MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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The Ifth of Oofth (1957)
Walter Trevis
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Contributed by Vijay Fafat

[This] is a short, zany, tall-tale reminiscent of Heinlein's "And He Built A Crooked House". Someone ends up making a 3-dimensional, unfolded projection of a 5-dimensional hypercube, a Penteract. The object, when dropped accidentally on the floor, ends up becoming a 4-spatial-dimensional tesseract extending into Time, leading to slap-stick comedy on planetary scale. The penteract builder explains how the higher dimensional objects are made from lower dimensional ones (the author gets the number of cubes and tesseracts required to make a Penteract incorrect, using 64 cubes instead of 40 and mentioning that a Penteract has 8 tesseracts instead of 10). The "Ifth" and "Oofth" in the title refer to 2 spatial dimensions orthogonal to our 3-D (though only one of them ends up being used).

This classic science fiction story by the author of The Color of Money (yes, the straight fiction story that became a Paul Newman film) originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in 1957 and (at least at the moment) is available for free online here.

Available Free Online at MathFiction.net: "The Ifth of Oofth" is available as a PDF from Vijay Fafat and Prof. Mythili Vutukuru's MathFiction.net website.

More information about this work can be found at johnesimpson.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 Ifth of Oofth
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. And He Built a Crooked House by Robert A. Heinlein
  2. Tiger by the Tail by A.G. Nourse
  3. Left or Right by Martin Gardner
  4. Vanishing Point by C.C. Beck
  5. Star, Bright by Mark Clifton
  6. Project Flatty by Irving Cox Jr.
  7. The Moebius Room by Robert Donald Locke
  8. Blinding Shadows by Donald Wandrei
  9. The Einstein See-Saw by Miles J. Breuer
  10. Space Bender by Edward Rementer
Ratings for The Ifth of Oofth:
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:
1/5 (1 votes)
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Literary Quality:
3/5 (1 votes)
..

Categories:
GenreScience Fiction,
MotifHigher/Lower Dimensions,
TopicGeometry/Topology/Trigonometry,
MediumShort Stories, Available Free Online,

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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)