MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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The Life Impossible (2024)
Matt Haig
(click on names to see more mathematical fiction by the same author)
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In this novel, a retired math teacher goes to a remote island to investigate the mysterious death of her friend.

Since Matt Haig has another work listed in this database and because the blurb mentions "a retired math teacher", I suspected that "The Life Impossible" might be a work of mathematical fiction. I intended to obtain a copy and read it for myself eventually. Before I could, a frequent contributor to this website wrote to confirm that it is indeed mathematical fiction:

Contributed by Hauke Reddmann

I can dispel your concerns that there is not enough math in the Haig, I read it on the train this Silvester night.

I'm certainly not the right man to review a "psychological" novel, even if technically F/SF. What I can say is that he (or his protagonist) quotes a lot of math as mathaphers...Mattaphers...sorry, still in Silvester mode :-) I find them a bit forced occasionally (Fibonacci - Pi digits - Hilbert Hotel... the list is long) but must quote this absolute jewel:

(quoted from The Life Impossible)

There is no sin in geometry...

NO way the pun wasn't intended!

Haig (freely rephrasing from another book of him) apparently writes his books as self-therapy for not losing faith in mankind and the universe, and we all desperately need this in these times. I'd rate it as 3 (for me)/4 (literatic)/4 (math content).

Now having had a chance to read this novel, I completely agree. There certainly is a lot of mathematical content, at least by one measure. I tend to "dog ear" the pages in a work of mathematical fiction that refer to mathematics or stereotypes of mathematicians. Even without reading a word of the book, my wife was able to look over at me while I read it and say "Wow, there's a lot of math in that one!"

The reader is constantly being reminded that the protagonist is a retired math teacher. Personality traits, like her skepticism or the fact that she was always more serious than fun-loving, are attributed to it. Like many mathematical characters in fiction, she reflexively begins counting and computing when bad things happen. Moreover, she seems to think of nearly everything in terms of mathematical metaphors. Traveling abroad is like a term moved from one side of an equation to the other. Being granted super-powers by an alien entity is like Cantor discovering that there is more than one "size" of infinity. And so on.

The author makes a few mistakes in these mathematical references. For example, he misstates the significance of Hilbert's infinite hotel and implies that we know for a fact that every even number bigger than two is a sum of two primes. But, he gets more right than wrong. Hauke's quote from above is one of my favorites. Here it is in context:

(quoted from The Life Impossible)

To properly know mathematics is to know the only thing that can be assuredly known. Politics and sociology and history and psychology have facts you have to interpret. But in mathematics facts are just facts. There is no arguing. There is no left-wing or right-wing algebra. There is no sin in geometry and no guilt in trigonometry.

Moreover, Haig frequently tries to turn these mathematical observations into broad statements about the human condition. For example:

(quoted from The Life Impossible)

You may be aware of 'complexity science'. That hybrid of sciene and mathematics that tries to tackle the tricky stuff. Not rocket science Rocket science is pretty straightforward, which is why conventional mathematics is enough for most engineering problems. No, complexity science involves understanding - for instance - the mathematics of nature, the intricacy of organisms as they grow, of predicting the course of climate change, of how atoms interact. And there is a concept within complexity science that is literally called 'universality', which tell as that even within the complexity of life there are universal similarities and patterns across different systems. And so the real magic is a mathematical one. It is the one that doesn't posit simplicity and complexity against each other, but one which finds the truer order within the complexity. Within the mess. The beautiful, spiralling, entropic mess we call life.

How much you like this book may depend on how you react to those "deep" statements. I can imagine some fans of mathematical fiction (ironically, perhaps ones that are most like the protagonist) who would be completely turned off by all of this "cheap" philosophizing. As for myself, I appreciated the attempt but did not feel particularly enlightened in the end. Yet, I know from browsing reviews online that some readers find this book to be extremely illuminating. If you're someone who likes to read mathematical fiction and falls into that last category, then this could really be one of your favorite books! Please, give it a try and let me know what you think.

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 Life Impossible
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. The Humans: A Novel by Matt Haig
  2. An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender
  3. The Parrot's Theorem by Denis Guedj
  4. Exordia by Seth Dickson
  5. Contact by Carl Sagan
  6. Lift: The Rise of Mathe-Lingua-Musica by Ray Anderson
  7. The Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar
  8. Distances by Vandana Singh
  9. Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright
  10. Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier
Ratings for The Life Impossible:
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 (1 votes)
..
Literary Quality:
4/5 (1 votes)
..

Categories:
GenreScience Fiction,
MotifAliens, Female Mathematicians, Math Education,
Topic
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)