 |
The Ah of Life (2010) |
 | Banks Helfrich (Writer and Director) |
|
At the beginning of this film we see various stages in the life of Nigel. We see him as a high school student about to fail math due to lack of interest in the subject. We see him as an old man who enjoys... (more) |
|
 |
All Cry Chaos (2011) |
 | Leonard Rosen |
|
When a mathematician is killed in an explosion immediately before presenting his paper on the inevitability of a one-world economy to the World Trade Organization, the case falls to Interpol agent Henri... (more) |
|
|
Arcadia (2016) |
|
| Iain Pears |
|
As this clever novel is intentionally a hodge-podge of genres, it is a bit difficult to describe. It involves a British spy brought back from retirement in the 1960s to find a mole, a mathematician in... (more) |
|
|
Bellwether (1996) |
|
| Connie Willis |
|
A statistician studying the causes of fads and a chaos theorist studying the behavior of animals write a joint grant proposal for a project involving sheep. That may not sound like a winning book summary,... (more) |
|
|
Children of Dune (1976) |
|
| Frank Herbert |
|
This third novel in the "Dune" series (which was also made into a TV miniseries) contains a wonderful (but rather brief and not very significant) bit of fictional mathematics. The following quotation... (more) |
|
|
Contact (1985) |
|
| Carl Sagan |
|
This is a fantastic novel; don't skip it just because you saw the
movie. Mathematics plays an important role in the book, much more so
than in the film. In both, Ellie Arroway detects a message from... (more) |
|
|
Context (2005) |
|
| John Meaney |
|
This is the second book in the Nulapeiron Sequence by John Meaney. The protagonist is still Tom Corcorigan, who in the first novel rose from slavery to royalty in part because of his "logosophical" (read... (more) |
|
|
Dalrymple’s Equation (1956) |
|
| Paul Fairman |
|
A tall tale about an alien “from Arva Majoris [...] a planet in a galaxy beyond the conception of [humanity’s] most brilliant minds.” . He’s taken on the name, “Tennyson Dalrymple” and uses... (more) |
|
|
Dark Integers (2007) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
The ``cold war'' between this universe with our mathematical laws and a bordering universe with different ones (which began in "Luminous") heats up when the numerical experiments of a mathematical physicist... (more) |
|
|
De Impossibilitate Vitae and Prognoscendi (1971) |
|
| Stanislaw Lem |
|
This is a philosophical discourse (intended as a parody, but I swear
I've read serious papers that were very much like it) in which the
author argues that probablity theory makes no sense since it is... (more) |
|
|
Distress (1995) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
My friends and I are all in agreement on this one: this book starts
out great (at a mathematical physics conference where people are
talking about the latest theories of quantum gravity) but then it
degenerates... (more) |
|
|
Division by Zero (1991) |
|
| Ted Chiang |
|
Answers the question: what would happen if we found out that
mathematics is inconsistent? This is a great piece of
mathematical fiction. (Thanks to Frank Chess who pointed it out to
me.)
Renee... (more) |
|
|
Do the Math: A Novel of the Inevitable (2008) |
|
| Philip Persinger |
|
A math graduate student becomes an intern for a math professor famous for his `theory of inevitability' but ends up also helping his wife (an even more famous author of romance novels) write a book using... (more) |
|
|
Drode's Equations (1981) |
|
| Richard Grant |
|
When this story takes place, the fictional "Drode's Equations" have been
lost for so long that they have become practically mythological. And so
the historian protagonist is surprised to find them in... (more) |
|
|
Eifelheim (2006) |
|
| Michael Flynn |
|
In this award winning science fiction novel, Tom and Sharon have a lot in common. They share an apartment, both use sophisticated mathematics in their research, and both become completely obsessed with... (more) |
|
|
The Eighth Detective (2020) |
|
| Alex Pavesi |
|
Many years ago, math professor Grant McCallister published a paper mathematically analyzing the structure of murder mystery fiction. He even self-published a collection of short stories illustrating several... (more) |
|
|
Emmy's Time (2018) |
|
| Anthony Bonato |
|
The main story-line is quite reminiscent of the pulp era, with its aw-shucks use of "recently discovered temporal fields" and "earth is about to be destroyed unless one brilliant mathematician can solve... (more) |
|
|
Euclid Alone (1975) |
|
| William F. Orr |
|
An administrator in the math department of a major research institute
has to decide how to handle a paper which proves the inconsistency of
Euclidean geometry.
Math is definitely central to this... (more) |
|
|
The Exception (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
Written in the form of a dialogue between a man in a nursing home and his grandchild, this short story describes an undergraduate research project that produces a surprising answer to one of the most famous... (more) |
|
|
The Fairy Chessmen (1951) |
|
| Henry Kuttner |
|
A mathematician whose research involves a type of chess played with
variable rules ("fairy chess") is the only one able to solve an "equation
from the future" in which the constants are treated as variables... (more) |
|
|
Finity (1999) |
|
| John Barnes |
|
A madcap science fiction adventure involving much bouncing between alternate realities, with vague references to quantum physics and mathematics.
