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Summary: Incredible and amazingly provocative. A page turner!
Review: Abbott's imagination is just fantastic. And I say fantastic in the most realistic sense. He has so many amazing ideas and makes everything so believable, but also makes you consider the possibility of something, some world completely beyond your conception; completely beyond your reality. It's entertaining and interesting and left me turning page after page, not putting the book down. Anyone who would like a good, interesting book should check this out. It's great for everyone because not only is it a fabulously well-written imaginitave piece of literature, it's very short. Short enough to finish in a day as I did.
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Summary: Upward, not Northward
Review: A. Square is a rather exceptional member of Flatland, a world that only has two dimensions. He not only dreams about a one-dimensional world, but also dares to question the limitation of having only two dimensions. Being a polygon himself, he will never truly understand the magic of Spaceland, but his unbound imagination lets him travel beyond what others call their 'space'. When he finally succeeds in going "Upward, not Northward" he gets convinced that he has a message to give to the other members of Flatland. But will the others accept his prophecy?Flatland is a truly remarkable piece of literature. Not only makes is philosophy and mathematics accessible for the common reader, it also gives evidence of Abbott's visionary mind. Written in 1884 this book introduces the readers to concepts that will prove to become very 'hot' more than 100 years later. Mathematicians of today who have no theory about the number of dimensions are almost considered to be unfaithful to their science. This is simply a must-read for everybody who likes to fantasize about dimensions and what the world would look like if we could see beyond our known dimensions.
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Summary: A delightful sci-fi classic
Review: "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions," by Edwin A. Abbott, is a marvelous tale that I regard as a pioneering piece of science fiction. According to the introductory note in the Dover edition, Abbott was an English scholar and clergyman, and the book was first published under a pseudonym in 1884. The book is enhanced by the author's own delightful illustrations. "Flatland" is told in the first person by an intelligent square who lives in a fantastic two-dimensional world. He describes in fascinating detail his own world of Flatland, going into such topics as architecture, war, genetics, medical arts, law, and family values. Particularly fascinating is his account of his society's rigid stratification by class and gender. The square tells of his visions of zero- and one-dimensional worlds, and of his life-changing contact with the three-dimensional world. Abbott succeeds in a task attempted with varying success by generations of science fiction writers since him: he creates an alternate world which is utterly alien, yet disturbingly familiar--a world that is complete and consistently compelling. "Flatland" could certainly be read as a satire of Abbott's own world; parts of it are laugh-out-loud hilarious. Whimsical yet possessing a biting edge, this is a brilliantly conceived and wonderfully written book. For a companion text, try A.K. Dewdney's "The Planiverse" (also about contact between two- and three-dimensional worlds); also try Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" (an equally intriguing view of a stratified sci-fi culture).
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Summary: ahead of its time
Review: This is a must read for anyone. Its written simply for anyone to understand yet the underlying principles can inspire thought and contemplation on the ideas of relativity and perspective. On the surface this book explores dimensions but it provokes thought about perspective and encourages you to evaluate your own perspectives. You can get anywhere from mild amusement from this book to philosophical life changing perspectives. In detail, Flatland is a classic story about a two dimensional square that discovers the world of a line, a point, a sphere and beyond. The square contemplates his role in society as a square and realizes that there is something else out there when a sphere comes to visit.
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Summary: Relatively Little Mathematical Heft
Review: A whimsical introduction to the concepts of multidimensional mathematics, this book is very much the product of the 1880's Victorian era in which it was written. In a preface to the book entitled ``Limitations'', Isaac Asimov writes, ``This book, then, should lead us to question the limitations we set to our Universe generally, not only those that are mathematical and physical, but those that are sociological as well.'' Indeed, this book taught me more about the backward attitudes of Victorian society than it did about mathematics. It does a nice job of illustrating what it means to project, say, 4-dimensional space into 3 dimensions, by starting from physical concepts we can grasp, namely, the projection of 3-space into 2 dimensions. However, if you're already familiar with such concepts, there's not much else here to recommend this one. The anachronistic references are just too distracting.
