Mathematics in science fiction

The three leading Mathematicians in contemporary American Science Fiction are:

1. 1. Professor Vernor Vinge – recently retired from teaching Mathematics in a major San Diego, California, university so as to write full-time;

1. 1. Professor Rudy Rucker – Ph.D. in Mathematical Logic; taught at San Jose State University, in the heart of Silicon Valley;

1. 1. Professor Jonathan Vos Post : also known as Your Humble Webmaster, in the 2nd semester as part-time professor of mathematics at Woodbury University, in Burbank, California; with a B.S. in Mathematical Logic from Caltech, and 4 Mathematics papers written in the first 4 weeks of 2004 and submitted to journals and international conferences.

There is plenty of Fantasy and Science Fiction about Mathematics, including:

1. 1. “Socrates and the Slave”, by Plato [date?] : Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “The Tachypomp”, by Edward Page Mitchell [18xx] : Originally published in a New York newspaper; arguably the first story ever about computer-enhanced human intelligence; idiot has what we would call a computer implanted in his skull, making him a genius; likely influenced the classic “Flowers for Algernon” and the botched film “Lawnmower Man”; Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “The Plattner Story”, by H.G. Wells [1896] : 4-D rotation makes 3-D object mirror-reversed;

1. 1. “Peter Learns Arithmetic”, by H.G. Wells [18xx]: Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “Young Archimedes”, by Aldous Huxley [1924]: Peasant prodigy discovered by couple vacationing in Italy; explicitly shows boy rediscovery of a theorem of Pythagoras; warning: tragic ending. Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “The Captured Cross-Section”, by Miles J. Breuer, M.D. [1929] : A multi-dimesnional geometry fiction, where the Mathematician hero has to save his mathematician finacee; starts with some Linear Algebra, and quickly moves to a 4-D creature manifesting in our 3-D world; Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica; has a sort of sequel by Greg Bear {to be done};

1. 1. “The Death of Archimedes”, by Karel Capek [19xx] : Historically, we think that Archimedes was killed by an ignorant Roman soldier. In this tale, the soldier knew very well who Archimedes was, and the murder stems from the great Mathematician refusing to work for the Roman Army, after some fascinating discussion about the use of Mathematics in military science. Karl Capek wrote the famous Science Fiction play “R.U.R.” which introduced the word “robot”, and the SF novel “War with the Newts.” Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “Jurgen Proves it by Mathematics”, by James Branch Cabell [19xx] : Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “A. Botts and the Mobius Strip”, by William Hazlett Upson [19xx] : Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “God and the Machine”, by Nigel Balchin [19xx] : Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “Misfit”, by by Robert A. Heinlein [1939] : math prodigy Libby;

1. 1. “And He Built a Crooked House–“, by Robert A. Heinlein [1940] : tesseract-projected-into-3D house folds into 4-D in California quake, with occupant inside; considered one of the most cited Mathematics story in modern fiction;

1. 1. “Inflexible Logic”, by Russell Maloney [1940] : Old theory that enough monkeys typing on enough typewriters would eventually type all the books in the British Museum. In this story, six chimpanzees are put at six typewriters, and start typing flawlessly. The Mathematician has to decide whether or not to intervene, to save the Laws of probability. Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “No-sided Professor”, by Martin Gardner [1946] : First published in Esquire. A Mobius strip is a strip of paper with a half-twist, that has only one side. Is there a way to keep going and get no sides? And what if you could fold a person that way? Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica; reprinted in Mathenauts; has a sequel “The Island of Five Colors”;

1. 1. “Wall of Darkness”, by Arthur C. Clarke [1949] : topological weirdness;

1. 1. “The Incomplete Enchanter”, by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt [1942] : in this novel, which had sequelae, a mathematical logic equation when read aloud as if a magical spell, is the key to travel to alternative universes, mostly ones inside what are fictions from our world;

1. 1. “Pythagoras and the Psychoanalyst”, by Arthur Koestler [19xx] : Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “Mother and the Decimal Point”, by Richard Llewellyn [19xx] : Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “Superiority”, by Arthur C. Clarke [19xx] : Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “Expedition”, by Fredric Brown [19xx] : Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “The Universal Library”, by Kur Lasswitz [19xx] : Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica; probably influenced Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Library of Babylon”;

1. 1. “Postscript to The Universal Library”, by Willy Ley [19xx] : Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “John Jones’s Dollar”, by Harry Stephen Keeler [19xx] : The power of Compound Interest; clearly influenced “Door into Summer” by Robert Heinlein, and “Age of the Pussyfoot” by Frederick Pohl. Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “A Subway Named Mobius”, by A. J. Deutch [1950] : Boston’s transit authority (MBTA) build a new train line, and the network becomes some complicated that train vanishes, disappearing into multidimensional network topology, or something like that. The math is not correct, but the story is fun. Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica; allegedly adapted to a movie;

1. 1. “The Mathematical Voodoo”, by H. Nearing, Jr. [1951] : a collection of short stories (not a novel as claimed on the cover) originally printed in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
      [Curtis Books, paperback, number 123-07051-075, cover price 75 cents, 224 pages; contains these stories among others: “The Mathematical Voodoo”, “The Hyperspeherical Basketball”, “The Factitious Pentangle”, “The Malignant Organ.” Cleanth Penn Ransom is the math Professor protagonist, although his name is obviously a composite of three famous poet/critics. Title story reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “The island of Five Colors”, by Martin Gardner [1952] : sequel to “The No-sided Professor.” Characters try to solve the Four Color Theorem in Topology (which has been solved recently by a computer-assisted proof that few people can follow).
      It gives a good summary of the Theorem, and then launches into a story about an imaginary African island divided into five simply-connected districts each of which borders the other four as well as the ocean. Professor Slapenarski is about to explain all, before he is kidnapped via a Klein Bottle by some sort of giant bug. Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “The Last Magician”, by Bruce Elliott [1952] : Magician with Klein Bottle baffles extraterrestrials. Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica;

