By Adolf Neumann – http://www.portraitindex.de/documents/obj/33213645, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58320662
A Moebius band has only one side and one edge and it is the main feature of several rather bizarre short stories. It is such a strange entity yet it’s easy to put one together and it’s somewhat intriguing to hold one in your hand knowing that it has only one side and one edge. It was discovered and first analysed by the German mathematician and astronomer August Moebius (1790 to 1868). Why would I be interested in talking about Moebius bands? Why would anyone be interested? The answer is simple.
The existence of Moebius bands confirms that Mathematics can be intriguing and perplexing and delightful, and not just about number crunching. It was a demonstration that Mathematics is not about numbers. It’s about concepts and relationships. Arithmetic began thousands of years ago. It was mainly about numerical relationships. Geometry appeared a long time ago as well, initially being concerned with the numerical measurement of shapes. Algebra made an appearance and it was also quite numerical. Trigonometry came later, and it was about angles and the ratios between lines. Probability came along which was also numerical but in an entirely different way than Arithmetic or Algebra. Then, relatively recently, there was a paradigm shift and in the nineteenth century a brilliant man named Euler came along. Mathematical historians usually list him as one of the three greatest mathematicians who ever lived yet hardly anyone has heard of him. He was also probably the most stable and sane of the great mathematicians. He basically invented a new branch of Mathematics called Topology (which has the nickname Rubber Sheet Geometry). Numbers are far less important in Topology than in most other areas of Mathematics. It is about shapes and shape distortions, and it cares little about the lengths of lines and the degrees in an angle. To a topologist a coffee cup and a doughnut are identical since they are both three dimensional shapes containing one hole (assuming the cup has a standard handle). A Moebius band is a topological entity.
By McManus-Young Collection – Library of Congress, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2342684
Moebius bands are one of those things that are capable of surprising you. Magicians use them but call them Afghan bands. Working with one often leads to wonderful new insights. Have you ever been working on something difficult mathematically and counter intuitive and you suddenly have an insight and everything suddenly falls into place? It’s like an epiphany, and it is exhilarating (e.g. Cantor’s proof that some infinities are larger than others, or the finite population correction factor). Similarly, there are mathematical concepts which may be challenging at first but they are curious and curious and learning about them is exhilarating. The concepts underlying Moebius bands and Klein bottles, tesseracts and infinity paradoxes are great examples.
I took Mathematics in secondary school and loved it, even competing in the Junior and Senior Ontario wide Mathematics Competitions. I took Mathematics at university and still loved it. In secondary school I discovered a book called Fantasia Mathematica and I never looked back. The book included Mathematics in a new form, in literary form. Two of the stories were about Moebius bands. I have since used mathematical ideas like those behind Moebius bands with students at various age and ability levels. I have also used those ideas to demonstrate to some Math-hating students that Mathematics could be interesting. Recreational Mathematics, which includes Moebius bands, was also incredibly effective in motivating students to think mathematically. So, this post is very practical in some ways, but it also brings back some very pleasant memories.
The first story I’m going to talk about features a small child named Star who is extraordinarily bright and is eventually able to travel through time and teleport anywhere through the power of her mind. It turns out that the entire immense history of time itself, and thus the human race, is cyclical and it fits sort of fourth dimensionally onto an enormous Moebius band. What happens when Star finds a way to get off of the Moebius band? This is the first, and best, of four stories I’m going to talk about, all about Moebius bands. It is a continuation of my posts about amazing children (the other posts discussed The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham ( https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/08/04/they-cannot-tolerate-our-minds-the-midwich-cuckoos-likely-story-17/ ), Mimsy Were the Borogoves by Henry Kuttner ( https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/08/11/the-jabberwocks-secret-on-beyond-euclid-likely-story-18/ ), and It’s a GOOD Life by Jerome Bixby ( https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/08/18/its-a-very-good-story-mind-control-propaganda-and-education-likely-story-19/ ).
This is the twentieth in a series of posts about works of fiction which I have enjoyed and which focus on or include some fascinating aspect of mathematical interest. Everything from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes short story ‘The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual’ (1893) to the miniseries ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ (2020) will make an appearance. I will discuss each particular work, and reference some related works, and expand on the mathematical principles in question.
