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Ask Slashdot: Mathematical Fiction?

Posted by Soulskill on from the it-was-an-arbitrarily-lit-and-stormy-night dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Neal Stephenson's 1999 Cryptonomicon was a great yarn. It was also a thoroughly enjoyable (and too short) romp through some mathematics. Where can I find more of that? I should say that I don't want SF — at least none of the classic SF I read voraciously in the 70s; it's just not the same thing, and far too often just a puppet-theatre for an author's philosophical rant. Has any author managed to hit the same vein as Stephenson did? (Good non-fiction math-reads are also gratefully accepted. What have you got?)"

12 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. Tons of math fiction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/

  2. Greg Egan by Edward+Coffin · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try something by Greg Egan. His short story Glory (pdf) is online.

    1. Re:Greg Egan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Egan's latest, "Clockwork Rocket", is probably his most mathy work to date. It takes place in a different universe (dubbed "Orthogonal") with its own distinct physics: the speed of light is different for different colors; gravity is an inverse-linear force as opposed to inverse-square; and don't even ask what's going on at the subatomic level (are there even atoms in this universe? It's not quite clear this early in the trilogy...)

      Anyway, the book's got diagrams and everything, so if math and physics are your thing, you'll have lots of fun with this one.

    2. Re:Greg Egan by Beetle+B. · · Score: 3, Informative

      I second Greg Egan. For a taste, here's a free short story.

      --
      Beetle B.
  3. flatland by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    flatland, a romance of many dimensions;
    (http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/Flatland/)

    1. Re:flatland by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Informative

      flatland, a romance of many dimensions;
      (http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/Flatland/)

      Yes, recommended. I enjoyed it, although one has to look past the misogyny in its pages. (It was written in 1884.)

      I also recommend the 1965 novel Sphereland for those who would enjoy a sequel with a more non-Euclidian treatment.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  4. Flatland: A Romance Of Many Dimensions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well over a hundred years old and well ahead of it's time.

  5. Not fiction but... by Empiric · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...Tracy Kidder's Pulitzer winner -reads- like good fiction.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine

    In terms of "dramatizing math", I'd have to give it the nod even over Cryptonomicon.

    --
    ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
  6. on the non-fiction side by new+death+barbie · · Score: 5, Informative

    Godel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofsteder
    The Mind's I, co-edited by Douglas Hofsteder and Daniel Dennett
    One, Two, Three... Infinity by George Gamow
    Flatland, by Edwin Abbott Abbott (okay, this one is fiction)
    anything by Martin Gardner

    --

    It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.

  7. Re:Trying to remember by mdenham · · Score: 3, Informative

    That would be "Luminous", by... hey, Greg Egan again. Good story, if kind of short.

    If you want to stick in that general direction of things, BTW, the short story collection Dark Integers and Other Stories has that plus four other more or less loosely-related (I believe only one actually qualifies as a sequel to Luminous) stories. Probably your best bet for sticking to math-related fiction.

  8. Funny you should ask... by EPAstor · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's an excellent source of mathematical fiction... Alex Kasman's curated list of mathematical fiction! I highly recommend it.

    Also, a story I discovered through this list, which was truly spectacular: Ted Chiang's "Division by Zero". Freely available here.

  9. Re:The greatest one of all by Antipater · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's an interesting read despite its now-defeated viewpoint, kind of like watching The Battleship Potemkin or Triumph of the Will. It was an allegory ranting against the discipline of complex math, which had just recently been introduced. He was ridiculing the concept of imaginary numbers, which take you to a Wonderland where things grow and shrink in size randomly and other things disappear almost entirely (except their grin!).

    --
    Everything is better with chainsaws.