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Imaginary Numbers
"With this delightful anthology, Frucht throws a bridge across the chasm separating the 'Two Cultures' of science and literature."--Booklist
"A marvelous colledtion of diverse talents and writing."--San Diego Union-Tribune
A wildly inventive treasury of the most artful words ever written about numbers. Mathematics and writing may seem to exist in opposite realms, but as William Frucht reveals, the world of numbers has always held a special fascination for men and women of letters. Imaginary Numbers displays the fruits of this cross-fertilization by collecting the best creative writing about mathematical topics from the past hundred years. In this engaging anthology, we can explore the many ways writers have played with mathematical ideas. Delve into the fourth dimension and infinity, into fantasy and philosophy with such masters as Lewis Carroll, Edwin Abbott Abbott, Philip K. Dick, Martin Gardner, and Alan Lightman. Revel in renowned tales by Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, cult classics such as Connie Willis's "The Schwartzschild Radius,"and lesser-known gems by such visionaries as William Gibson and A. K. Dewdney. For mathematical mavens and literary lions alike, Imaginary Numbers adds up to one fascinating read.
"A marvelous colledtion of diverse talents and writing."--San Diego Union-Tribune
A wildly inventive treasury of the most artful words ever written about numbers. Mathematics and writing may seem to exist in opposite realms, but as William Frucht reveals, the world of numbers has always held a special fascination for men and women of letters. Imaginary Numbers displays the fruits of this cross-fertilization by collecting the best creative writing about mathematical topics from the past hundred years. In this engaging anthology, we can explore the many ways writers have played with mathematical ideas. Delve into the fourth dimension and infinity, into fantasy and philosophy with such masters as Lewis Carroll, Edwin Abbott Abbott, Philip K. Dick, Martin Gardner, and Alan Lightman. Revel in renowned tales by Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, cult classics such as Connie Willis's "The Schwartzschild Radius,"and lesser-known gems by such visionaries as William Gibson and A. K. Dewdney. For mathematical mavens and literary lions alike, Imaginary Numbers adds up to one fascinating read.
352 pages, Paperback
First published September 28, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 10, 2019
I first picked up this book at my brilliant local library when I was about thirteen, and I was totally inspired. This is my third reading, and I found it dispiritingly male and pale (not a single non-white character or author as far as I can tell)
The Form of Space by Italo Calvino This sexist little piece is very eloquently, gracefully written, but repulsive in content. Rape culture is not Calvino's fault, but there is really no need to enthusiastically pitch in.
A New Golden Age by Rudy Rucker
This is pure intellectual snobbery, but apart from that is hugely likeable. It doesn't start off well and the dialogue feels lumpy, with too many characters for a short short story, but the idea of a math-player that you can plug into your brain to experience math directly is just too cool to resist, and Rucker's description illustrates it perfectly. I hope someone invents it.
A Serpent with Corners by Lewis Carroll This will amuse folks who pick this up hoping for logic puzzles to chew on. Abner Shimony's piece Resolution of the Paradox: A Philosophical Puppet Play, which features a lion who defies Zeno's logic, is in the same vein
How Kazir Won His Wife by Raymond Smulyan
This is about the 'Goodman principle' which tells you how to find things out in a situation where some people always lie and others always tell the truth, (geek moment: Sarah uses it in The Labyrinth!), but there is much talk around the topic. This tale is a good example of what the book is like in general: math-inspired subversive whimsical realism (has someone coined this genre?)
An extract from Einstein's Dreams made me really want to read the whole book - here Lightman imagines what the universe would be like if the arrow of time pointed in the opposite direction: the one in which disorder DECREASES. Another extract, from Hofstadter's GDB, about preludes to fugues, reminds me that I want to re-read that book as well
The Golden Man by Philip K Dick A longer piece that as always demonstrates Dick's genius-level talent for writing hauntingly believeable scifi. There is, I think, a critique here of illiberal institutional controls, yet its tension with fear is fully fleshed out, to the point where the terror takes over. I'm not buying the woman-blaming though...