1. STAR, BRIGHT by Mark Clifton, published in 1952.
Single parent Pete Holmes notices his three year old daughter Star construct a Moebius band then stare at it for awhile as if she was analysing it. Three-year-olds don’t do that sort of thing and so Pete ponders the task that he faces – figuring out how to teach Star how to negotiate a world which he knows will be hostile to a very bright child. When she does go to school (it was compulsory – that was before the days of not uncommon home schooling) Star immediately learns how to hide her intelligence and manipulate others so Pete has nothing to worry about. Star is a phenomenally fast reader and Pete soon realizes she is also telepathic. She also starts referring to people as Brights (like her), Tweens (Pete is a Tween) and Stupids. Soon another Bright, Robert, moves in next door and Pete wonders whether Star had searched mentally for another Bright and had connected with Robert, and that somehow the two of them found a way to get Robert’s family to move in next door.
One day Star drops a coin and Pete sends it off to a friend, Jim, as a joke and Jim, realizing that the coin is four thousand years old and yet brand new, pays Pete a visit during which Jim and Pete witness Star and Robert disappear while playing hide and seek with a neighbour’s child. They discover that the two kids are time travelling. Pete talks with the children and they explain how they travel mentally and eventually Pete, who is a Tween, learns how to time travel mentally himself. They also tell Pete that if you travel far enough into the future you end up in the past. It turns out that time is not just an ordinary loop but a loop in the form of a Moebius band. In the far future the world is about to end and the few Brights living then can only escape by travelling to the distant past. It was the Brights that created the human race and our theories about primitive humanoid evolution are not correct.
By Tttrung – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=960446
However, once the Brights started things going in the distant past they disappeared and Star has deduced that they somehow found a way to get off of the Moebius band of time. One day Pete finds that the children have disappeared. From things that Star and Robert told him Pete realizes that teleportation is possible if you form a Klein bottle out of two Moebius bands and you can get off the band by using a cube, or possibly a tesseract, instead of a Moebius band. A Klein bottle is a bottle whose neck stretches into the fourth dimension which allows it to seem to intersect itself but it isn’t really since it is partially in a higher dimension. Felix Klein was the first to conceptualize and analyse such entities – I did an earlier post on stories featuring Klein bottles ( https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/05/26/nothing-to-see-here-likely-story-11/ ). A tesseract is the fourth dimensional counterpart of a cube, and in three dimensional space it has the appearance of a cube within a cube. By mentally taking the six distorted outer cubes of a tesseract and folding them in on one another so that every angle is a right angle, Pete also finds a way to get off the Moebius band. We never see Pete, Star or Robert again so we never find out what happens when you leave the Moebius band.
By The original uploader was Tomruen at English Wikipedia. – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Jalo using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4694970
Like some of the earlier stories about exceptional children, one point of this story is that as exceptional as some of these kids are cognitively they are still emotionally and psychologically just children with all the faults that children display. A three year old from one of these stories may be psychologically advanced for a three year old, so they are acting like a six year old but they are not able to act like adults. Fortunately Star in this story has respect for Pete because Pete respects her abilities, so though she is mischievous she is not at all like the monstrous Anthony in It’s A GOOD Life. Of course all the talk in this story about Moebius bands, Klein bottles and tesseracts is mathematically correct but time and the human race is not on a Moebius loop and getting off the Moebius band of time is meaningless. It is almost as if science fiction writers of the forties and fifties became aware of these fascinating entities and started incorporating them into their stories because they liked the concepts behind these things.
One important point this story makes is the idea that the world at large is often not kind to children who are different, particularly if they are bright, even more so if a bright child out-thinks a patronizing, condescending adult who, when push comes to shove, fights back, sometimes angrily and forcefully, when they mistakenly interpret a child’s superiority as an attack or a threat. Of course there are those children who are particularly bright who are full of themselves and they need to be diplomatically reined in, which can be done in a fair and effective way. An educational system, like the military, is set up non-democratically out of necessity. A good teacher is able to bring in some democratic elements and view teacher and student as non-confrontational since they have the common goal of preparing the student for a happy and productive life after leaving school. A good teacher should be able to manage a classroom with authority without resorting to blind submissiveness on the part of the students, and that sometimes involves a teacher owning up to errors or to lack of particular skills or bits of knowledge, and recognizing and acknowledging when a student in a particular instance knows better than the teacher. A secure teacher is able to handle such matters. Bright students have difficulties with life as much as average students, and that is something teachers and parents may sometimes forget. Some average adults, however, feel threatened by superior students particularly students who, because they are still maturing, may not always handle things diplomatically. That is not the fault of the student.
