
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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) |
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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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De Impossibilitate Vitae and Prognoscendi (1971) |
|
| Stanislaw Lem |
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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) |
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The Devil You Don't (1970) |
|
| Keith Laumer |
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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) |
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Diary of a Bad Year (2007) |
|
| John Maxwell Coetzee |
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J.M. Coetzee has a Nobel Prize in literature (2003) and an undergraduate degree in mathematics (University of Cape Town, 1961). It is therefore not too surprising to find him included in my list of mathematical... (more) |
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Drunkard's Walk (1960) |
|
| Frederik Pohl |
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A number theorist is suffering from frequent and
inexplicable suicide attempts, the latest victim of a small epidemic among
academia. In between lectures on Pascal's triangle and the binomial
theorem... (more) |
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Fifty Million Monkeys (1943) |
|
| Raymond F. Jones |
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The story is set sometime around 12,000 AD. The use of interstellar rockets over 15 years creates a "polarization of space" which leads to a "Pioneer anomaly"-like deviations in flight paths of spacecraft.... (more) |
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The Gigantic Fluctuation (1973) |
|
| Arkady Strugatsky / Boris Strugatsky |
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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) |
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The Grand Wheel (1977) |
|
| Barrington J. Bayley |
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This is primarily space opera, but with a mathematical element in
the fictional discovery of randomatics: a science which shows that
the Gambler's Fallacy is true under certain conditions, enabling
random... (more) |
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Habitus (1998) |
|
| James Flint |
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There is no doubt that this novel is a work of mathematical fiction, but I'm not sure how to describe it. I think the best word for it may be "uneven". It does some great things, both presenting some... (more) |
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Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) |
|
| Douglas Adams |
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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) |
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Imperativ (1982) |
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| Krzysztof Zanussi |
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It is about a mathematician (a probability professor) in existential crisis about the nature of necessity and chance.
(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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Inflexible Logic (1940) |
|
| Russell Maloney |
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There is a famous example of probability which (in one of its many
forms) states that six chimpanzees randomly typing at six typewriters
would eventually reproduce all of the books in the British museum.... (more) |
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Into Darkness (1992) |
|
| Greg Egan |
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Creepy story about a man who volunteers to rescue people from a
worm-hole that randomly appears in cities, killing anyone who is not
able to make it to the center of the spacetime-distortion before it
disappears.... (more) |
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The Investigation (1959) |
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| 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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Jurassic Park (1990) |
|
| Michael Crichton |
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Although there is really not much mathematics in this SF thriller at all, the
mathematician (played in the
film by
Jeff Goldbloom) has an important role as the only
person smart enough to recognize... (more) |
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The Law (1947) |
|
| Robert M. Coates |
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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) |
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Luck be a Lady (2009) |
|
| Dean Wesley Smith |
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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) |
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Moriarty by Modem (1995) |
|
| Jack Nimersheim |
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A cyberversion of Sherlock Holmes is created to track down an accidently
released cyberversion of Moriarty. The big clue involves both the binomial
theorem and binomial variables.
Published in... (more) |
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Mozart and the Whale (2005) |
|
| Petter Næss (Director) |
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A romance about two people with Asperger's Syndrome based on a true story. I have not seen the film, but understand that the male character is obsessed with numbers and statistics but works as a cab driver.... (more) |
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Nachman at the Races (1999) |
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| 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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The Non-Statistical Man (1956) |
|
| Raymond F. Jones |
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In this short story, insurance adjuster Charles Bascomb comes up against his greatest enemy: intuition. The story presents mathematics (especially statistics and logic) as one way man can deal with reality.... (more) |
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Null-P (1951) |
|
| William Tenn |
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The story extrapolates to great lengths (including a complete overthrow of humanity by smartly evolved canines) a simple principle: what might happen if we found a perfectly average man who had quantitative... (more) |
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Nymphomation (2000) |
|
| Jeff Noon |
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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) |
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Off Day! (1953) |
|
| Al Feldstein (writer)/ Jack Kamen (artist) |
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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) |
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The Pi Man (1959) |
|
| Alfred Bester |
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I found this work in an anthology of Alfred Bester short stories "The Dark Side of the Earth". It is an ironic story of a man that calls himself the Pi Man (irrational) that tries to set a pattern... (more) |
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PopCo (2004) |
|
| Scarlett Thomas |
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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) |
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Probabilities (1995) |
|
| Michael Stein |
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Sixteen year-old Will Sterling is the protagonist of this "coming of age story" that throws just a little math in with the usual teen-angst and sexual exploration.
The author is very good at letting you... (more) |
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The Rock (1996) |
|
| Robert Doherty |
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"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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Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead (1967) |
|
| Tom Stoppard |
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This brilliant, weird play, retelling the story of Shakespeare's Hamlet
from the point of view of two "throw away" characters, unfortunately has
very little mathematics in it. However, every few days... (more) |
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San (2000) |
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| Lan Samantha Chang |
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A short story in the collection "Hunger" about a girl who becomes interested in mathematics (especially probability) when her gambler father deserts his family. She does not succeed as a college student and learns in the end that in both math and life, it is the mysteries (and not their solutions) which are of real interest.
(more) |
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Silent Cruise (2002) |
|
| Timothy Taylor |
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In an open forum on mathematics at the BIRS Website, Canadian author Taylor does a great job of explaining why I am listing this short story here:
[In this story] I introduce [the characters]
Dett... (more) |
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Slightly Perfect / Are you with it? (1941) |
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| George Malcolm-Smith (Novel) / Sam Perrin (Script) / George Balzer (Script) |
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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) |
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Statistician's Day (1970) |
|
| James Blish |
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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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Tracking the Random Variable (1991) |
|
| Marcos Donnelly |
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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) |
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Twisted (2004) |
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| Jonathan Kellerman |
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One of the main characters is a graduate student pursing a Ph.D. in biostatistics, who notes to police detectives that coincidences in the circumstances of several murders are statistically significant,... (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 Visiting Professor (1994) |
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| Robert Littell |
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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) |
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What Are the Odds? (2006) |
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| Justin Spitzer (writer) / Matthew Tritt (director) |
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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) |
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The Year of the Jackpot (1952) |
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| Robert A. Heinlein |
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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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