Time Warp
Flatland
Randy Streu

Flatland is required reading

for anybody with a more-than-passing interest in the Science Fiction genre. Or, at least, Freshman nerds who want desperately to fit in with the geek intelligentsia. What -- was it just me?

Regardless of my motive for reading it, Edwin Abbot's mathematical classic was indeed the catalyst for many a late-night philosophical bull session, and a ready anecdote or analogy in many more. And for good reason. Though anyone with basic knowledge of geometry would readily attest to the simple mathematical facts cited in the text, Abbot challenged the reader to go use those facts to consider both the scientific and metaphysical implications of expanding beyond the world of our own experiences.

And, of a more vital importance, he was entertaining while he did it.

For the uninitiated, Flatland concerns itself with the doings of a two-dimensional man named "A. Square," who lives -- as you may have guessed -- in a land of only width and breadth. He is visited by a citizen of Spaceland, who pulls him out of his own realm and forces him to take in the enormity of Three Dimensions. From here, A. Square begins to form his own conclusions: if there are three dimensions, why not four? Or five? Why not infinite possibilities?

Abbot's is neither the first nor last treatise on multidimensionalism, or on the broader subject of man's unwillingness to challenge himself with the unknown. Yet it is consistently cited in these and other regards, precisely because of the tale it into which it is woven. Flatland is not just a philosophical story about geometry. It is also a social and political satire, an indictment of prevailing scientific and religious thought, and a challenge to his generation -- and future generations -- to broaden their minds at least enough to recognize possibilities outside their own spheres.

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