MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893)
Lewis Carroll
(click on names to see more mathematical fiction by the same author)
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The sequel to his somewhat popular book "Sylvie and Bruno" never achieved the popularity of the original. This lack of success may or may not be related to Chapter VII (entitled "Mein Herr") of the book in which (while sharing some tea) the characters discuss the production of a projective plane by gluing the boundary of a disk to the boundary of a Mobius strip.

Contributed by Moses Klein, University of Wisconsin

"The entertaining Klein bottle passage certainly isn't the only mathematical chapter in the book. There's also one exchange in which Bruno estimates a crowd of 1004 ("I'm sure about the four; it's the thousand I'm not sure about") which I occasionally cite to explain significant digits. This book is Lewis Carroll at his finest: subtly sophisticated, playfully presented, but undeservingly underappreciated."

(Thanks to Victor Jiminez Lopez for pointing out an error on this page that I have now hopefully successfully corrected and I will not repeat in order to avoid further embarrassing myself.)

More information about this work can be found at www.hoboes.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 Sylvie and Bruno Concluded
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. Euclid and His Modern Rivals by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll)
  2. The Raven and the Writing Desk by Ian T. Durham
  3. What the Tortoise Said to Achilles by Lewis Carroll
  4. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott
  5. A Tangled Tale by Lewis Carroll
  6. The Romance of Mathematics: Being the Original Researches of a Lady Professor of Girtham College... by Peter Hampson Ditchfield
  7. Sphereland: A Fantasy About Curved Spaces and an Expanding Universe by Dionys Burger
  8. Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy
  9. A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel by Gaurav Suri / Hartosh Singh Bal
  10. Perelman’s Refusal [Les Refus de Grigori Perelman] by Philippe Zaouati
Ratings for Sylvie and Bruno Concluded:
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:
2.66/5 (3 votes)
..
Literary Quality:
5/5 (3 votes)
.

Categories:
GenreDidactic,
MotifMobius Strip/Nonorientability,
TopicGeometry/Topology/Trigonometry,
MediumNovels, Available Free Online,

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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)