The Morphology of the Kirkham Wreck by Hilbert Schenk is a unique piece, less whimsical realism than math-magical realism. It's protagonist reads as a typical lifeboat man, hardy and deeply experienced, to the point where his professional intuition seems like a preternatural ability, except in his case it actually is. I enjoyed the framing of the story from the point of view of 'time-users' watching Keeper Chase, an energy-user, doing his godlike tricks.
The Third Sally, or The Dragons of Probability by Stanislaw Lem bored me somewhat after the first few pages, but I think I was just being impatient - it is quite funny in a Terry Pratchett way. The same goes for the other Lem story in here, The Extraordinary Hotel, which is about set theory, and is more technical.
An extract from Flatland: Concerning Irregular Figures is extremely disturbing. I wonder if anyone has written a feminist analysis of Flatland, where all women are lines while men have different shapes depending on social class/occupation. In itself this is a kind of feminist comment on Victorian society... I've never been tempted to read Flatland but maybe I should. Clearly only men could be 'irregular' and therefore subject to the murderous eugenic policy here illustrated...
On Fiddib Har by A K Dewdney is an extract from The Planiverse, which imagines contact with a two-dimensional world through a youth who lives there, and is extremely clever and interesting to me. The illustrations are particularly delightful. It is quite technical and book length would probably bore, but a small dose is delicious.
The Church of the Fourth Dimension by Martin Gardner feels more real than fiction. I'm sort of surprised that Gardner imagined the whole thing - it makes sense! Nice that it has some knot tricks at the end. Fun.
Burning Chrome by William Gibson Most of these stories have no women in them at all. Where we do feature, we are invariably objects of the action and description rather than subjects. Here hacker Bobby, for whom women are 'talismans', is observed by his partner in crime Jack. Rikki, Bobby's current sexual partner, is the driving force of the story, yet she has no character, other than a desire to become a 'simstim' star, for which she will need to have her lovely brown eyes replaced with new ones able to literally film life from her point of view. The eyes she wants are blue, but Gibson offers no material for an analysis of why. Jack is in love with Rikki and thus resents Bobby's objectifying relationship to her, but his intervention in her favour consists of buying her a flight to Hollywood to pursue her dreams
While I'm on the feminist line of attack, Fritz Leiber's story Gonna Roll the Bones is particularly grotesquely sexist. Oppressed by his mother and abused (by him) wife, the protagonist heads out to gamble, where slim, naked young women serve and are delighted to be groped. Sample: "The Big Gambler had just taken into his arms his prettiest evilest sporting girl and was running an aristocratic hand across her haunch with perfect gentility, when the poet chap, green-eyed from jealousy and lovesickness, came leaping forward like a wild cat and aimed a long gleaming dagger at the black satin back."
The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges was my favourite story on first reading and it retains its ponderous and ponderable pleasure, but by this point I am wondering why none of the authors yet featured have been women (with the possible exception of Wislawa Szymborska who contributed a poem - must check gender!) and can't help but notice that the Library contains no women at all. Presumably the men spring fully formed from the bookshelves without the messy business of birthing...
Ah here we are! Connie Willis' tale Schwarzchild Radius breaks the mold with a very literary reflection on the weirdness of war and relativistic physics. Now my favourite piece in the collection. I must find more of Willis' work.
Siv Cedering's poem Letter from Caroline Herschel is great - I think I saw it before in Dark Matter? Anyway, it's a tribute to 'my long, lost sisters, forgotten/in the books that record/our science - Agnice of Thessaly, Hyptia, Hildegard, Catherina Hervelius, Maria Agnesi...
Then there is an extract from We by Yevgeny Zamyatin which is a very good book in my opinion, and finally a J G Ballard story The Garden of Time which as Frucht writes in his introduction, is very evocative, reeking of nostalgia for decadent days. The final description of the approaching army is painfully vivid. But isn't this fear of barbarian hoards from whom one cannot protect one's charming, frail wife a sort of... elitist white supremacist parable?
The Form of Space by Italo Calvino This sexist little piece is very eloquently, gracefully written, but repulsive in content. Rape culture is not Calvino's fault, but there is really no need to enthusiastically pitch in.
A New Golden Age by Rudy Rucker
This is pure intellectual snobbery, but apart from that is hugely likeable. It doesn't start off well and the dialogue feels lumpy, with too many characters for a short short story, but the idea of a math-player that you can plug into your brain to experience math directly is just too cool to resist, and Rucker's description illustrates it perfectly. I hope someone invents it.
