Flatland

A Romance of Many Dimensions Princeton science library

by Edwin Abbott Abbott, Ian Stewart

trade paperback, 103 pages

English language

Published April 22, 1991 by Princeton University Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-691-02525-4
OCLC Number:: 22954745

(8 reviews)

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, though written in 1884, is still considered useful in thinking about multiple dimensions. It is also seen as a satirical depiction of Victorian society and its hierarchies. A square, who is a resident of the two-dimensional Flatland, dreams of the one-dimensional Lineland. He attempts to convince the monarch of Lineland of the possibility of another dimension, but the monarch cannot see outside the line. The square is then visited himself by a Sphere from three-dimensional Spaceland, who must show the square Spaceland before he can conceive it. As more dimensions enter the scene, the story's discussion of fixed thought and the kind of inhuman action which accompanies it intensifies.

108 editions

The Weaver Reads reviewed Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott (Penguin Science Fiction)

Goodreads Review of Flatland

3 stars

I read this book for the first time while I was in undergrad, and picked it up again after reading Death’s End by Liu Cixin. I think it was lost on me how much of the book is social criticism about Victorian England. The first half is an overview of what Flatland is like, and it’s obvious how rigid the social roles are, and how absurd and arbitrary their assignments are. The second half of the book explores Lineland, Flatland, Sphereland, and Pointland, and it’s here that we learn about the 3+1 visual dimensions (to humans).

The second half of the book is really quite interesting, but this short little text is a bit of a slog.

noisenerd reviewed Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott (Princeton science library)

Contender for "Greatest Book Ever"

5 stars

I'm perhaps being a little over-the-top there, but also not really. The way this book serves as political/societal satire while simultaneously teaching a fairly advanced mathematical concept in an entertaining and accessible way is masterful. The social commentary may be a bit less relevant than it was in its time, but sadly still isn't entirely irrelevant even now, and I think the geometry lesson is still one of the best explanations of the concept I've seen.