An evergreen science fiction classic, Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland presents an alternate vision of society rendered completely in two dimensions.
In the titular Flatland, women are line segments and men are polygons with various side lengths and angles. Even in such a simple world, social hierarchies and inequality persist. Social status is determined by a man’s regularity of shape and their number of sides. Women, as line segments, are considered dangerous because they can disappear from view and wound others with their end points. In addition to its social critique, Flatland has also been widely praised by scientists like Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking as a useful thought experiment for conceptualizing life in higher and lower dimensions.
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Table of Contents:
Part I: This World 13
I. Of the Nature of Flatland 15
II. Of the Climate and Houses in Flatland 17
III. Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland 20
IV. Concerning the Women 24
V. Of our Methods of Recognizing
one another 30
VI. Of Recognition by Sight 35
VII. Concerning Irregular Figures 41
VIII. Of the Ancient Practice of Painting 45
IX. Of the Universal Colour Bill 48
X. Of the Suppression of the
Chromatic Sedition 52
XI. Concerning our Priests 57
XII. Of the Doctrine of our Priests 60
Part II: Other Worlds 65
XIII. How I had a Vision of Lineland 67
XIV. How I vainly tried to explain the
nature of Flatland 72
XV. Concerning a Stranger from
Spaceland 78
XVI. How the Stranger vainly
endeavoured to reveal to me in
words the mysteries of Spaceland 82
XVII. How the Sphere, having in vain
tried words, resorted to deeds 90
XVIII. How I came to Spaceland, and
what I saw there 93
XIX. How, though the Sphere shewed me
other mysteries of Spaceland, I still
desired more; and what came of it 99
XX. How the Sphere encouraged me in
a Vision 107
XXI. How I tried to teach the Theory
of Three Dimensions to my Grandson,
and with what success 110
XXII. How I then tried to diffuse the
Theory of Three Dimensions by
other means, and of the result 113
About the Author :
Edwin A. Abbott (1838–1926) was an English schoolmaster, theologian, and classical scholar. He graduated from Cambridge University and served as the headmaster of the City of London School for over two decades, where he pioneered advanced modern teaching methods. While he wrote numerous theological and grammatical texts, he is internationally remembered for his 1884 mathematical satire, Flatland. Written under the pseudonym "A Square," the novella brilliantly used geometric dimensions to critique Victorian social hierarchy and expand human imagination regarding higher planes of existence.
