
Ask HN: Books that blend math and fiction - sonabinu
Just finished &#x27;The Housekeeper and the Professor&#x27;by Yoko Ogawa.  A really nice blend of fiction and mathematics, especially Number Theory. Loved it for it&#x27;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 &#x27;... but I felt that I would have a much deeper understanding if I struggled it alone for a while&#x27;. I am looking to read more books like this one. Any recommendations?
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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](https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/math-fiction)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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vulkd
Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" is worth reading. Some concepts erring heavily on
the side of fiction ("Teglons"), others firmly rooted in reality.

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jki275
Cryptonomicon, Anathem.

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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/](http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/)

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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.

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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.

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thorin
I seem to remember the man who loved only numbers had some puzzles in and it's
an interesting story about the mathematician Paul Erdos:

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Loved-Only-
Numbers/dp/18570...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Loved-Only-
Numbers/dp/1857028295)

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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.

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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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo)

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Joof
I am a strange loop.

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mirihf
"Surreal Numbers" by Donald Knuth!

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pizza
Another recommendation for Greg Egan

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bhaskargr
Checkout books by S L Huang (slhuang.com), she combines math and action packed
fiction

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2038AD
Closest I've read is Borges' Labyrinths

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unixhero
Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke

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kleer001
Most anything from Greg Egan.

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HNLurker2
Logicomix

A wrinkle in Time

