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Ask HN: Books that blend math and fiction

38 points by sonabinu ↗ HN
Just finished 'The Housekeeper and the Professor'by Yoko Ogawa. A really nice blend of fiction and mathematics, especially Number Theory. Loved it for it's ease of read, sensitive writing and the math. My favorite line in the book, a thought stream on whether to have a formula explained or discovered by oneself '... but I felt that I would have a much deeper understanding if I struggled it alone for a while'. I am looking to read more books like this one. Any recommendations?

22 comments

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jki275
Cryptonomicon, Anathem.
philipkiely
It's not nearly so academic (in fact, it's for middle-grade readers) but Brandon Sanderson's The Rithmatist bases its magic system on a unique take on some foundational geometric principles.
ex3xu
I personally feel that there are so many interesting true stories in mathematics and physics that I would point you towards nonfiction stuff like Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh, the Logicomix graphic novel about Bertrand Russell, or any of the lauded biographies on Turing, Noether, Erdos, Ramanujan, Riemann, Perelman, Feynman, the list goes on and on.

If you are sure you want to read some fiction, you can try the Quantum Thief series, Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem series, or the Goodreads shelf on "Math Fiction": https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/math-fiction

qtplatypus
Can I suggest Gödel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Its more on the maths side but has many short stories in it.

Also if you are more into the physics side of mathematics you might enjoy Greg Egan who writes sci-fi with ideas like about what if the speed of light was promotional to frequency. He also recently published some new adavances in the field of super permutations.

ooo000
Try The Algebraist by Iain M Banks, The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse, Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson, Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis / Christos Papadimitriou (comic about Bertrand Russell)

There's a big list here with reviews: http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/

dannykwells
It's a play, but Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" is probably the best piece of fiction ever written about math, and honestly, probably the best piece of English literature written since Hamlet.
snicker7
Lewis Carrol, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, was a mathematician. His collection of short stories, A Tangled Tale, has a lot of math-related humor.
jonjacky
There was a burst of this in the 1950s and 1960s, inspired by interest in/anxiety about science and math prompted by Sputnik, the space race, and nuclear war. So these are period pieces but you still might enjoy them -- I did:

Fantasia Mathematica (1958) and The Mathematical Magpie (1962), two short story collections edited by Clifton Fadiman

Mathenauts (1967), short story collection edited by Rudy Rucker

The Space Child's Mother Goose (1958?), poetry

Come to think of it, A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L'Engle (1962) fits right in with this group. The math and cold war anxiety themes are stronger in the book than in the recent movie.

bhaskargr
Checkout books by S L Huang (slhuang.com), she combines math and action packed fiction
baruchel
The "The Infinite Assassin" short story in Greg Egan's Axiomatic is awesome. Some other short stories embed mathematical thoughts as their main plot, for instance "Dark integers".
chewxy
Measure theory showing up was a surprise.

On that note, also check out Dichronauts and the three Orthogonal books. Dichronauts ended terribly and I stopped reading Egan for a while after that book.

Come to think about it he doesn't really know how to end books.

mirihf
"Surreal Numbers" by Donald Knuth!
Joof
I am a strange loop.
unixhero
Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
srirangr
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott is a nice little book. Abbott blends planar geometry and reality brilliantly. For example, every planar geometry object is a member of the flatland and as the number of points grow in the figure it becomes more wise; Circle is the wisest of all. It's funny how he describes personality types using isosceles triangles, equilateral triangles, and squares. In fact, he calls himself a square.

Be warned for sexist ideas and satirical writing.

shoo
there's a splash of math in some of Georges Perec's works of fiction.

a fun literary example of a structure preserving transformation is the translation of Perec's "La Disparition" from the original french-without-the-letter-e to english-without-the-letter-e.

see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo

vulkd
Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" is worth reading. Some concepts erring heavily on the side of fiction ("Teglons"), others firmly rooted in reality.
kleer001
Most anything from Greg Egan.
pizza
Another recommendation for Greg Egan
2038AD
Closest I've read is Borges' Labyrinths