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Summary: No depth
Review: The fantastical setting of Edwin A. Abbott's "Flatland" is one of the most curious in literature: a two-dimensional world in which all the inhabitants are sentient flat shapes which slide around on a plane with no knowledge or conception of a third dimension. However, the book's theme -- the importance of unimpeded scientific inquiry and the danger of denying the possibilities of infinity in all its forms -- is treated with the didacticism of a tendentious theological tract, leaving the reader, who probably was already well aware of the book's implications long before he even heard of the book, gasping for breath. We are introduced to the nature of Flatland by the narrator, a nameless Square, who describes his world as being populated primarily by regular polygons. A citizen's social and occupational status is in direct proportion to his number of sides, so those with so many sides that they approximate circles achieve the highest ranks. These circular elite are dubbed "priests" and rule Flatland apparently on a parliamentary model. At the other end of the spectrum are the Triangles, who constitute the working class. Even lower than the Triangles, however, are the simpleminded Lines -- and these are Flatland's women, useful only for procreation. It takes little imagination to guess what the irregular polygons represent. The Square's purpose in writing this report is to rejoice in his discovery of the (previously unimagined) third dimension, revealed to him by a helpful Sphere who visits from Spaceland. The Square, now in possession of arcane knowledge and an intuitive conviction of the existence of higher dimensions, assumes an evangelical role and ultimately emerges as a Promethean figure when he is imprisoned for the heretical act of preaching a third dimension. "Flatland" has been compared to "Alice in Wonderland" and "Gulliver's Travels," but I'd say there are clearer parallels to Huxley's "Brave New World" (in the classist regimentation of the Flatlanders' society) and Samuel Butler's "Erewhon" (in the Flatlanders' strange and limited belief system). The difference is that the aforementioned novels employ both irony to qualify as allegorical satires and narrative integrity to endure as pure fiction, whereas "Flatland" is so earnest in its delivery and so ineffectual in its impact, it feels like a pebble in an avalanche. Too obvious and elementary to be a scientific or mathematical essay, too obtuse to be a philosophical treatise, too moralistic to be a good example of a novel, "Flatland" misses its mark and slips silently through the cracks.
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Summary: Excellent mathematical analogy!
Review: This book is a great piece of very clear, very convicting prose, using well-explained mathematical analogies for classism, sexism, and close-mindedness. I think it's a great analogy for people's willingness to accept paradoxes and the possibility of a spiritual realm. It was written by a minister, so that's not so much of a surprise. I highly recommend this book! The mathematics are simply and not intimidating. Mind-opening.
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Summary: Neither a good math nor fiction book, but a passable hybrid
Review: What is there to say about Flatland? It is certainly a creative attempt at trying to familiarize people with the concepts of dimensionality. It is not nearly as enlightening as some reviewers have made it out to be, though there are a couple of great endearing ideas that will stick with you. Unfortunately, what starts off as a great book quickly becomes mired in tedium. Part of the tedium stems from the vast difference between 19th and 21st century cultures. Abbott works hard to describe a society for one-dimensional or two-dimensional beings based on his own Victorian era. Unfortunately it is written in such a way that the difference in values between our two eras adds confusion rather than enlightenment to the message of the book. We can't identify with the society, and that identification is crucial to the usefulness of the story. Second, there is entertaining fiction, and then there is ad-nauseum details which detract from the plot. His penchant for tangents (pun intended) reminded me of how boring the Iliad could be at points. The book receives an A for originality. As for simplifying weighty concepts and making the matter entertaining, it receives only a passing grade. It is so far entangled in a social scheme that is outdated as to detract from the overall enjoyment.
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Summary: A fascinating book in which the characters are shapes
Review: Flatland is one of the most interesting books I have ever read. The characters of the book are lines and geometric shapes. The main character lives in a two dimensional world, then is exposed to the third dimension. Returning to the second dimension, his heightened knowledge is marginalized. Overall, the book reminds me of Plato's allegory of the cave.
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Summary: There's more to life than meets the eye
Review: (...). The obvious is that it is a math-ish book, just as any book written in English is also an English language book. To me, using an imaginary world of 2 dimensions and a journey into 0,1,3 dimensional worlds the author is revealing to us a potentailly new way in which to look at our own life, the universe etc. Its less a mathematical book and more a philosophical/spiritual book. The author's background should be an additional pointer towards this conclusion. The message is that there is more to us and our life on earth than is commonly understood. That our perception of the universe need not limit it to just that in reality. The story itself is a highly interesting illustration of this fact using mathematical concepts. And the best part -- the author commendably stays away from actually expounding any theories or belief systems. For anyone interested in spirituality, this book will be mighty enjoyable.
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