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The Adventure of the Russian Grave (1995) |
 | William Barton / Michael Capobianco |
|
Even in the old Arthur Conan Doyle stories, Sherlock Holmes' arch-nemesis was a mathematician. Moriarty was said to be a math professor who (when he wasn't being evil) worked on the binomial theorem and... (more) |
|
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All Cry Chaos (2011) |
 | Leonard Rosen |
|
When a mathematician is killed in an explosion immediately before presenting his paper on the inevitability of a one-world economy to the World Trade Organization, the case falls to Interpol agent Henri... (more) |
|
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Annals of Klepsis (1983) |
|
| R.A. Lafferty |
|
A wacky sci-fi adventure comedy featuring space pirates. There is not much math in the book, but the central plot revolves around a mathematical ``doomsday equation'' and the goal of preventing the horrible... (more) |
|
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Arcadia (1993) |
|
| Tom Stoppard |
|
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) |
|
|
The Bank (2001) |
|
| Robert Connolly |
|
A brilliant young mathematician (aren't they all!) uses chaos theory to develop a mathematical model that predicts the stock market in this Australian thriller (co-produced by Axiom Films) .
I love... (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... (more) |
|
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The Book of Worlds (1929) |
|
| Miles J. Breuer |
|
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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Calculating the Speed of Heartbreak (2023) |
|
| Wendy Nikel |
|
Normally, I don't like works of mathematical fiction that use mathematical terminology and notation to discuss romantic relationships. They often involve groan-inducing formulae like "Pat + Sandy = Love".
However,... (more) |
|
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The Chimera Prophesies (2007) |
|
| Elliott Ostler |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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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Drop (2008) |
|
| Lisa Papademitriou |
|
A mathematically talented high school student uses what appears to be psychic powers to beat the casinos in this novel for young adults. However, with the help of a math professor she begins to realize... (more) |
|
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Foundation (1951) |
|
| Isaac Asimov |
|
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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Freemium (2021) |
|
| Louis Evans |
|
A man whose ethically questionable internet scheme made him a billionaire gets even more rich and powerful when unknown aliens provide him with factorizations of large integers and predictions of the stock... (more) |
|
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Futility (1929) |
|
| Sterner St. Paul Meek (S.P. Meek) |
|
There is an old folk story, “The Appointment in Samarra”, in which a man sees Death in a market in Baghdad and flees to Samarra to escape its clutches, only to find that his appointment with Death... (more) |
|
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Galactic Rapture (2000) |
|
| Tom Flynn |
|
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) |
|
|
The Gimatria of Pi (2004) |
|
| Lavie Tidhar |
|
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 |
|
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 the ability to predict the future. A running subplot is the mathematical aspects of determinism (i.e. (more) |
|
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In The Country of the Blind (1990) |
|
| Michael Flynn |
|
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) |
|
|
In the Courts of the Sun (2009) |
|
| Brian D'Amato |
|
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) |
|
|
Incident on Simpac III: A Scientific Novel (2018) |
|
| Doug Brugge |
|
In this science fiction novel, human colonization of extra-solar planets is guided by "synthesis", mathematical algorithms that make determinations about the best course of action in the future based on... (more) |
|
|
The Investigation (1959) |
|
| Stanislaw Lem |
|
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) |
|
|
Journey into a Dark Heart (1998) |
|
| Peter Hoeg |
|
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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Kapitoil (2010) |
|
| Teddy Wayne |
|
It is 1999 and Karim Issar is a Qatari programmer who has just moved to NYC to work on Wall Street. Karim understands the world through mathematics and equations, and wishes others did as well. He does... (more) |
|
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The Last Equation of Isaac Severy (2018) |
|
| Nova Jacobs |
|
After mathematician Isaac Severy's suspicious death, his grand-daughter follows the clues he left her to find and protect his final discovery.
In this murder mystery/family drama, Hazel Severy leaves... (more) |
|
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Mad Destroyer (1930) |
|
| Fletcher Pratt |
|
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) |
|
|
Mathematicians in Love (2006) |
|
| Rudy Rucker |
|
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) |
|
|
Nachman at the Races (1999) |
|
| Leonard Michaels |
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Odds Against Tomorrow (2013) |
|
| Nathaniel Rich |
|
Mitchell Zukor is a statistician and probabilist whose area of expertise is the prediction of disasters. To many people, including the reporter/narrator, this makes him a humorous and pathetic number... (more) |
|
|
Out of the Sun: A Novel (1996) |
|
| Robert Goddard |
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Risqueman (2009) |
|
| Mike Wood |
|
A brilliant (and beautiful) French mathematician is distressed by governmental misuse of her algorithm which accurately predicts accidents and disasters that previously were only determined probabilistically.... (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
The Stochastic Man (1975) |
|
| Robert Silverberg |
|
This is a tautly written story of political intrigue involving 3 central figures: a student of statistics, Lew Nichols, who invents the field of predictive stochastics, a seemingly clairvoyant and eccentric... (more) |
|
|
Strange Attractors (2013) |
|
| Charles Soule (author) / Greg Scott (Illustrator) |
|
This is is graphic novel in which a mathematics student seeks the help of a seemingly insane genius who claims he has been using chaos theory to save the city of New York from disaster for decades.
Heller... (more) |
|
|
The Three-Body Problem (2006) |
|
| Cixin Liu (author) / Ken Liu (translator) |
|
This creative "first contact" novel by a famous Chinese science fiction author won many awards, including the Hugo award.
Like much "hard SF", it is a work of fiction in which the ideas are at least... (more) |
|
|
To The Power Against (2007) |
|
| Carrie Smith (writer) / Stephanie Lantry (Artist) |
|
Probability and the number 235 (which appears on each cover, sometimes cleverly hidden) each play a role in this interesting but still somewhat amateurish comic book series from Conjoined Comics.
Our... (more) |
|
|
Touch (2012) |
|
| Tim Kring |
|
This TV show combines disparate familiar elements. Like "24", it has Kiefer Sutherland running around trying to save people. Like "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" it has the autistic child of a single... (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Trueman Bradley: Aspie Detective (2012) |
|
| Alexei Maxim Russell |
|
Trueman Bradley moves from a small midwestern town to New York City to establish himself as a private detective. At first people try to discourage him as he seems highly unqualified. Not only has he... (more) |
|
|
Turbulence (2010) |
|
| Giles Foden |
|
A British meteorologist is stationed in Scotland during World War II not to simply run a weather station (which is his cover), but to get to know the brilliant Wallace Ryman and learn to use his mathematical... (more) |
|
|
Until Tomorrow, Then (2010) |
|
| Shaun Hamill (writer and director) |
|
A short film about a young mathematician obsessed with working out the "rate the universe is running down" so that he can determine time that the universe will end.
One of the two other characters... (more) |
|
|
A Very Good Year (1984) |
|
| Jack C. Haldeman (II) |
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
The Zero Theorem (2013) |
|
| Pat Rushin (screenplay) / Terry Gilliam (director) |
|
Qohen Leth corrects people who call him a number cruncher: he's an entity cruncher. Even though he is very good at his job, processing data in the office at his company's famous cube-based computer terminals,... (more) |
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