There is a wonderful scene in the story in which Star first attends nursery school when she turns four. This is the student who can speed read and understand material from an encyclopedia, and even read people’s minds. Imagine being a teacher and having a student who can read your thoughts. Pete is apprehensive but Star is more than equal to the task. When she returns home she takes a book of fairy tales down from the shelf and asks Pete to read it to her. He replies sardonically “Since when? Go read your own story.” and she replies “Children of my age do not read.” Then when Pete asked her how her first day in nursery school went she tells him that she tried to cut out paper dolls but the scissors kept slipping.” This is the child who a year earlier had used scissors and paper to construct a Moebius band. Pete, with a smile, explains that she shouldn’t overdo it, that four-year-olds should be able to cut out paper dolls. Star replies: “I guess that’s the hard part, isn’t it, Daddy – to know how much you ought to know?” Star goes on to say: “One of the Stupids showed me how to cut them out, so now that little girl likes me. She just took charge of me then and told the other kids they should like me too . . . I think I did right, after all.”
Another point at least worth making in passing, is that the story, published in 1952, is a story of its time at least when it comes to gender, as the following demonstrates:
1) When Robert is trying to explain to Pete how the future loops around to become the past again, he says: “There isn’t any future, Mr. Holmes. That’s what I keep telling Star, but she can’t reason – she’s just a girl.”
2) When Robert is writing out the names of the different stages of human development he writes “Cave Men, This Men, That Men, Mu Men, Atlantis Men, Egyptians, History Men, Us Now Men, Atom Men, Moon Men, Planet Men, Star Men”.
What was unusual at the time was when Henry Kuttner, in his story of extraordinary children, Mimsy Were the Borogoves, published in 1943, had Emma, who was younger than her brother Scott, had the superior abilities and was the mastermind behind the startling denouement of the tale. Similarly, John Wyndham, in his story of exceptional children, The Chrysalids, has the female character Petra have the strongest telepathic powers. Also, those who are seen to be exceptional in that story are Sophie, David, Petra, Rachel, Rosalind, Katherine, Sally, Michael and the woman from New Zealand.
2. A. BOTTS AND THE MOEBIUS STRIP by William Hazlett Upson published in 1945
This story is neither thoughtful nor mathematically profound but it is amusing. It also illustrates an unusual property of a Moebius band. It would help you understand the story if, before you read the story, you actually made your own Moebius band, though you can easily follow the story without doing so. As Botts explains to Henderson in the story, simply take a long thin strip of paper and bring the ends together. This gives you an ordinary loop. Take one of the ends and flip it over (give it a half twist) then join it to the other end. Now start at any point on the strip, place your pencil in the middle of the strip and start drawing a line down the middle of the strip, and you’ll soon find that, without going anywhere near an edge, by the time you return to your starting point you have traversed the entire single surface. If you were to go back to the original loop you started with and traced a line down the middle of one side the other side would have remained unmarked. Furthermore if you took scissors and cut along the line you drew along one side of that original loop, you’d end up with two loops, each the same length as the original but half as wide. Now go back to the Moebius strip and take your scissors again and cut along the line you drew down the middle. Of course once again you would get two loops, right? Well, actually, no. Try it and see what happens. This is what a Moebius band looks like:
By David Benbennick – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50359
In the story one Major Alexander Botts of the Australian Air Force during World War Two, finds himself on Mungomori Island with a group of badly wounded Australian soldiers. They need to be airlifted out as soon as possible so Botts unhappily needs to somehow find a bulldozer with tractor to build an airstrip. He manages to arrange to have the Earthworm Tractor Company drop a bulldozer with tractor onto the island using a new experimental giant parachute able to use with such heavy equipment so he is happy. The drop is made successfully but the tractor lands in a marshy area and ends up mired in a swamp and a second tractor is needed to get the first one out which drives Botts to despair. One Gilbert Henderson of the Earthworm Tractor Company then informs Botts that he is sending the newest model of their tractor and bulldozer with new safety devices to the island to demonstrate the new features so Botts is happy again.
