Flatland

A Romance of Many Dimensions Penguin Science Fiction

by Edwin Abbott Abbott

Paperback, 160 pages

English language

Published June 4, 2020 by Penguin Books, Limited.

ISBN:: 978-0-241-44157-2

(7 reviews)

A work that still poses provocative questions about perception and reality, Flatland is a brilliant parody of Victorian society where all existence is limited to length and breadth - its inhabitants unable even to imagine a third dimension. The amiable narrator, A. Square, provides an overview of this fantastic world - its physics and metaphysics, its history, customs and religious beliefs. But when a strange visitor mysteriously appears and transports the incredulous Flatlander to the Land of Three Dimensions, his worldview is forever shattered.

Written more than a century ago, Flatland offers an extraordinary animation of dimension, geometry and physical space that continues to resonate in contemporary science.

58 editions

NullPotential reviewed Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott

The interesting bits are burried by the boring

3 stars

Firstly it can't be dismissed how prescient a concept the fourth dimension and the importance of time was when this book was penned. The idea would be nothing more than fantasy up until Abbott's final years, when some dude named Einstein wrote a theory. The parts of the book that center around the topic of dimensions and the separations between holds up nearly 1.5 centuries later.

Unfortunately, Abbott goes into great detail on the imagined lives and societies of the creatures in the first and second dimension as a commentary on the Victorian period.