MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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Det sista ordet inom vetenskapen [The Last Word in Science] (1987)
Peter Nilson
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This is very short story by a Swedish astronomer and author which presents a mathematical version of the biblical story of Genesis. Carl Gustav Werner, who kindly brought it to my attention, translates the opening sentences as:

(quoted from Det sista ordet inom vetenskapen [The Last Word in Science])

In the beginning God created the Borel sets.
And God said, “Let there be the Banach space, and thereby the potential to create manifolds. Let there also be the Hausdorff space, so that we can create universes.”
And God saw that the Banach space did exist, and that it was good, and his Spirit was moving through the Hausdorff space and counted the dimensions.

It was published in the author's book "Avgrundsbok" and, as far as I know, appears only in Swedish.

(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 Det sista ordet inom vetenskapen [The Last Word in Science]
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. Mathemagics by Patricia Duffy Novak
  2. The Babelogic of Mathematics by Vijay Fafat
  3. Saint Joan of New York: A Novel About God and String Theory by Mark Alpert
  4. Mathematics Disputes with Death, and the Devil Intervenes by Thomas Reed Willemain
  5. When the Devil Took the Professor [Wie der Teufel den Professor holte] by Kurd Lasswitz
  6. Math Takes a Holiday by Paul Di Filippo
  7. Dante Dreams by Stephen Baxter
  8. Probabilitea by John Chu
  9. The Book of Alephs by Inderjeet Mani
  10. Perelman's Song by Tina Chang
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Categories:
GenreFantasy,
MotifReligion,
Topic
MediumShort Stories,

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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)