The narrator is an astronomer who has developed a mathematical... (more) |
|
|
|
|
The Four-Color Puzzle: Falling Off the Map (2013) |
|
| Lior Samson |
|
A math professor becomes intrigued with a high school student he meets at an online tutoring site when she presents him with what appears to be a short and very clever proof of the four-color theorem.... (more) |
|
|
Gallactic Alliance - Translight! (2009) |
|
| Doug Farren |
|
A human scientist invents a new branch of mathematics, "continuum calculus", as the basis for a stardrive. At one point, he compares his mathematical constructions with those of an alien species who have... (more) |
|
|
The Geometry of Narrative (1983) |
|
| Hilbert Schenck |
|
This story begins with a character who is a graduate student of English proposing to his professor a new geometric approach to literary analysis. As he points out, this has been used to some limited degree... (more) |
|
|
Getaway from Getawehi (1969) |
|
| Colin Kapp |
|
Colin Kapp has written a few stories which have some good, hard SF mixed up with highly tongue-in-cheek, believable flights of fancy. The present story is set on the single planet, Getawehi, of a rogue... (more) |
|
|
Glory (2007) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
The story talks about a xenomathematician's quest to understand hieroglyphic tablets on an alien planet containing the mathematical knowledge of an extinct civilization. The extinct aliens had apparently... (more) |
|
|
The God Equation (2007) |
|
| Michael A.R. Co |
|
The angel Azrael is ordered to kill a Philippine mathematician who is using the Internet to create a mathematical proof of the existence of God.
In this story, Azrael is presented as a hitman who kills... (more) |
|
|
His Master's Voice (1968) |
|
| Stanislaw Lem |
|
In this book, we follow the investigations of a team of scientists and mathematicians trying to figure out the meaning of an apparent "message" being sent through space. The novel is written with "tongue... (more) |
|
|
A Killer Theorem (2007) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
Mangum, P.I. returns in this mystery in which the unproven Gauss' Last Lemma is wielded as a murder weapon. Apparently, a certain approach to proving it is so enticing that merely showing it to mathematicians... (more) |
|
|
The Last Starship from Earth (1968) |
|
| John Boyd |
|
A mathematician named Haldane IV and a poet named Helix fall in love and try to learn the truth about the famous 19th century mathematician Fairweather I. Unfortunately, both of these things are against... (more) |
|
|
The Last Theorem (2008) |
|
| Arthur C. Clarke / Frederik Pohl |
|
Ranjit Subramanian, the protagonist in this science fiction novel, is a young Sri Lankan man who (re)discovers a short and elementary proof of Fermat's Last Theorem while enduring torture during an unjust... (more) |
|
|
Let's Consider Two Spherical Chickens (2016) |
|
| Tommaso Bolognesi |
|
Although it takes the form of a murder mystery, Bolognesi's "Let's Consider Two Spherical Chickens" really is more of an essay than a work of fiction. Like the other chapters from the collection in which... (more) |
|
|
The Lost Books of the Odyssey (2008) |
|
| Zachary Mason |
|
The introduction to this novel is a work of pseudo-scholarship, explaining how the chapters to follow were decoded by an NSA cryptographer with the help of the author. The intro contains references to... (more) |
|
|
Lucy and David and the God Equation (2011) |
|
| Alan McKenzie |
|
Lucy, a freshman at a Scottish University, and David, the graduate student who leads the problem sessions for her physics class, discuss the mathematical and philosophical implications of Gödel's First... (more) |
|
|
Luminous (1995) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
A truly wonderful story in which two math grad students discover that the things we consider to be "truths" in number theory are actually part of a dynamical system, subject to change over time and in... (more) |
|
|
Math is Murder (2012) |
|
| Robert C. Brigham / James B. Reed |
|
This is a murder mystery co-written by an emeritus math professor and a retired crime scene investigator. The victim was an egotistical and (almost unbelievably) unpleasant mathematics department chair... (more) |
|
|
Mathematicians in Love (2006) |
|
| Rudy Rucker |
|
Together, two math grad students who are both in love with the same girl prove a theorem which characterizes all dynamical systems (from the stock market to the motion of particles) in terms of objects... (more) |
|
|
Monster (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
A story about group theory, plagiarism, the untapped potential of a collaboration between mathematics and marketing, the bleak financial future of academia, and the Monster.
This story talks about... (more) |
|
|
Mother's Milk (2005) |
|
| Andrew Thomas Breslin |
|
Lawyer Cindy Kichlklug takes on the dairy industry (with the aid of a quirky mathematician) in this witty SF satire.
The "conspiracy theory" in the book is well put together. It tightly combines so... (more) |
|
|
Mulligan Stew (1979) |
|
| Gilbert Sorrentino |
|
An avant garde novel, or a parody of one, presented in the form of a collection of letters, notes, papers and other writings. Includes Cardano's formula, plus a full length parody of a mathematics research... (more) |
|
|
Murder, She Conjectured (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
A police psychologist attending a conference in Cambridge, England is pulled into an unsolved murder mystery by her mathematician boyfriend. An important theme of the story is the oppresive sexism that... (more) |
|
|
Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley (2016) |
|
| Danyl McLauchlan |
|
A semi-serious Lovecraftian novel set in New Zealand's Te Aro suburb featuring some mystical mathematicians (and questions of Platonism) in a central role.