1. 1. “FYI”, by James Blish [1953] : transfinite arithmetic;

1. 1. “The Devil and Simon Flagg”, by Arthur Porges [19xx] : A deal-with-the-devil story with a unique twist: the Devil is challenged to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem. By the story’s end, he and the human are collaborating with enthusiasm, to the disgust of the man’s wife. Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica; a short and somewhat different version was published under the title “The Devil a Mathematician Would Be”;

1. 1. “Fantasia Mathematica”, edited by Clifton Fadiman [1956] : essential anthology;

1. 1. “Occam’s Razor”, by David Duncan [1959] : explains Calculus of Variations;

1. 1. “The Mathematical Magpie”, edited by Clifton Fadiman [1962] : essential anthology;

1. 1. “Euclid Alone”, by William F. Orr [1975; in Orbit 16 anthology] : author is also a mathematician;

1. 1. “Sorority House”, by Frederick Pohl (19zz) ;

1. 1. various stories, by Norman Kagan [19zz] ;

1. 1. “Solid Geometry”, by Ian McEwan [1976] : sort of a sequel to “No-sided Professor” [1946]

1. 1. “Cosmos”, by Carl Sagan [19xx] : the novel (but not this film) has a particularly absurd subplot near the end, where the digits of “pi” are calculated to an immensely large distance, and a 2-D image of a circle appears, as if as the signature of God. This is absurd for several reasons, including: God has no reason to prefer Base 10; and Pi is Pi in any universe, regardless of the physics;

1. 1. “Mathenauts”, by Rudy Rucker [19zz] : anthology;

1. 1. various other books, by Rudy Rucker [19zz] ;

1. 1. “Kandelman’s Krim”, by J. L. Synge [19zz] ;

1. 1. “Luminous”, by Greg Egan [19zz]
   2. “Division by Zero”, by Ted Chiang [19zz]

;

1. 1. others

: {to be done}

There are also Fantastic or Science Fictional MOVIES about Mathematics,
most notably:

1. 1. “A Subway Named Mobius”, by A. J. Deutch [1950]

: Reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica; allegedly adapted for film;

1. 1. Goodwill Hunting [1997]

: Directed by Gus Van Sant; screenplay by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck; starring Robin Williams as Sean Maguire, a janitor at MIT who has a natural gift for Mathematics;

1. 1. Pi [1998]

: Kabbalists and Wall Street goons chase a mathematician who has been going insane while earching for a pattern in the digits of Pi; the actual Greek lower case letter for “pi” is the official title of the film;

1. 1. A Beautiful Mind [2001]

: Directed by Ron Howard; adapted to screenplay by Akiva Goldman from the book by Sylvia Nasar; starring Russell Crowe as John Forbes Nash, the brilliant Game Theorist who redirected Economics with his discoveries at Princeton, and then was captive of hallucinatory schizophrenia for decades;

1. 1. Hypercube [2003]

: sequel to “Cube”, where 4-D geometry and a kind of time travel complicate things for a motley assortment of people trapped in a Military Industrial Complex deadly super-secret project;

1. 1. others

: {to be done}

And there are movies that have fragments of Mathematics:

1. 1. Return of the Pink Panther

: in the Lugash National Museum, we see the Star of Lakshmi, also known as the Star Polygon {8/2} which the Hindus use to symbolize Ashtalakshmi (the 8 forms of wealth); this figure is also widely used in traditional Mexican art;

1. 1. Last Year in Marienbad [1961]

: as Margherita Barile points out, Alain Resnais’ film has two players in the Game of Nim, alternately taking counters from one of 4 heaps of 1, 3, 5, and 7 counters at the start, with the player winning who moves last;

1. 1. The Avengers [date?]

: Uma Thurman descends a Penrose Stairway, and ends where she began. A Penrose Stairway famously appears in M. C. Escher’s prints “Ascending and Descending” and “House of Stairs”;

1. 1. The Man Without a Face [1993]

: Mel Gibson (as Justin McLeod) demonstrates the Perpendicular Bisector Theorem to Nick Stahl (as Chuck Norstadt);

1. 1. It’s My Turn [1980]

: as Margherita Barile points out, The Snake Lemma is explained in the first scene of this film by Claudia Weill, starring Michael Douglas and Jill Clayburgh;

1. others : {to be done}

For illustrations of some of the above, see: Mathematics in Film

For some examples of Mathematical concepts in stories not promarily about math, see:
Mathematics in Literature

For a "geneology" of my teachers' teachers' teachers, including many of the most famous Mathematcians in History, see:
My Teachers' Teachers' Teachers

For a web page about the Mathematics of "The Four Nines Problem", see: The Four Nines Problem

I am not automatically assuming that all Computer Scientists are Mathematicians, although some are. Your Humble Webmaster is also in the Faculty Pool of the Computer Science Department of California State University, Los Angeles, but not teaching there this semester (state budget crisis). But there is a plethora of quasimathematical content in Computer-oriented Science Fiction: see the section on Cyberpunk in this web page.