Flatland

<p>Edwin A. Abbott's hallucinatory tale has captivated readers for more than a hundred years-including contemporary scientists such as Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking. In this mind-expanding satire <em>Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions </em>describes a two-dimensional world organized by strict caste system of geometrical forms. The narrator A. Square introduces us to Flatland before describing his revelatory explorations of Lineland a one-dimensional world and Pointland a world of no dimensions and the hitherto inconceivable three-dimensional world of Spaceland through which he is ushered by his Virgil-like guide Sphere. In Flatland Square is regarded as a heretic and imprisoned for his belief in the existence of a third and possibly even a fourth dimension.</p><p>Although it did not achieve popular success on its publication in 1884 <em>Flatland</em> gained a broad audience after the publication of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity which focused attention on the concept of a fourth dimension. The book enjoyed another renaissance with the advent of modern science fiction in the late 1930s and is now widely acknowledged as a pioneering work of mathematical fiction.</p><p>Includes the author's original illustrations and a short biography.</p>