MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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Goliijo (2007)
Alex Rose
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Contributed by Vijay Fafat

A very cute, mind-tickling short tale about a place called “Goliijo”. References to Mandelbrot's paper on British coastline and the Koch curve lead the reader to a description of Goliijo, which is literally a self-similar fractal down to the last detail (“Every detail of Goliijo is an inscription of its own layout…[…] there is no need for maps because the city itself is a map”). The inhabitants don't see anything strange, though “there is no such thing as lost, no such concept.[…] Everywhere is home. Every child is one's own”. And for travelers? Well, “If a traveler stays long enough, he too will become inscribed into its landscape; he will be absorbed into its history, its future. “lostness” itself will be lost”.

This story appeared in Rose's anthology The Musical Illusionist and Other Tales.

More information about this work can be found at www.amazon.com.
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Works Similar to Goliijo
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. Mandelbrot the Magnificent by Liz Ziemska
  2. An Angel of Obedience by John Giessmann
  3. Geometric Regional Novel by Gert Jonke
  4. The God Equation by Michael A.R. Co
  5. Gulliver's Posthumous Travels to Riemann's Land and Lobachevskia by William Pepperell Montague
  6. The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges
  7. Arcadia by Iain Pears
  8. What it Means When A Man Falls From The Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
  9. Probabilitea by John Chu
  10. Math Takes a Holiday by Paul Di Filippo
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Categories:
GenreFantasy,
Motif
TopicChaos/Fractals,
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)