So the author's work is largely legerdemain. It is work nonetheless to envision, make consistent, propose, reveal, control dynamically, and then exit gracefully from a constructed universe that is more rewarding than the fragments of reality we individually perceive. Every novel is in some sense a "Reality Reconfigured 2.0" simulation for our "thinking meat" brains to ingest
The very least we can derive from Hilbert is his insistence on defining a problem to be solved, whether with words or mathematics. If the proof of the fiction be incomplete, we will never judge the work as "whole."