Flatland: A Romance Of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott (book review)
As Banesh Hoffman explains in the introduction, when ‘Flatland: A Romance Of Many Dimensions’ was first released in 1884, the author was noted as ‘A. Square’. In truth, it was school headmaster Edwin A. Abbott who imagined what would it be like to have a reality based on three dimensions, the third being time. The other two dimensions were just flat.
The story is outside of copyright so there are several imprints out there.
The narrator of the story doesn’t explain how but apparently he was able to see his world from above and able to describe the various shapes he’s seen. These range from polygons to the circles, which are the women. At most, they are a foot long although he doesn’t explain how they use terrestrial measurements. Certainly, it was written before metric was even thought of. They are aware of there being sharp edges as some of these 2-dimensional shapes rotate so you are facing them and literally look like a dot. Abbott shows diagrams of what they look like. I’m not sure if I understand how their houses can work or how they avoid crashing into each other when moving around. Abbott is a lot more concerned with the social implication, more so with the end where the narrator reveals he is seen as a heretic. I mean, a 3-dimensional world? Who could believe in that? What are they going to have? Buildings extending into the skies?
‘Flatland’ is certainly unique and a Science Fiction tale before Science Fiction became a genre so you have to applaud this attempt so far back with nothing else there to compare it to. There is an element of mathematics involved but you don’t need to focus on that. Whether you can have shapes that other shapes see as lines does raise a question how thick these lines are because any depth adds some three-dimensionality to them. See, I’m already thinking which I think Abbott intended. ‘Flatland’ is worth reading, not for what it is but to get you questioning what is. You can’t get better than that.
GF Willmetts
June 2025
(pub: Dover Thrift Editions, 1992 release of a 1884 book. 82 page illustrated small enlarged paperback. Price: varies. ISBN: 978-0-486-27263-4)
check out website: https://store.doverpublications.com/products/9780486272634?_pos=3&_sid=fe6671055&_ss=r
