MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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The Martian (2014)
Andy Weir
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An astronaut is stranded alone on Mars and must figure out how to survive until he can be rescued.

My wife and I both loved this "hard SF" novel (soon to be a movie). But, we disagreed about whether it was mathematical fiction. I read it without even considering adding it to this database and then passed it to her. When she read it, she noted that the protagonist had to do lots of calculations to save his own life and wondered why it wasn't here.

So, I'm curious to know what you think. First, if you haven't read The Martian, you should. It is wonderful. Then, once you have, please write to let me know if you think it should be in this database. (Thanks!)

Contributed by Jack Lin

in "engineering the #*$! out of" surviving, protagonist does every one of Bishop 6's mathematical activities.

More information about this work can be found at www.amazon.com.
(Note: This is just one work of mathematical fiction from the list. To see the entire list or to see more works of mathematical fiction, return to the Homepage.)

Works Similar to The Martian
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. The Clockwork Rocket [Orthogonal Book One] by Greg Egan
  2. Return from the Stars by Stanislaw Lem
  3. The Infinite Tides by Christian Kiefer
  4. She is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick
  5. Eversion by Alastair Reynolds
  6. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  7. Exordia by Seth Dickson
  8. The Singularities by John Banville
  9. The Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar
  10. The Anomaly [L'Anomalie] by Hervé Le Tellier
Ratings for The Martian:
RatingsHave you seen/read this work of mathematical fiction? Then click here to enter your own votes on its mathematical content and literary quality or send me comments to post on this Webpage.
Mathematical Content:
2/5 (2 votes)
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Literary Quality:
4.25/5 (4 votes)
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Categories:
GenreScience Fiction,
MotifMath as Beautiful/Exciting/Useful,
TopicReal Mathematics,
MediumNovels,

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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)