The tractor and bulldozer arrive but the man in charge of it, Dixon, won’t release the equipment to Botts to build the airstrip. Dixon is there not just to demonstrate the safety features on the new models, but to inspect any Earthworm Tractor Company equipment already in place to make sure everything is running safely. The only other piece of Earthworm equipment on the island is a small diesel motor in a small house along with a pump in another house about nine metres away, with a ten centimetre belt running between the two houses. Inside the pump house there is no protection for the pulley or the belt which comes in one hole in the house and out another. Dixon, obsessed about safety, insists that the belt be painted red because, he explains, painting dangerous moving parts in a bright contrasting colour reduces the incidents of accidents. However, that can be done in a few hours and then he can hurry on to the next place on his safety inspection tour schedule to keep everyone safe. He’s already behind schedule so he’s not even going to give the promised safety demonstration of the new models because this location is unimportant. If he loans the tractor and bulldozer to Botts, he explains, it will delay his departure even further which will never do, even though the delay will save the lives of the Australian soldiers. Dixon insists that only one side of the belt be painted red for maximum safety. Botts is no longer happy.
Botts, knowing some mathematics however, has his people sneak out to the pump house, unlace the belt, give it a half-twist, and lace it up again, turning it into a large Moebius band. Since a Moebius band has only one side as soon as you start painting it, and continue painting without going over the edge “to the other side” you end up painting the entire surface because there is no “other side”. There’s only one edge as well. While Dixon is attempting the impossible Botts plans to secretly send Dixon’s tractor and bulldozer off to build the airstrip. Botts only asks Henderson to send a note to General Smith, Dixon’s boss, explaining the situation and ordering Dixon to let Botts have the temporary use of the tractor and bulldozer (which he will have already used, without Dixon’s knowledge or permission).
Henderson and Smith agree with Botts and the orders go out to Dixon to place the tractor at the disposal of Botts. Before the orders arrive, however, Botts has to make sure Dixon and his assistant, Humboldt, are kept busy long enough so the slow-moving tractor is able to be driven out of where it is being kept, and into the jungle out of sight of Dixon. Dixon keeps painting in one house while Humboldt keeps advancing the belt forward bit by bit from the other house. Finally Dixon is painting away when a section of the belt comes into sight already painted red and he thinks he’s done. But then as he finishes painting the belt on top he happens to look under the belt only to discover that the underside has also been painted red.
Dixon is furious, and he accuses Humboldt of painting the underside while Dixon was painting the top, never realizing that both top and bottom are part of the same side. The tractor is still in sight so Botts, in order to keep Dixon distracted, suggests that Dixon is now going to have to remove the paint from one side of the belt even though Botts knows that this is just as impossible as painting only one of two sides when there’s only one side. At any rate Dixon carefully goes about using gasoline and rags to remove the paint from the underside as Humboldt once again advances the belt bit by bit by hand. Of course Dixon, concentrating on the underside, never glances at the top side, and he gets to the end and suddenly realizes that the paint has also been removed from the top. Again he is livid and again accuses Humboldt of tricking him, and again Humboldt can show that he’s innocent. Dixon loses it, picks up a nearby blowtorch, it slips out of his hand and starts a fire. All three are rescued by a group of Australian soldiers nearby and are unscathed, the letter arrives saving Botts from any trouble Dixon might decide to send his way, but to this day Dixon never discovered what really happened.
