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Title: Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So by Ian Stewart ISBN: 0-7382-0675-X Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: 16 April, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (27 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An enjoyable sequel
Comment: This book is a sequel to Edwin Abbott's "Flatland" and makes its heroine a granddaughter of the hero of Abbott's book. Some people may find his playing with words excessive (his heroine is named "Victoria Line," combining the fact that she is literally a geometric "line" with the name of a subway line in London) but the book manages to cover a lot of territory in an amusing manner. I can't say I _learned_ a lot from the book, because I already knew most of its subject matter, but I'd certainly encourage someone who wanted to learn about curved spaces and higher dimensions to read it. The ultimate accolade: _After_ I had read it from cover to cover, I bought a copy, just so I'd have it in my own library.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Pleasing Guided Tour to Higher Dimensions
Comment: The heroine Vikki Line is a great-great-granddaughter of the narrator A. Square of Edwin Abbott's classic book, "Flatland." The teenaged Flatlander heroine goes to a tour to higher dimensional worlds guided by a Space Hopper. She visits the Fractal Forest, Topologica, Platterland, Cat Country, the Domain of Hawk King, etc., and learns, together with the reader, about many concepts of modern mathematics and physics. The author Ian Stewart, a winner of the Royal Society's Michael Faraday Medal for furthering the public understanding of science, writes the story in the style of "Alice in Wonderland" by using enjoyable wordplay and putting exotic and cute creatures he invented to familiarize the difficult concepts.
Some topics are treated in a manner to give the reader good understanding, but others are described only superficially. There are simple errors in giving a number for fractal dimension and describing the behavior of the decoherence time. (I leave it to the reader as exercises to spot them.) The author explains the particle nature of the photon by the uncommon use of the process of electron-impact photon emission, while the orthodox explanation uses the inverse process, i.e., the photoelectric effect.
In spite of these minor defects, this is a joyous read for holidays. The heroine is depicted as such a clever, adventurous and charming linear being (near the end of the story she comes to know that she is something superior to a line) that I think how I would have been happy if I had had a girlfriend like her in my youth. Her guide and tutor, the Space Hopper, often shows a big grin, reminding us of the popular physicist and good lecturer Richard Feynman. In the short last chapter, the reader feels it important that more of us, "Planiturthians," become aware of the possible ten-dimensional reality of our physical universe, which Vikki learned at the final stage of her tour. Thus, I would like to recommend this book to every curious mind.
Rating: 5
Summary: No Words to Describe It!
Comment: As a high school student, I was tortured into reading this book for Math Analysis. Having previously read Flatland, I was not keen on the idea of reading the sequel. My grade-conscious self got the better of me and I started to read the book. From the first chapter I was enthralled! Ian Stewart knew how to write and keep my attention. My parents had to threaten me so I would put it down so I could eat. (Imagine: a high schooler entranced in a MATH book!) I so totally recommend this book because I would have NEVER understood Mandelblot (er... Mandelbrot) nor would I have read on to discover a plethora of new dimensions (one and a quarter). I would recommend any person, avid mathematician or high schooler, to read this. It was easily understood and Ian Stewart is a fantastic writer! Too bad they didn't have ten stars!
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Title: Flatland : A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott ISBN: 048627263X Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 21 September, 1992 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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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 |
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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 |
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Title: Spaceland: A Novel of the Fourth Dimension by Rudy Rucker ISBN: 0765303671 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 04 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Planiverse: Computer Contact With a Two-Dimensional World by A. K. Dewdney ISBN: 0387989161 Publisher: Copernicus Books Pub. Date: September, 2000 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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