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The Amber Shadows (2016) |
 | Lucy Ribchester |
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This is another thriller set at Bletchley Park during World War II. Many of the characters are described as mathematicians and Alan Turing is mentioned occasionally, but math is definitely not the center... (more) |
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The Atrocity Archives (2004) |
 | Charles Stross |
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"The Laundry" is a British spy organization which is responsible for suppressing certain dangerous math research. The occult implications of mathematics became clear with Alan Turing's paper "Phase Conjugate... (more) |
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The Auden Test (2016) |
|
| Lawrence Aronovitch
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A short play in which poet W.H. Auden delivers a speech in 1954 on the same day that he learns of the death of his friend, mathematician Alan Turing. Although they were contemporaries, I'm not aware of... (more) |
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Breaking the Code (1986) |
|
| Hugh Whitemore (playwright) |
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This biography of Alan Turing is a "character study" of this
fascinating mathematician. Although we do see some mathematics (including
an especially nice description of Gödel's Theorem and its mathematical
significance)... (more) |
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The Cambridge Quintet (1999) |
|
| John L. Casti |
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A group of famous historical figures, including Wittegenstein,
Schrödinger, J.B.S. Haldane, and Alan Turing meet at the home of
C.P. Snow to discuss the question of whether machines can think.
John... (more) |
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Cryptonomicon (1998) |
|
| Neal Stephenson |
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This "cult" novel of mathematics, computer science, espionage and
warfare follows a mathematician through World War II and his grandson
through the creation of a (less than ordinary) silicon valley start-up
company.... (more) |
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The Cypher Bureau (2018) |
|
| Eilidh McGinness |
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This work of historical fiction tells the story of Marian Rejewski, a Polish mathematician who used algebraic methods to break the Nazi Enigma code before the beginning of World War II. Most of the book... (more) |
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Doctor Who: The Turing Test (2000) |
|
| Paul Leonard |
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Mathematician Alan Turing appears as a primary character in this unusual Doctor Who novel, and narrates the first third of it. (The other two thirds are narrated by authors Graham Greene and Joseph Heller... (more) |
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Enigma (1995) |
|
| Robert Harris / Tom Stoppard |
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In this this espionage story set in England's Bletchley Park at the height of the Second World War, Tom Jericho is a clever mathematician at the famous code breaking facility who -- either despite or because... (more) |
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Factoring Humanity (1998) |
|
| Robert J. Sawyer |
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There is certainly a lot of deep mathematics discussed in this `first
contact' novel, as well as a good deal of controversial physics and
psychology. Still, in the end, I did not find it especially
satisfying.... (more) |
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The Fall of Man In Wilmslow (2009) |
|
| David Lagercrantz |
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Before he gained fame in the US as the Swedish author taking over the mystery series featuring the fictional heroine Lisbeth Sander, David Lagercrantz wrote this novel about the death of mathematician... (more) |
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Habitus (1998) |
|
| James Flint |
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There is no doubt that this novel is a work of mathematical fiction, but I'm not sure how to describe it. I think the best word for it may be "uneven". It does some great things, both presenting some... (more) |
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I Sin Every Number (2007) |
|
| Jason Earls |
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This is another work of experimental fiction from Jason Earls that combines some real computational number theory, some mathematical terminology used within nonsense for poetic effect, and a science fiction... (more) |
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The Imitation Game (2014) |
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| Morten Tyldum (director) / Graham Moore (screenplay) |
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This film about Alan Turing and his role in breaking the Nazi enigma code has been a critical and financial success. It has won numerous awards and brought huge crowds of people to see a movie about a... (more) |
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Lovesong of the Electric Bear (2005) |
|
| Snoo Wilson (playwright) |
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This play about Alan Turing, told from the point of view of Porgy, his teddy bear, was produced as part of the Summer 2005 season at the Potomac Theater Project in Maryland. Turing certainly had both... (more) |
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Machines Like Me (2019) |
|
| Ian McEwan |
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There are many ways to describe this book without mentioning mathematics: It is a romance between Charlie (a slacker who dabbles in day-trading) and Miranda (the law student who lives in the apartment... (more) |
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A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines (2006) |
|