By The original uploader was Tomruen at English Wikipedia. – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Jalo using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4694970
3. PAUL BUNYAN VERSUS THE CONVEYER BELT by William Hazlett Upson published in 1949
This second story by Upson is only three pages long but it does illustrate an amazing property of Moebius bands. Paul Bunyan has set up a conveyor belt 1.6 Kilometres long and ten centimetres wide to transport uranium out of a mine he has set up. After a bit the vein has extended so far into the mine that Bunyan needs a conveyor belt twice as long but it can be half as wide and still do the job. He had constructed the belt initially so that it was a Moebius band because that way there was wear equally on both the top and the bottom even though overall the belt only had one side. He orders his assistant Ford Fordsen to make a cut down the middle knowing that if you do that with a Moebius band instead of getting two belts you get one belt twice as long and half as wide, with two half-twists in it instead of one.
Just before Fordsen makes the cut Loud Mouth Johnson arrives. When Ford tells him he needs a conveyor belt twice as long and half as wide as this one so he’s going to cut it down the middle Johnson quickly bets him that he’ll just get two belts each the same length as the original and half as wide. Johnson doesn’t know that the belt is a Moebius band so he loses the bet. A while later Bunyan is getting less bulky material out of the mine so he needs a belt the same length as the one he now has but half the width. He starts to cut his belt down the middle, Johnson arrives again, and, based on what happened previously, Johnson makes another large bet that the belt this time, like last time, will, when cut, produce a belt twice as long, half as wide, with two twists in it. However, when you cut a Moebius band a second time you get two pieces linked together. Both times Paul Bunyan tried making his cuts on strips of paper first to confirm his predictions. Johnson should have done the same thing as Bunyan before betting but he didn’t, and lost a lot of money. That seems to be the moral of the story.
NEXT WEEK: Moebius Tales Part 2 of 2. What happens when a subway car, and the three hundred and fifty people on it, disappear when the subway system achieves infinite connectivity?
LIKELY STORIES already posted, ready or in the planning stage:
1. NORTH OF THE NORTH POLE – FLATLAND by Edwin A. Abbott (and other trans-dimensional stories from 1884 to 2017) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/03/03/north-of-the-north-pole-likely-story-1/
2. QUEEN VICTORIOUS – THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT – the 2020 Netflix miniseries (and other chess-related stories from 1624 to 2020) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/03/16/queen-victorious-likely-story-2/
3. ONCE UPON A TIME – THE TIME MACHINE by H.G.Wells (and other time travel stories from 1838 to 2018) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/03/24/once-upon-a-time-likely-story-3/
4. THE DYNAMICS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES – THE MUSGRAVE RITUAL by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an original Sherlock Holmes story https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/04/07/the-dynamics-of-sherlock-holmes-likely-story-4/
5. LOOKING THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS – THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS by Lewis Carroll (with its existential nihilism, death jokes, and its foreshadowing of quantum physics) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/04/14/looking-through-the-looking-glass-likely-story-5/
6. DANCE OF THE DEAD – THE PRISONER – the 1968 television enigma created by Patrick McGoohan https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/04/20/dance-of-the-dead-likely-story-6/
7. I FOUGHT THE LAW – INFLEXIBLE LOGIC by Russell Maloney, about monkeys typing (and other probability stories) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/04/28/i-fought-the-law-likely-story-7/
8. ALL YOU ZOMBIES by Robert Heinlein (a sixty-three year old trans story) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/05/04/all-you-zombies-likely-story-8/
9. UNSAFE HOUSE – – AND HE BUILT A CROOKED HOUSE by Robert Heinlein, and THE CAPTURED CROSS-SECTION by Miles J. Breuer (and other stories about the fourth dimension from 1887 to 1997) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/05/12/unsafe-house-likely-story-9/
10. ONSCREEN MATH – GOOD WILL HUNTING – the 1997 film starring Matt Damon and Robin Williams about an unusual Math genius (and other Math movies) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/05/19/onscreen-math-good-will-hunting-likely-story-10/
11. NOTHING TO SEE HERE – THE LAST MAGICIAN by Bruce Elliott (and other science fiction stories that are extreme, controversial and dangerous) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/05/26/nothing-to-see-here-likely-story-11/
12. CHILD’S PLAY – THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH by Norton Juster with its dozens of puns (and other mathematical children’s stories) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/06/02/childs-play-likely-story-12/
13. THE MATHEMATICAL IDEOLOGY OF DEATH (including ALL THE KING’S MEN by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and other stories about chess, political science and ethical philosophy) https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/06/09/the-mathematical-ideology-of-death-likely-story-13/
14. DOWN UNDER – ALICE IN WONDERLAND and its many manifestations ( https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/07/07/down-under-alice-in-wonderland-likely-story-14/
15. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE HUMAN RACE: NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR by George Orwell
16. GUIDE TO THE GUIDE TO THE GALAXY – Douglas Adams’ five part trilogy starting with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/07/21/guide-to-the-guide-to-the-galaxy-douglas-adams-likely-story-16/
17. THEY CANNOT TOLERATE OUR MINDS – THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS – A slow and ghastly invasion tale ( https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/08/04/they-cannot-tolerate-our-minds-the-midwich-cuckoos-likely-story-17/ )
18. THE JABBERWOCK’S SECRET – an extraordinary story about extraordinary children https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/08/11/the-jabberwocks-secret-on-beyond-euclid-likely-story-18/
19. IT’S A VERY GOOD STORY– a monstrous story about a monstrous child, a post about mind control, propaganda and education ( https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/08/11/the-jabberwocks-secret-on-beyond-euclid-likely-story-18/ )
20. MOEBIUS TALES PART 1– A set of stories that feature the mathematically famous Moebius Band which has only one side and one edge.