A Serpent with Corners by Lewis Carroll This will amuse folks who pick this up hoping for logic puzzles to chew on. Abner Shimony's piece Resolution of the Paradox: A Philosophical Puppet Play, which features a lion who defies Zeno's logic, is in the same vein
How Kazir Won His Wife by Raymond Smulyan
This is about the 'Goodman principle' which tells you how to find things out in a situation where some people always lie and others always tell the truth, (geek moment: Sarah uses it in The Labyrinth!), but there is much talk around the topic. This tale is a good example of what the book is like in general: math-inspired subversive whimsical realism (has someone coined this genre?)
An extract from Einstein's Dreams made me really want to read the whole book - here Lightman imagines what the universe would be like if the arrow of time pointed in the opposite direction: the one in which disorder DECREASES. Another extract, from Hofstadter's GDB, about preludes to fugues, reminds me that I want to re-read that book as well
The Golden Man by Philip K Dick A longer piece that as always demonstrates Dick's genius-level talent for writing hauntingly believeable scifi. There is, I think, a critique here of illiberal institutional controls, yet its tension with fear is fully fleshed out, to the point where the terror takes over. I'm not buying the woman-blaming though...
The Morphology of the Kirkham Wreck by Hilbert Schenk is a unique piece, less whimsical realism than math-magical realism. It's protagonist reads as a typical lifeboat man, hardy and deeply experienced, to the point where his professional intuition seems like a preternatural ability, except in his case it actually is. I enjoyed the framing of the story from the point of view of 'time-users' watching Keeper Chase, an energy-user, doing his godlike tricks.
The Third Sally, or The Dragons of Probability by Stanislaw Lem bored me somewhat after the first few pages, but I think I was just being impatient - it is quite funny in a Terry Pratchett way. The same goes for the other Lem story in here, The Extraordinary Hotel, which is about set theory, and is more technical.
An extract from Flatland: Concerning Irregular Figures is extremely disturbing. I wonder if anyone has written a feminist analysis of Flatland, where all women are lines while men have different shapes depending on social class/occupation. In itself this is a kind of feminist comment on Victorian society... I've never been tempted to read Flatland but maybe I should. Clearly only men could be 'irregular' and therefore subject to the murderous eugenic policy here illustrated...
On Fiddib Har by A K Dewdney is an extract from The Planiverse, which imagines contact with a two-dimensional world through a youth who lives there, and is extremely clever and interesting to me. The illustrations are particularly delightful. It is quite technical and book length would probably bore, but a small dose is delicious.
The Church of the Fourth Dimension by Martin Gardner feels more real than fiction. I'm sort of surprised that Gardner imagined the whole thing - it makes sense! Nice that it has some knot tricks at the end. Fun.
Burning Chrome by William Gibson Most of these stories have no women in them at all. Where we do feature, we are invariably objects of the action and description rather than subjects. Here hacker Bobby, for whom women are 'talismans', is observed by his partner in crime Jack. Rikki, Bobby's current sexual partner, is the driving force of the story, yet she has no character, other than a desire to become a 'simstim' star, for which she will need to have her lovely brown eyes replaced with new ones able to literally film life from her point of view. The eyes she wants are blue, but Gibson offers no material for an analysis of why. Jack is in love with Rikki and thus resents Bobby's objectifying relationship to her, but his intervention in her favour consists of buying her a flight to Hollywood to pursue her dreams
While I'm on the feminist line of attack, Fritz Leiber's story Gonna Roll the Bones is particularly grotesquely sexist. Oppressed by his mother and abused (by him) wife, the protagonist heads out to gamble, where slim, naked young women serve and are delighted to be groped. Sample: "The Big Gambler had just taken into his arms his prettiest evilest sporting girl and was running an aristocratic hand across her haunch with perfect gentility, when the poet chap, green-eyed from jealousy and lovesickness, came leaping forward like a wild cat and aimed a long gleaming dagger at the black satin back."
