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Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

Abbott, E. A. (1984). Flatland. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc.

A. Square, a perfect parellelogram with equal sides, begins by explaining his world where the more vertices one has with regular angles, the higher in status one is. In fact, the highest are polygonal and are indistinguishable from circles.

Like Gulliver, A. Square visits other lands that are different from his own. In A. Square’s case, he visits Pointland and Lineland, two worlds rather different from his own two-dimensional existence. He attempts to enlighten the Monarch of Lineland and a self-proclaimed god in Pointland and is himself enlightened by a three-dimensional being: a sphere. At the end, he is declared a dangerous heretic with strange ideas.

This is one of the few pieces of mathematical fiction!

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