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Aleph Sub One (1948) |
 | Margaret St. Clair |
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This is a little known story by a well known author from the Golden Age of Science Fiction. The math content is high, and it's a good story, definitely belongs on your Mathematical Fiction page.
From... (more) |
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Alexander's Infinity (2021) |
 | Lidija Stankovikj |
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This novel describes the spiritual journey of "a middle-aged Scandinavian mathematician with a bent for the metaphysical" to India and Burma. I have not yet had a chance to read it, but the author has lived in India, Burma, and Sweden and holds a degree in mathematics, so she should at least know something about those aspects of the plot.
(more) |
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Apeirogon: A Novel (2020) |
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| Colum McCann |
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This novel with a mathematical title is based on the real lives of two peace activists, Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian and Rami Elhanan, an Israeli, both fathers of young daughters who died violently in... (more) |
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Art Thou Mathematics? (1978) |
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| Charles Mobbs |
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Short story (Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, October 1978 Vol. 98 No 10) concerning the very nature of mathematical discovery. It was later rewritten in the form of a play, which the author has... (more) |
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Been a long, long time (1970) |
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| 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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Beyond Infinity (2004) |
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| Gregory Benford |
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Cley is one of the few "original" humans left in a future where most of the characters are genetically enhanced. These engineered lifeforms, whether they are Supras (a highly advanced humanoid) or based... (more) |
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The Book of Alephs (2023) |
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| Inderjeet Mani |
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A writer becomes infatuated with the author of a book he is given by a bookseller. The bookseller says it is the ideal book for him personally since he is not like other people. He notices right away... (more) |
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The Book of Sand (1975) |
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| Jorge Luis Borges |
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"The line is made up of an infinite number of points;
the plane of an infinite number of lines;
the volume of an infinite number of planes;
the hypervolume of an infinite number of volumes.
.... (more) |
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The Brink of Infinity (1936) |
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| Stanley G. Weinbaum |
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A
mathematics professor is kidnapped by a madman with a grudge against
mathematicians, who threatens dire consequences unless the prof can
solve a math riddle he has concocted: by asking ten questions,... (more) |
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Cantor's War (1974) |
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| Christopher Anvil |
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In my opinion, this story is slanderous and the author should be ashamed.
The plot involves a science fiction scenario in which the human military is battling aliens in "tau space". Whenever we send... (more) |
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The Cat in Numberland (2006) |
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| Ivar Ekeland (author) / John O'Brien (illustrator) |
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This picture book uses the idea of a hotel with infintely many rooms for introducing some advanced concepts about numbers and infinity to children. The hotel, run in the book by "Mr. and Mrs. Hilbert",... (more) |
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A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel (2007) |
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| Gaurav Suri / Hartosh Singh Bal |
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The intertwined stories of Ravi, a Stanford student taking a course on "Infinity" in the 1980's, and his grandfather who was jailed for blasphemy in New Jersey in 1919 constitute a philosophical investigation... (more) |
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Continuums (2008) |
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| Robert Carr |
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The decisions we make and the difficulty in accepting the consequences is the main focus of this book about a Romanian mathematician who leaves her country and her daughter to be in a place that she could... (more) |
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The Countable (2011) |
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| Ken Liu |
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An autistic boy finds comfort in Cantor's discovery that the set of fractions is greatly outnumbered by the set of irrationals. (See, for example, Cantor's Diagonal Argument.)
I did not much enjoy... (more) |
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Crunch (2003) |
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| John Gould |
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A short story in which a man tries to explain to his son, Barry, the relative sizes of things when the child happens to ask, “How small is in-fin-ite-ly small?”. So father and son start exploring... (more) |
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A Disappearing Number (2007) |
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| Simon McBurney |
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Scenes of Srinivasa Ramanujan's collaboration with G.H. Hardy around the time of World War I are mixed in with modern storylines including an Indian physicist who has applied Ramanujan's work to String... (more) |
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The Discovery of Heaven (1992) |
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| Harry Mulisch |
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This novel is considered to be the magnum opus of one of the
greats of Dutch postwar literature. (Original Dutch title _De Ontdekking van de Hemel_,
English translation 1996, film version in 2001)
_The... (more) |
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The Exploration of Space (1972) |
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| Barrington J. Bayley |
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The author has used - as in some of his other stories like "The problem of Morley's Emission" - a story format to lay out some of his philosophical speculations, in this instance about the nature of... (more) |
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The Face of the Waters (1991) |
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| Robert Silverberg |
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The novel is set on a water-logged planet called “Hydros”, populated by artificial islands floating on a planet-spanning ocean. A few humans on one of the islands end up offending the local... (more) |
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The First Task of My Internship (2020) |
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| Ziyin Xiong |
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In this short piece (which is more of an extended joke than a story), the narrator is tasked with devising a method to literally fulfill The Olive Garden's promise of "unlimited breadsticks". Some of... (more) |
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FYI (1961) |
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| James Blish |
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This story contains a brief explanation of the transfinite cardinals
and their arithmetic as part of a scary bit of science fiction. Why,
you may ask (and the character in the story does), do the transfinite
cardinals... (more) |
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The Galactic Circle (1935) |
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| Jack Williamson |
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Prof. Thorn Jarvis, the Einstein-figure of the story, has built a ship called Infiniterra to undertake “possibly the greatest scientific expedition of history.”