21. MOEBIUS TALES PART 2 – A set of stories that feature the mathematically famous Moebius Band which has only one side and one edge.
22. COUNTDOWN PART 1 – More likely stories, with mathematical elements, told in the form of songs, from Beethoven and the Eagles to Radiohead and Queen.
23. COUNTDOWN PART 2 – More likely stories, with mathematical elements, told in the form of songs, from Beethoven and the Eagles to Radiohead and Queen.
MUSIC TO YOUR EARS
A series of posts on the politics and culture, the history and structure of music. For example:
THE POLITICS OF ANTHEMS – from the Mexican Olympics’ Black Power salute to taking a knee.
MUSICAL FAMILIES – from the Jacksons to Oasis, and the offspring of Bach and The Beatles, and why sons take up the mantle but daughters rarely do.
THIRD STREAM MUSIC – from Gershwin to Jon Lord of Deep Purple.
MUSIC – RELIGIOUS AND ATHEISTIC – from Madonna to Randy Newman, Buddhist chants and Gospel energy.
And twenty-three other topics. So far.
These will cover new ground not covered in my earlier series of posts on POLITICAL MUSIC.
The best site I’ve come across that deals with literary Mathematics in general is this one, a database with over a thousand entries and a lot of good information with works from as recently as 2020:
http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/ I have not read every entry on the “works inspired by” lists so some may be mathematically interesting but of mediocre literary quality. If you’re thinking of trying any of the stories mentioned in any of these posts you might first check out the story’s entry on this site to get more details, and opinions, about the story. Other good sources of information:
1. Math Goes to the Movies by Burkard Polster and Marty Ross, 2012, is particularly comprehensive and detailed, with many photos and diagrams. For an even more comprehensive source of information on more than 800 films, take a look at the website the authors of this book have put together: https://www.qedcat.com/moviemath/index.html#3
2. Mathematics in Popular Culture edited by Jessica K. Sklar and Elizabeth S. Sklar.
3. The modern interest in mathematical literature started, most would agree, with a seminal work from 1958 which many still speak about with reverence. The book is called Fantasia Mathematica, with works by Plato, H.G.Wells, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and Lewis Carroll amongst others.
4. The 1962 sequel to Fantasia Mathematica was called The Mathematical Magpie, containing writing by Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Mark Twain, Stephen Leacock, Bertrand Russell, Lewis Carroll, Norton Juster and William Wordsworth, amongst others.
5. Imaginary Numbers is an anthology of mathematical stories, diversions, poems and musings edited by William Frucht, 1999. This contains works by Lewis Carroll, J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Stanislaw Lem, Connie Willis, William Gibson, Joe Haldeman and Yevgeny Zamyatin, amongst others.
6. Mathenauts: Tales of Mathematical Wonder, edited by Rudy Rucker, 1987. This contains works by Greg Bear, Ian Watson, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Martin Gardner and Robert Sheckley, amongst others.
According to The Kidd 