MathFiction: Fatous Staub (Christian Mähr)

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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Fatous Staub (1991)

Christian Mähr
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This surrealistic science fiction novel about parallel worlds, computers, and the mathematics of Pierre Fatou (who laid the foundations for the theory of fractals) has appeared only in German. Since I read German about as well as I can juggle knives with my toes, I can't say much about it. I'm hoping that others (like Hauke Reddmann who brought the book to my attention) will write in with more details. For instance, perhaps someone can tell me whether it would be correct to translate the title as "Fatou's Dust"?

Contributed by Hauke

In spite of your toe-juggling abilities the entry is correct. Too bad it's too long that I read the book, and the content was so confusing, so I decline to comment :-) "Fatou's Dust" is indeed the meaning. But with the rest of my memory, I'd say the book is more meant to be *structured* like a fractal than *about* (if you know "The Bridge" by Iain Banks, you know what I mean...).

More information about this work can be found at www.amazon.de.
(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 Fatous Staub

According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:

Perry Rhodan 2638: Zielpunkt Morpheus-System by Marc A. Herren
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (author) / Ken Liu (translator)
Signal to Noise by Eric S. Nylund
Chaos in Wonderland: Visual Adventures in a Fractal World by Clifford Pickover
Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling
Doing our Babbage by Ira Slobodien
Paradox by John Meaney
Bloom by Wil McCarthy
The Nature of Smoke by Anne Harris
Death Qualified: A Mystery of Chaos by Kate Willhelm

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Categories:

Genre	Science Fiction,
Motif
Topic	Computers/Cryptography, Chaos/Fractals,
Medium	Novels,

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Where are the new works of mathematical fiction?: As you can see from this chronological listing, this database includes many works of mathematical fiction for each year from 1990 to 2025. Strangely, only two are listed for 2026, so far. Either less mathematical fiction is being published than in previous years or I'm just having more trouble finding it. If you know of any works of fiction that should be added to this list, especially recently published ones, please let me know. (Keep in mind that I do not include self-published works or children's fiction that just covers elementary mathematical concepts.) Thanks!

(Maintained by Alex Kasman, College of Charleston)