Thanks to Aaron Gullison for pointing out that in this Discworld novel, "the camels are all mathematicians, and think in math." For instance,
| (quoted from Pyramids)
The greatest mathematician alive on the Disc, and in fact the last one in the Old Kingdom, stretched out in his stall and counted the pieces of straw in his bedding. Then he estimated the number of nails in the wall. Then he spent a few minutes proving that an automorphic resonance field has a semi-infinite number of irresolute prime ideals. After that, in order to pass the time, he ate his breakfast again.
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This camel, the brilliant mathematician "You Bastard", realizes that something is wrong with mathematics:
| (quoted from Pyramids)
You Bastard was thinking: there seems to be some growing dimensional instability here, swinging from zero to nearly forty-five degrees by the look of it. How interesting, I wonder what's causing it? Let V equal 3. Let Tau equal Chi/4. cudcudcud Let Kappa/y be an Evil-Smelling-Bugger differential tensor domain with four imaginary spin coefficients....
Ptraci hit him across the head with her sandal. "Come on, get a move on!" she yelled. You Bastard thought: Therefore H to the enabling power equals V/s. cudcudcud Thus in hypersyllogical notation...
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Funny, but mostly meaningless as far as I can tell.
| Contributed by
RG
While it scores a 1, this (and most of Pratchett's work) is mathematiccally lucid, and frequently presents physics and mathematics (and especially the Discworlds's deeviations from the normal rules) as important to the narrative -- on the Discworld,which isvheavily influenfed by "narrativium", million to one chances happen nine times out of ten, and the story is much better for it.
See also the semiserious "Science of Discworld" books, which are amongst the best "popular" presentations of serious science I've ever come across.
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