The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges was my favourite story on first reading and it retains its ponderous and ponderable pleasure, but by this point I am wondering why none of the authors yet featured have been women (with the possible exception of Wislawa Szymborska who contributed a poem - must check gender!) and can't help but notice that the Library contains no women at all. Presumably the men spring fully formed from the bookshelves without the messy business of birthing...
Ah here we are! Connie Willis' tale Schwarzchild Radius breaks the mold with a very literary reflection on the weirdness of war and relativistic physics. Now my favourite piece in the collection. I must find more of Willis' work.
Siv Cedering's poem Letter from Caroline Herschel is great - I think I saw it before in Dark Matter? Anyway, it's a tribute to 'my long, lost sisters, forgotten/in the books that record/our science - Agnice of Thessaly, Hyptia, Hildegard, Catherina Hervelius, Maria Agnesi...
Then there is an extract from We by Yevgeny Zamyatin which is a very good book in my opinion, and finally a J G Ballard story The Garden of Time which as Frucht writes in his introduction, is very evocative, reeking of nostalgia for decadent days. The final description of the approaching army is painfully vivid. But isn't this fear of barbarian hoards from whom one cannot protect one's charming, frail wife a sort of... elitist white supremacist parable?
August 15, 2022
A variety of short stories and poems with some relation to math. In the case of, for example, William Gibson's "Burning Chrome", the relation is pretty tenuous. In the case of Stanislaw Lem's "The Third Sally, or the Dragons of Probability", it was quite solid. Fritz Leiber's "Gonna Roll the Bones" was nice, and I suppose any story about gambling is somewhat related to math. I finally read Jorge Luis Borges' "The Library of Babel", and it was like meeting someone famous, I have heard so many references to it.
All in all, like any collection of works from many authors, it is nearly impossible for it to be great (see "reverting to the mean" for an explanation of why), but it was well worth my time.
All in all, like any collection of works from many authors, it is nearly impossible for it to be great (see "reverting to the mean" for an explanation of why), but it was well worth my time.
September 15, 2009
terrific stories drawn from science history and science fiction which cover a range of mathematical topics including time, dimension, optics, infinity, and so on- some terrific stories
July 26, 2017
Exceptional collection of math/science related fiction, but there were a few pieces I questioned being included in his anthology; however, in his introduction, Frucht explains his reasoning for including the writings he chose. I would especially recommend Philip K Dick's "The Golden Man" and Douglas Hofstadter's "Prelude" from An Eternal Golden Braid.
December 6, 2014
Quanto si parla di matematica in letteratura? Non tantissimo, purtroppo. Però se uno va a cercare bene ci sono parecchi racconti di tema matematico; alcuni di questi sono stati raccolti da William Frucht in questa antologia. Diciamolo subito: a volte Frucht ha barato. Nell'introduzione aveva detto che per quanto possibile avrebbe usato testi di autori non matematici di professione, sennò sarebbe stato troppo facile: ma nell'antologia troviamo un capitolo di The Planiverse di A.K. Dewdney e uno da Gödel, Escher, Bach di Douglas Hofstadter che tecnicamente sono saggi scientifici, anche se non matematici in senso stretto né di autori matematici in senso stretto. Però questa non è una pecca, di per sé, perché permette di avere uno sguardo più ampio sulla "letteratura matematica". Ci lamentiamo tanto delle due culture separate e poi non vogliamo metterle insieme quando ne abbiamo la possibilità?
Come ogni analogia che si rispetti, il libro contiene di tutto: prosa e poesia, fantascienza e letteratura "ufficiale", Nobel come la Szymborska e non-Nobel come Borges, e anche due autori italiani: Italo Calvino e Tommaso Landolfi, che è un po' buffo leggere in traduzione inglese; a proposito di traduzioni, ho scoperto il romanzo distopico del russo Evgenij Zemjatin "We", una delle fonti per 1984 di Orwell, e che fu pubblicato nella lingua originale più di sessant'anni dopo la sua stesura. Se siete abbastanza ferrati nella lingua di Albione,la raccolta è una lettura piacevole.