This uranium-powered ship increases... (more) |
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The Gnome and the Pearl of Wisdom: A Fable (1977) |
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| Richard Willmott |
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A greedy gnome with a countably infinite collection of marbles wants to
trade it with Merlin the mathematician for his beautiful "pearl of
wisdom". Merlin takes advantage of the gnomes unfamiliarity... (more) |
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Hilbert's Hotel (1999) |
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| Ian Stewart |
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Another take on the idea (attributed to lectures by David Hilbert) that the bizarre properties of the countably infinite can best be presented through the analogy of a hotel. Here, Mr. and Mrs. Smith... (more) |
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The Infinite Assassin (1991) |
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| Greg Egan |
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Originally published in `Interzone #48', June 1991.
There are multiple realities. As the narrator puts it, `the number of
parallel worlds is uncountably infinite - infinite like the real numbers,
not... (more) |
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The Infinite Plane (1981) |
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| Paul J. Nahin |
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As a student, Richard Mackley discussed some philosophical aspects of the
mathematical abstraction of an infinite plane with his math
professor. For instance, they noted that the plane would look the... (more) |
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The Infinite Tides (2012) |
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| Christian Kiefer |
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A somber novel about an astronaut whose daughter dies tragically and wife leaves him while he is in space. Since he and his daughter were both mathematical prodigies, for whom math was not only a beloved... (more) |
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Infinities (2010) |
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| Vandana Singh |
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A nicely written story about Abdul Karim, a mathematics teacher at the local municipal school, set against the backdrop of the religious turmoil between Hindus and Muslims in India. I couldn't quite... (more) |
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Infinities (2002) |
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| John Barrow |
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This play, written by Cambridge cosmologist John Barrow, has been produced and performed in Italy (Milan and Valencia). It is made up of five separate vignettes several of which touch on the deep mathematics... (more) |
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The Infinities (2010) |
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| John Banville |
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As mathematician Adam Godley lies seemingly unconscious and dying in bed, his family and professional rival wander through his home.
The title is a reference to the computational anomalies in quantum... (more) |
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The Infinitive of Go (1980) |
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| John Brunner |
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John Brunner's novel, "The Infinitive of Go" is a story about teleporting devices based on a "posting" principle affecting living objects in the process of "posting" - the author describes it in terms... (more) |
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Kandelman's Krim: A Realistic Fantasy (1957) |
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| John Lighton Synge |
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Thanks for Tony Vance for pointing out to me that this novel by mathematical physicist J.L. Synge should be included in my database. It is difficult to find now, but it is clear that at the time of its... (more) |
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The Last Answer (1980) |
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| Isaac Asimov |
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Physicist Murray Templeton dies and is then surprised to find that he somehow still exists. Murray engages in a conversation with his Creator (who is bemused at being called `God'),... (more) |
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The Library of Babel (1941) |
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| Jorge Luis Borges |
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Years ago, I read The Library of Babel in a volume of collected short
stories by [Argentinian] Jorge Luis Borges, published under the title,
Labyrinths and translated from the [Spanish]. Like many... (more) |
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Logicomix (2008) |
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| Apostolos Doxiadis / Christos Papadimitriou |
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A graphic novel on the history of mathematical logic by the authors of Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture and Turing. In an interview (available online here) Papadimitriou says:
It is really... (more) |
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Long Division (2003) |
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| Michael Redhill |
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The title of this short story refers both to arithmetic, a beloved subject of the school age child at its center, and the separation that his mother feels from him and his father due to the child's extraordinary... (more) |
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Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers (2010) |
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| Pendred Noyce |
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This novel for middle school aged children seems at first rather similar to the Phantom Tollbooth, which was apparently a source of inspiration for its author. The plot is familiar: a boy and girl travel... (more) |
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The Lottery in Babylon [La lotería en Babilonia] (1941) |
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| Jorge Luis Borges |
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In what is clearly a metaphor for the apparent randomness of life (and the theological implications that follow), the great Argentinian writer Borges crafts a tale about the all important lottery in a... (more) |
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Math Girls (2007) |
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| Hiroshi Yuki |
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Three high school friends work through some difficult mathematical ideas in this book, recently translated into English from the Japanese original.
The author is apparently well known in Japan for his... (more) |
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The Measure of Eternity (2006) |
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| Sean McMullen |
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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) |
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Mister God, This is Anna (1985) |
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| Fynn |
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Though it is presented as if it were non-fiction, it is generally believed that this account concerning a very thoughtful six year old girl is a work of fiction. It is primarily about the girl's philosophy... (more) |
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The Monkey in Hilbert's Hotel (2019) |
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| K. B. Basant |
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This is yet another tale about a hotel to illustrate the mind-blowing properties of infinite cardinals. Like the others, which you can find listed below among the "similar works", this is only barely... (more) |
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Mortal Immortal (1833) |
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| Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley |
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This fantasy story by the author of Frankenstein, about a man who drinks a half dose of a potion that bestows immortality, is only borderline mathematical fiction. The only arguably mathematical part... (more) |
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Murder on the Einstein Express (2016) |
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| Harun Šiljak |
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An essay containing many interesting remarks and anecdotes about mathematics and mathematical physics presented in the form of a dialogue between a professor and students. Topics covered include entropy,... (more) |
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Nightscape: The Dreams of Devils (2012) |
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| David W. Edwards |
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A teenage math prodigy is contacted by other-worldly beings through his nightmares. As the separation between dream and reality seems to disappear, he faces a supernatural threat with the help of a religious... (more) |
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No Chance (2001) |
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| Guy Hasson |
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While playing poker, a math professor and a biology professor discuss the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, with the mathematician offering what he sees as a mathematical argument proving... (more) |
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Numberland (1987) |
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| George Weinberg |
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The co-author (with John Schumaker) of STATISTICS: AN
INTUITIVE APPROACH, and practicing psychotherapist, tells
a charming little fable about Numberland.
Peace, harmony,... (more) |
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Onto Infinity (2002) |
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| David Alex |
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A young mathematician and his older wife struggle to accept her fate as she slowly dies of cancer.
As you might guess since I maintain a website on mathematical fiction, I am not one of those who see... (more) |
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The Planck Dive (1998) |
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| Greg Egan |
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This short story describes a bizarre experiment in which researchers are cloned (quantum cloning, not the genetic kind; these researchers aren't "fleshers") and sent into a black hole. Their goal is to... (more) |
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PopCo (2004) |
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| 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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The Raven and the Writing Desk (2019) |
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| Ian T. Durham |
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In this work -- which is more of a Socratic dialogue utilizing characters from Lewis Carroll's fiction than it is a work of fiction itself -- the author explores philosophical questions regarding the existence... (more) |
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Ripples in the Dirac Sea (1988) |
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| Geoffrey A. Landis |
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A time machine story based on a combination of Hilbert's Hotel analogy and the "Fermi Sea". We read of the travels of the main character to the ancient past, to the San Francisco earthquake and to the... (more) |
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Shakespeare Predicted it All (2003) |
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| Dietmar Dath |
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An artistically composed piece about Georg Cantor, inventor of the theory of transfinite cardinals, in the form of a dialogue between the characters "1" and "2", both of whom are either Cantor or Hamlet.... (more) |
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The Third Party (2004) |
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| David Moles |
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Two conflicting groups of humans make contact with
a forgotten human world. One of the natives turns
out to be a brilliant mathematician, independently
discovering Cantor's diagonalization argument, and
is confused that a colleague considers it obvious.
This short story appeared in the September 2004 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. (more) |
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Touch the Water, Touch the Wind (1972) |
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| Amos Oz |
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Amos Oz, the famous Israeli author and political activist, wrote this mathematical, musical and mystical novel about a Holocaust survivor who proves a terribly important theorem about "infinity" while... (more) |
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Ultima lezione a Gottinga [Last lecture at Göttingen] (2009) |
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| Davide Osenda |
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This beautifully illustrated comic book presents a professor's last lecture to a (nearly) empty auditorium as the Nazi's begin to gather the city's Jews outside. It is perhaps a stretch to call this "fiction";... (more) |
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Uncle Georg's Attic (2002) |
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| Ben Schumacher |
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This short story appeared in the September 2002 issue of "Math Horizons",
published by the Mathematical Association of America. In it, some kids
look through an attic containing lots of stuff belonging... (more) |
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The Universal Library [Die Universalbibliothek] (1901) |
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| Kurd Lasswitz |
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This early "science fiction" story explores the notion of a library containing every possible five hundred page book and an English translation appears in the classic mathematical fiction collection Fantasia... (more) |
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A Universe of Sufficient Size (2019) |
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| Miriam Sved |
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It is only after the death of her father that an Australian sculptor learns that her mother was one of five Hungarian Jews mathematicians who worked on math research together in a public park as Hitler... (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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White Light, or What is Cantor's Continuum Problem? (1980) |
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| Rudy Rucker |
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I think the best description of this book is Naked Lunch
meets The Wild Numbers, with a cameo appearance by
Donald Duck's nephews. Happily, this book has recently been rereleased
(2001) in a new format... (more) |
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