| Janna Levin
|
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This novel about Alan Turing and Kurt Gödel contains much that has already been said many times before, and occasionally "tries too hard" artistically. Still I very much enjoyed reading it, and even... (more) |
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Mother's Milk (2005) |
|
| Andrew Thomas Breslin |
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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) |
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Murmur (2019) |
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| Will Eaves |
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A novel about a character whose story is clearly closely modeled on the life of Alan Turing. Like Turing, Alec Pryor is a British mathematician whose worldview is shaped by a childhood romance with a... (more) |
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Oracle (2000) |
|
| Greg Egan |
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The protagonist, Robert Stoney is a british mathematician who worked on German codes during WW II, was greatly affected by the death of a close friend, and was later persecuted for his homosexuality. ... (more) |
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PopCo (2004) |
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| Scarlett Thomas |
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Alice was raised by her grandparents, a mathematician and a cryptographer, and now uses what she learned from them to make mathematical puzzles for children. Her employer, the giant toy company "PopCo",... (more) |
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Sebastian (1968) |
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| David Greene (director) |
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A film about a British mathematician trying to break the German codes during World War II. (So, add this to the growing list of works of mathematical fiction inspired by Alan Turing!) I must admit that I have not yet seen the film, but you've got to love its tagline:
We can't tell you what he does (it's an international secret) but he does it with 100 girls... and does it the best!
(more) |
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Sekret Enigmy (1979) |
|
| Roman Wionczek
|
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Although Alan Turing tends to get much of the credit for breaking the Nazi "Enigma" codes during World War II, three Polish mathematicians did preliminary work that (depending on who you ask) either equally brilliant and important or even more so. This film tells their story, featuring some real acts of heroism.
(more) |
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Tangents (1986) |
|
| Greg Bear |
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There are far too many mathematical stories about finding a way to
travel into "other dimensions". Still, this one is one of my
favorites. Not only do we see a clever approach to this "old"
storyline,... (more) |
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Turing (A Novel About Computation) (2003) |
|
| Christos Papadimitriou |
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The four vertices of an unlikely love "rectangle" are (a) a dying, maverick cryptographer, (b) a pregnant Internet wiz, (c) a romantic middle-aged Greek archaeologist and (d) Turing, an artificially intelligent... (more) |
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The Turing Enigma (2011) |
|
| Peter Wild (Screenwriter and Director) |
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Maths professor Jonah Block finds himself in possession of a 50 year old postcard from Alan Turing over which people have been killed. He quickly realizes it is the (literal) key to decoding a series... (more) |
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The Turing Option (1992) |
|
| Harry Harrison / Marvin Minksy |
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A mathematical prodigy uses his expertise in artificial intelligence to repair his own brain after he is shot in the head in this novel by famed AI researcher Marvin Minsky together with science fiction... (more) |
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Turing's Apples (2008) |
|
| Stephen Baxter |
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Story about a far-away civilization transmitting a complex message in all directions, containing a software program (“Turing machine”) which ends up creating von Neumann machines with one... (more) |
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Turing's Delirium (2007) |
|
| Edmundo Paz Soldan |
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This is a hacker-counter-hacker story set in Bolivia, where the newly resurrected president hires an NSA official to set up the country's counter-espionage / cyber-security unit ("Black Chamber"). The... (more) |
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Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture (1992) |
|
| Apostolos Doxiadis |
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This novel, recently (2000) translated from Greek, follows the attempts of
fictional mathematician Petros Papachristos to prove Goldbach's
Conjecture (that every even number greater than two is the sum... (more) |
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The Weight of Numbers (2006) |
|
| Simon Ings |
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This is an ambitious novel which attempts to be as overwhelming as Pynchon, to deconstruct what it means to be human like Vonnegut and to tie together bits of history like Forrest Gump. For a few readers,... (more) |
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What Happened at Cambridge IV (1990) |
|
| David Langford |
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This is another BLIT story by David Langford; this time, a brilliant mathematician working on a neuro-mathematical model of the brain finds a type of visual input that doesn't just slow it down but causes... (more) |
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