This sequel to the Danyl McLauchlan's "Unspeakable... (more) |
|
|
Neverness (1988) |
|
| David Zindell |
|
"[In this book], the Order of Pilots tries to tackle the Continuum Hypothesis.
It's a long, strange, complex story, but it seems pretty certain that the
author
had some mathematical training. He tries... (more) |
|
|
Nymphomation (2000) |
|
| Jeff Noon |
|
A math professor's theory of ``nymphomation'' (described in the book as a way for numbers to mate) is used to develop a lottery game called "Domino Bones" that entirely takes over the city of Manchester,... (more) |
|
|
The Oxford Murders (2004) |
|
| Guillermo Martinez |
|
A young, Argentinian mathematician visiting the UK is drawn into a murder mystery when his landlord (a woman who had worked as a code breaker during World War II) is killed. A clue and the words "The... (more) |
|
|
Perry Rhodan 2638: Zielpunkt Morpheus-System (2012) |
|
| Marc A. Herren |
|
The long-running German science fiction series Perry Rhodan recently ran a contest whose winner, a certain Martin Felten, was included in issue number 2638 as a space actuary and inventor of a five-dimensional... (more) |
|
|
The Phantom Scientist [Le Chercher Phantôme] (2013) |
|
| Robin Cousin |
|
This graphic novel takes place at at "The Institute for the Study of Complex and Dynamic Systems", which facilitates interactions between researchers in different disciplines. Although none of the researchers... (more) |
|
|
Pop Quiz (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
An algebraic geometer is called in when messages from an alien spacecraft appear to be asking questions about projective varieties. Though it may at first appear to be another "mathematics as a common... (more) |
|
|
Proof by Induction (2021) |
|
| José Pablo Iriarte |
|
Paul Gifford is a waiting-for-tenure professor of mathematics at a university. His father, a professor-emiritus of mathematics at the same university has just passed away. This death has come at a very... (more) |
|
|
A Proof of God (2004) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
A mathematician is approached by a seemingly crazy old man who claims to have a proof of the existence of God, but later it seems that he might not be so crazy after all in this hilarious spoof from Adams'... (more) |
|
|
Psychohistorical Crisis (2001) |
|
| Donald Kingsbury |
|
In the far future, a group of "psychohistorians" controls the fate of humanity using the mathematical theory of "the founder" in this unauthorized "sequel" to Asimov's Foundation series. Kingsbury's lengthy... (more) |
|
|
Pure Math (1992) |
|
| John Timson |
|
A mildly funny and fairly predictable time travel story involving a stand-alone time loop created by information sent back in time. Jacob Appel is a “Nobel Laureate and the man acknowledged by nearly... (more) |
|
|
Return from the Stars (1961) |
|
| Stanislaw Lem |
|
This book contains some of the
most realistic sounding fictional mathematics I have ever read, as
well as some very high praise for mathematics (from a fictional
character). In this book, an astronaut... (more) |
|
|
Rites of Love and Math (2010) |
|
| Edward Frenkel / Reine Graves |
|
UC-Berkeley mathematical physicist Edward Frenkel wrote and stars in this short film about a mathematician who is determined to kill himself after he discovers the formula for love.
The film is inspired... (more) |
|
|
Rubicon Beach (1986) |
|
| Steve Erickson |
|
One of the three plot lines in this bizarre novel follows a mathematician who has made a (supposedly) horrific discovery.
Since there are no direct connections between the other two characters and the... (more) |
|
|
Schild's Ladder (2002) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
Far in the future, the mathematical theory of "quantum graph theory" is the theory of
physics. Unlike the current theories of relativity and quantum physics,
which are obviously approximations that... (more) |
|
|
The Singularities (2022) |
|
| John Banville |
|
This ambitious novel may be the capstone to the body of work by the critically acclaimed Irish author John Banville. The closing words suggest that it is a finale to his career. And a clever plot conceit... (more) |
|
|
|
|
Turbulence (2010) |
|
| Giles Foden |
|
A British meteorologist is stationed in Scotland during World War II not to simply run a weather station (which is his cover), but to get to know the brilliant Wallace Ryman and learn to use his mathematical... (more) |
|
|
Unreasonable Effectiveness (2003) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
"Unreasonable Effectiveness" reminds me of a classic Arthur C. Clarke style
short story. It has exactly enough mathematics done correctly and a twist that
boggles the mind at the end. To be fair... (more) |
|
|
The Wild Numbers (1998) |
|
| Philibert Schogt |
|
Most mathematicians dream of proving a terribly important result. In
this novel, mathematician Isaac Swift
thinks he has done just that: solved "Beauregard's Wild Number
Problem". But is his proof... (more) |
|
