Vikki stumbles on a copy of Flatland (books are actually a series of dots and dashes on a wire), decodes a cipher that helps her hook up a Virtual Unreality device to her computer, access the Interline, discover a smiley-faced Space Hopper and embark on a tour of Planiturth, where, among other things, “the fundamental unit. “He was the black shape of the family,” her father, Grosvenor Square, recalls. He also wanted to have some fun: in Flatterland, set a century after the events of Flatland, the precocious adolescent Vikki Line learns that her great-great-grandfather Albert Square (a Square who learned that he, too, could become a Circle) died in prison. Though there have been other Flatland sequels, Stewart ( Life’s Other Secret: The New Mathematics of the Living World, 1998, etc.) was fascinated with the way Abbott used science, in the form of the looming threat of a Fourth Dimension and the eerie visitation of a Promethean circle, to laugh at the narrow-mindedness of English Victorians. In his introduction, Stewart (Mathematics/Warwick University) says he got a “bee in his bonnet” to continue Abbott’s whimsical fantasy of life experienced in a two-dimensional universe. In the tradition of Alice in Wonder-land and The Phantom Toll Booth, this magnificent investigation into the nature of reality is destined to become a modern classic.Overly cute sequel to British mathematician Edwin Abbott’s 1884 classic Flatland, from the Scientific American recreational math columnist. Along the way, we meet Schrödinger's Cat, The Charming Construction Entity, The Mandelblot (who lives in Fractalia), and Moobius the one-sided cow.
The writings help her to contact the Space Hopper, who becomes her guide and mentor through eleven dimensions.
The journey begins when our heroine, Victoria Line, comes upon her great-great-grandfather A.
Through larger-than-life characters and an inspired story line, Flatterland explores our present understanding of the shape and origins of the universe, the nature of space, time, and matter, as well as modern geometries and their applications. Now, British mathematician and accomplished science writer Ian Stewart has written a fascinating, modern sequel to Abbott's book.
As both a witty satire of Victorian society and a means by which to explore the fourth dimension, Flatland remains a tour de force. Abbott published a brilliant novel about mathematics and philosophy that charmed and fascinated all of England.
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