This title tends to scare people, so please be reassured that there is no actual math in this fantasy novel. No numbers, no plus or minus, no funny symbols.
What I have done is to write a fantasy novel with some (I hope) interesting ideas about magic and magicians, based on the idea that there is a mathematics of magic. Out here in the real world, math works by abstraction: instead of adding two teacups to two other teacups, we make a general rule using numbers (2+2=4) that is so abstract that it can be used for two plus two of anything. The first thing that gets abstracted away in math is the mathematician. That is, once we’ve got a mathematical method, it works for anybody. But in the world of Weapon, the spells are mathematical expressions that only work for someone who understands them very thoroughly. If you want to be a magician, you start by studying mathematics.
This book is set in world that (again, I hope) you’ll find interesting if you have a taste for fantasy, and follows Hondoll, the King’s Magician, in a battle against two crazy cults of new gods, to fight for reason and rationality. Here’s the set-up:
It’s been said that when mathematicians discover a new series of numbers, the first thing they do is to give it an insulting name.
Negative numbers sound negative, but the Renaissance accountants could not keep books without them.
Irrational numbers are not irrational. They are just one more series of numbers, and a steam engine can’t be designed without them.
Imaginary numbers are not imaginary: the laws that govern electronic circuits are based on them.
In the middle of the 21st century, a mathematician named John Timothy Offand at UCLA discovered a new series he called commotic numbers, after a Latin root meaning “deranged.” Commotic numbers are, just like the other series, part of the laws of the physical world.
Offand did not fully understand, and could not control, what he had found. Civilization died in a wave of pain and force the survivors called the Sorcerer’s Deluge. The Age of Magic had begun.
I hope you’ll have a magical time with this book!
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I started out with a 5×8″ edition on Amazon, but then I discovered that Ingram would let me print it at mass-market size, 4.25 x 7″, which in God’s and my opinion is the only correct size for science fiction. (Nothing has changed in the story.)
The best way to get my book is to order it from your local bookstore, which gives me a little money, keeps them in business, shows that you are a cultured and perspicacious person and improves your chances of Heaven. (Of course, it’s expensive: my book doesn’t cost any more, but you’ll be irresistibly compelled to buy other books once you enter the bookstore, if you’re anything like me.)
You can order A Weapon of Mathematics from:
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/books/a-weapon-of-mathematics/9781090614407
Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-weapon-of-mathematics-charles-ott/1134229886?ean=9781737496700
Amazon print or Kindle edition:https://www.amazon.com/Weapon-Mathematics-Charles-Ott-ebook/dp/B07ZBN1S2B/ref=sr_1_3
Smashwords (ebook in any format, including .mobi for Kindle): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1019840