A Matter of Degree

I write books.

(No, really? You don't say!)

But that wasn't always the plan. When I started out in college I had no idea what I wanted to do. I studied a whole bunch of math because I was good at it, and when the major I was hoping for fell through, the easiest alternative was to fall back on a math major. I didn't realize I wanted to be a writer until my senior year.

Sometimes I wonder: if I had known then what I know now, what would I have chosen to study?

So, just for fun, here's a (not very well thought out) guide to majoring in "I want to be a fantasy writer."

1. Take lots of English classes. Don't bother taking too many English classes. Unless they sound really interesting, like Beowulf. (Have I ever mentioned I've considered adopting a really ugly cat and naming it Grendel?) Instead, read a lot of fantasy in whatever free time you get.

2. Caveat: take lots of Linguistics. I only really understood English after I studied lots of other languages. (And I do love diagramming sentences. *sigh*)

3. Throw in a good bit of Anthropology. Roll a die to see which courses you get--you can hardly go wrong.

3a. Take an Anthropology of Music class. Music is a kind of magic, right? Decide you would rather be a musician. Drop everything, take piano lessons and become a composer.

3b. Take an Anthropology of Food class. (After all, people love reading long descriptions of every single meal your characters eat, down to the minute details of preparation.) Realize you'll probably be cooking for the rest of your life, so you might as well be good at it. Enroll in culinary school instead.

4. Take a Mythology class for inspiration. Add in some Military Science if you plan to have any warfare in your books.

5. Choose a track: Contemporary, Historical or Other-world Fantasy

5a. Contemporary. Take some introductory Biology, Chemistry and Astronomy. You can't break science with magic until you know how it works!

5b. Historical. Take a bunch of Medieval Studies classes. Come to the conclusion that there are enough Medieval Fantasy stories in the world, and that it was a rather brutish time period anyway. Take several History courses from multiple eras all over the world instead. You'll probably not hit on the one era you end up wanting to write about, but at least you'll know how to do research!

5c. Other-world. Take Economics. Geology. Political Science. Religion. A bit more Anthropology for good measure. Fight the disappointment that slowly dawns on you as you realize no world you design will ever be quite as real as the real world.

6. Add in some Psychology if you still have room for it.

7. Succumb to burn-out. Remember that you used to be so good at math. Wonder if you still might be able to make a career out of it somehow...

In retrospect, maybe my studies, unconventional as they were for a writer, set me along precisely the right path in the end.

Math Stories

Thinking about game theory on Monday got my mind whirling about math for the first time in a while. I've probably mentioned before that I was a math major in college. For a long, long time math was my greatest interest. I loved the logic of it and the fact that every problem always had a correct answer. I loved its elegance and I loved that mathematical truth could usually be known with certainty.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that math wasn't my final destination. Much as I still love it, I never regretted making the change to writing. But I've always found a lot of beauty in math, and since I know so many people don't see it I want to talk about math from a story perspective.

History

Ever hear of Evariste Galois? I won't be surprised if you haven't. He was a brilliant mathematician of the early 19^th century, but he died at a very early age after being wounded in a duel. The reasons for the duel aren't entirely clear, but evidence suggests it had something to do with a girl.

How about Carl Friedrich Gauss? There's a famous anecdote about Gauss as a young boy. His teacher asked him to find the sum of all whole numbers from 1 to 100, thinking the task would take a long time to complete. Within seconds Gauss had the answer.

Surely you've heard of Isaac Newton. But do you know about Gottfried Leibniz? Did you know there was a huge plagiarism scandal over which of the two men invented calculus? Today they are both credited with coming up with it simultaneously, but in the early 18^th century the question sparked a bitter controversy. (By the way, Leibniz's notation is the one we use today.)

The history of mathematics is full of quirky people and dramatic events, many of which are fascinating to study. And I bet I wouldn't have to search very hard to find a mathematical story worth telling. Why? Because despite the pure logic of mathematics, it was developed by very human people, and human stories are universal. So if you're ever looking for a new character idea, consider browsing through a list of famous mathematicians for inspiration.

Mystery

As a child one of my favorite mysteries was Fermat's Last Theorem. If you already know about it, forgive me for explaining to those who don't.

Everybody who has taken Geometry should be familiar with the Pythagorean Theorem: a² + b² = c², where a, b and c are the lengths of the sides of a right triangle (c being the hypotenuse).

So here's the question: what if you change the equation to aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ, where n is a whole number greater than 2? That is, if a, b and c aren't squared but are instead, say, cubed, or taken to the fourth power, can you ever find a solution to the equation?

Pierre de Fermat (a mathematician living in the first half of the 17^th century) said no. At his death, his son found the following written in a book and referring to the fact that the equation had no solution: “I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.”

But what was his proof? Nobody knows! It was never found. And for a few hundred years, nobody was able to prove that the theorem was true. Only within the past fifteen years did one man (Andrew Wiles) and a 100-page proof finally lay the question to rest.

But surely Fermat's proof wasn't 100 pages long! So did he really have a proof? And if he did, what was it? It's still a mystery!

And it's not the only mathematical mystery. So if you've got writer's block and you're looking for something new to stimulate your mind, try delving into a math mystery for a while.

Magic

You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but I'm still always amazed when I find that things in the real world come back to mathematics. There's something almost magical about how math just fits everywhere.

In fact, I wrote a story once about math and magic and music and the embodiments of Hope and Peace and other such ideas. I called it Fugue. It was a NaNoWriMo story and had almost no research, and a lot of the math was just hand waving because I didn't go through all of it rigorously, but it was a lot of fun and I liked the idea.

I already know what I'll be writing for the next couple years at least, but maybe some day in the future I'll work on another book with math in it. In the meantime, if you're looking for some interesting people to help you get rid of any lingering anger toward math, I'd point you in the direction of Martin Gardner and Vi Hart. They make math pretty irresistible.