Come ogni analogia che si rispetti, il libro contiene di tutto: prosa e poesia, fantascienza e letteratura "ufficiale", Nobel come la Szymborska e non-Nobel come Borges, e anche due autori italiani: Italo Calvino e Tommaso Landolfi, che è un po' buffo leggere in traduzione inglese; a proposito di traduzioni, ho scoperto il romanzo distopico del russo Evgenij Zemjatin "We", una delle fonti per 1984 di Orwell, e che fu pubblicato nella lingua originale più di sessant'anni dopo la sua stesura. Se siete abbastanza ferrati nella lingua di Albione,la raccolta è una lettura piacevole.
October 20, 2020
This collection of 31 offerings of short stories, poems, metaphysical musings will leave you amused...and often confused! If you are familiar with the writings of Douglas Hofstadter you will find yourself on slightly familiar grounds. (One story is an excerpt from Hofstadter’s Pulitzer Prize winning Godel, Escher, and Bach).
The stories all have a common thread in mathematics, metaphysics, physics, and/or the time contemplation. The contributors include many well-known science fiction writers such as Philip K Dick, Stanislaw Lem, William Gibson, Fritz Leiber, Joe Halerman, Connie Willis, and J. G. Ballard. Also fantasy writers like Lewis Carrol and mathematicians like Martin Gardner. There is even a selection of poems written by Racter, an artificial intelligence computer program!
I must confess that I could not follow about 1/4 of these stories and many others had me googling many terms used. Overall, it is worth the read, although I can’t see myself ever wanting to re-read it.
The stories all have a common thread in mathematics, metaphysics, physics, and/or the time contemplation. The contributors include many well-known science fiction writers such as Philip K Dick, Stanislaw Lem, William Gibson, Fritz Leiber, Joe Halerman, Connie Willis, and J. G. Ballard. Also fantasy writers like Lewis Carrol and mathematicians like Martin Gardner. There is even a selection of poems written by Racter, an artificial intelligence computer program!
I must confess that I could not follow about 1/4 of these stories and many others had me googling many terms used. Overall, it is worth the read, although I can’t see myself ever wanting to re-read it.
November 16, 2021
Highlights:
A New Golden Age by Rudy Rucker.
The Dragons of Probability by Stanislaw Lem. Essentially hitchhikers guide 15 years before Adams. Absolutely amazing.
The Library of Babel by Borges. Obvious all time classic.
Schwartzschild Radius by Connie Willis. Maybe my favorite SF story written in the whole of the 80s. A masterpiece.
The Garden of Time by JG Ballard. Not sure it is on topic for this anthology, but an amazing story regardless.
Nb. Stanislaw Lem did not write The Extraordinary Hotel. It was Naum Vilenkin.
A New Golden Age by Rudy Rucker.
The Dragons of Probability by Stanislaw Lem. Essentially hitchhikers guide 15 years before Adams. Absolutely amazing.
The Library of Babel by Borges. Obvious all time classic.
Schwartzschild Radius by Connie Willis. Maybe my favorite SF story written in the whole of the 80s. A masterpiece.
The Garden of Time by JG Ballard. Not sure it is on topic for this anthology, but an amazing story regardless.
Nb. Stanislaw Lem did not write The Extraordinary Hotel. It was Naum Vilenkin.
January 11, 2012
This book is a collection of mathematically themed short stories. Some are good, some less so. Some are excerpts from longer works, which is not an editing choice that I would have followed. Frucht's introduction and acknowledgments are amusing insofar as he is unapologetic in his tastes and he openly admits that others deserve an editor credit, but he was unwilling to share any royalties.
my favorite quote: "I feel myself. But it’s only the eye with a lash in it, the swollen finger, the infected tooth that feels itself, is conscious of its own individual being. The healthy eye or finger or tooth doesn’t seem to exist. So it’s clear, isn’t it? Self‐consciousness is just a disease."
my favorite quote: "I feel myself. But it’s only the eye with a lash in it, the swollen finger, the infected tooth that feels itself, is conscious of its own individual being. The healthy eye or finger or tooth doesn’t seem to exist. So it’s clear, isn’t it? Self‐consciousness is just a disease."
November 26, 2012
Interesting overview of math anthologies.
December 31, 2021
Hit or miss on the short stories, but the collection as a whole was a worthwhile read. Some of my favorites were "Gonna Roll the Bones" and "Ten Weary, Foot-sore Travelers".
February 16, 2017
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14404959
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14404959
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews