MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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Exordia (2024)
Seth Dickson
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Contributed by Gregory Cherlin

Seth Dickinson's Exordia (Jan 2024) takes as one of its central conceits the notion that the physical universe is an expression of mathematical reality, and has as one of its central characters a Chinese mathematician Li Aixue trying to understand the structure of an artifact appearing in Kurdistan and apparently able to amplify that process.

As such the book invokes quite a bit of mathematics and mathematical practice, as well as cosmology and the physics of black holes, alluded to only in passing in the New York Times review.

There is more in the review at The Crimson, from which the following is quoted:

While writing “Exordia,” Dickinson spoke with experts to implement physics and mathematics into the story, where concepts such as pink noise and Kolmogorov complexity feature prominently throughout.

“I had to talk to a mathematician. I would explain concepts I was trying to get at, and he would give me a sense, and I’d be like, this sounds beautiful. I don’t really know what it means,” Dickinson said. “But there’s a degree of reality to it that even a poet — I’m not a poet, but you know, a layperson — can understand.”

-Samantha H. Chung

He wants the prime numbers to serve somehow as a template - someone should have told him about the relation between the zeros of the zeta function and eigenvalues of random unitary matrices, as it would fit in neatly.

There's also a great deal about the politics of Kurdistan which, in spite of his disclaimers in the acknowledgements, he clearly has gone into fairly deeply.

(One notices, as one particular joke in the book falls flat, that the author has probably not heard the term "Lie group" pronounced. But generally he pulls off what he's aiming at.)

I am grateful to Gregory Cherlin for bringing this novel to my attention.

A key point of the plot is that the mathematician character, Li Aixue, is entirely dedicated to understanding the true nature of things. Many people I meet, upon learning that I am a mathematician, think it means that I am very interested in numbers, which is not the case. Like Li Aixue, it was my focus on truth that led me to this career. So, that is something I really appreciated about Exordia.

As noted above, the book also wants to suggest that the underlying nature of reality is mathematical, and that the laws of physics themselves are somehow connected to the distribution of prime numbers. But, I disagree with Gregory Cherlin's comment that "someone should have told [the author] about the relation between the zeros of the zeta function and eigenvalues of random unitary matrices". It seems clear to me that the author is aware of this and even refers to it a few times. (For example, I think that's what she is referring to when Aixue says "One of the strangest things in the world...is that the Riemann hypothesis...turns out to be useful for explaining the behavior of atomic nuclei in quantum theory.") But, that is not the main connection the book proposes between physics and the prime numbers. Instead, the idea he focuses on is that the distribution of the primes underlies the ubiquity of the 1/f (or "pink noise") probabilities in physical systems. Like the connection between the zeroes of the zeta function and eigenvalues of random matrices, this might just be a coincidence, but it is an intriguing one that real mathematicians have looked into.

The book also mentions lots of other advanced mathematical ideas, such as fractal geometry, the difference between Shannon and Kolmogorov's measures of complexity, the huge number TREE(3), a brief mention of the Collatz conjecture, symmetry breaking, the Lie group joke (which, as was pointed out above, seemingly is based on a mispronunciation of Sophus Lie's name), Noether's theorem (without mentioning her name), the Prime Number Theorem, etc.

And, the author is trying to tie together more than just math and physics. Ethical quandaries (like the "Trolley Problem") arise over and over again. And the book talks about souls and black holes and eternal punishment in hell and... If it really could have combined all of these interesting ideas into a coherent story, especially if it could have said something meaningful about them, that would indeed have been impressive. Early on, I was somewhat optimistic that Dickinson might be able to pull off that feat. However, unless I'm missing it, that isn't what happened. In the end, the book is a bit of a mess and -- for me, at least -- not at all satisfying.

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 Exordia
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. White Light, or What is Cantor's Continuum Problem? by Rudy Rucker
  2. The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas
  3. Mathematica by John Russell Fearn
  4. Doctor Who: The Turing Test by Paul Leonard
  5. The Mathenauts by Norman Kagan
  6. The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  7. Distances by Vandana Singh
  8. Dark as Day by Charles Sheffield
  9. The Clockwork Rocket [Orthogonal Book One] by Greg Egan
  10. The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
Ratings for Exordia:
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:
4/5 (2 votes)
..
Literary Quality:
4/5 (2 votes)
..

Categories:
GenreScience Fiction,
MotifCool/Heroic Mathematicians, Aliens, Female Mathematicians, Math as Beautiful/Exciting/Useful,
TopicAlgebra/Arithmetic/Number Theory, Mathematical Physics, Chaos/Fractals,
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)