Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Flatland : A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott ISBN: 0-486-27263-X Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 21 September, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (111 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: A valuable read culturally, but a literary mediocrity
Comment: Sometimes you look at a book and shake your head. From what I've heard, they did that when this book came out in the late 19th century.
This book isn't science fiction in the classical sense; compared to A. K. Dewdney's Planiverse, the science in it is actually quite bad. It's more valuable as a cultural benchmark describing the class strictures of Victorian Britain in an unusual setting than anything else. Its overriding message of being open to different thinking, while admirable, is lost in the portrayal of a society whose strictures are not merely cultural but biological, rendering the point of the book somewhat vague at best.
It's interesting, yes. For the price of a Dover Thrift Classic edition, it's worth getting. But it's heavy-handed and lacking in any real sense of wonder such as you'd expect from a Jules Verne or Arthur Conan Doyle.
Rating: 4
Summary: It will stretch your imagination
Comment: I just finished reading "Flatland" by Edwin A. Abbott and I'm not entirely sure what to think. While this book challenges the imagination of the reader with the possibilities of any number of dimensions, I found the language of the book a bit harder to wade through. While only around 100 pages, I feel it took me a longer time to read it than a longer, modern fiction, as the language is a bit older, complete with whence, thou shalts, and so forth.
However, I still think this is a worthwhile read, as the ideas are still applicable, especially with modern physics and with string theory claiming that more dimensions do indeed exist. I encourage you to pick it up if you're at all interested in mathematical curiousities and having your knowledge of 3 dimensions pulled and twisted a bit. Also, the social structure of a two-dimensional society is extremely interesting.
The first part of the book describes the world of Flatland, a world restricted to two dimensions and the society contained therein. In this world, each human is a shape, and irregularity is highly condemned. Women are straight lines and the highest class of society is filled with circles, or many sided polygons. Our author is a square, who describes to us the ways of life in Flatland, from how to recognize each other (as every shape would appear as a straight line seen edge-on), to how the laws of nature grant that successive generations may gain a side, thus rising on the social ladder. Also, he tells of the history of Flatland, during the trying times of the "Universal Colour Bill" and the "Suppression of the Chromatic Sedition."
In the latter part of the book, our square friend tells us of his vision of Lineland, whose inhabitants are confined to one dimension. Sadly, he cannot convince the Lineland monarch of the existance of another dimension. The next day, however, he is visited by a sphere from Spaceland. Through much demonstration and persuasion, the Sphere finally convinces the square of the existence of a third dimension, by bringing him into it. Sadly, after the sphere departs, and the square is again restricted by Flatland, he is unable to convince his Flatland companions of this miraculous third dimension. He is sentenced to a life in prison, taunted by a knowledge of an extra spatial dimension, yet forbidden by his two-dimensional world from ever entering it again.
Rating: 5
Summary: "Something-which-you-do-not-as-yet-know"
Comment: Do not miscast this wonderful little book as being merely "sci-fi". Two-dimensional "worlds" exist within ours, if only in a somewhat pragmatic sense. If we imagine some "thing" intellective within such a world, then we have little difficulty seeing that our humble narrator, Mr. A. Square, might be such a world's most insightful oddball. The book is a classic exposition in basic geometry, but it is more than this. Abbott uses mathematics to make some very telling observations about human minds and psychologies.
Edwin Abbott (1838-1926) was a clergyman and a math geek. He was an educator, an expositor of English literature and New Testament studies, a notable headmaster, and the author of something like 40 books on widely varied themes. Today you will probably have a difficult time finding any of his other volumes, but Flatland is said to have never been out of print since it was first published in 1884.
No need to retell A. Square's big adventures here, other than this bit of dialog between our two-dimensional thinker and his three-dimensional visitor/teacher (Square is given to thoughts of still higher-dimensional worlds):
"SPHERE. But where is this land of Four Dimensions?
[A. Square]. I know not: but doubtless my Teacher knows.
SPHERE. Not I. There is no such land. The very idea of it is utterly inconceivable."
Abbott offers his allegory of physical and conceptual limits with an economy of word and thought that is nothing less than extraordinary. A great many volumes, five to ten times as large, conclude having said far less than this little parable. Read it. You will take from it what you are willing to take. If you find little or nothing here, you are indeed a citizen of Flatland.
 |
Title: Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So by Ian Stewart ISBN: 073820675X Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: 16 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension by Rudolf Rucker ISBN: 0486234002 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 June, 1977 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
 |
Title: The Annotated Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott, Ian Stewart ISBN: 0738205419 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: 04 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
 |
Title: Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics by Robert Gilmore ISBN: 0387914951 Publisher: Copernicus Books Pub. Date: August, 1995 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
 |
Title: Spaceland: A Novel of the Fourth Dimension by Rudy Rucker ISBN: 0765303671 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: July, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
