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Description edit
How would a creature limited to two dimensions be able to grasp the possibility of a third? Edwin A. Abbott's droll and delightful "romance of many dimensions" explores this conundrum in the experiences of his protagonist, A Square, whose linear world is invaded by an emissary Sphere bringing... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Quotes edit
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“'You see,' said my Teacher, 'how little your words have done. So far as the Monarch understand them at all, he accepts them as his own – for he cannot conceive of any other except himself – and plumes himself upon the variety of Its Thought as an instance of creative Power. Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction.”
The Sphere
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Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy.
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“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t”
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The tact and skill which suffice to avert a Woman’s sting are unequal to the task of stopping a Woman’s mouth; and as the wife has absolutely nothing to say, and absolutely no constraint of wit, sense, or conscience to prevent her from saying it, not a few cynics have been found to aver that they prefer the danger of the death-dealing but inaudible sting to the safe sonorousness of a Woman’s other end.
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But a wise ordinance of Nature has decreed that, in proportion as the working-classes increase in intelligence, knowledge, and all virtue, in that same proportion their acute angle (which makes them physically terrible) shall increase also and approximate to the comparatively harmless angle of the Equilateral Triangle.
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since women are deficient in Reason but abundant in Emotion, they ought no longer to be treated as rational, nor receive any mental education.
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a spirit of rebellion against the Conceit which would limit our Dimensions to Two or Three or any number short of Infinity.
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Thus, in the most brutal and formidable of the soldier class—creatures almost on a level with women in their lack of intelligence—it is found that, as they wax in the mental ability necessary to employ their tremendous penetrating power to advantage, so do they wane in the power of penetration itself.
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Yet I exist in the hope that these memoirs, in some manner, I know not how, may find their way to the minds of humanity in Some Dimension, and may stir up a race of rebels who shall refuse to be confined to limited Dimensionality.
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It is the merit of the Circles that they have effectually suppressed those ancient heresies which led men to waste energy and sympathy in the vain belief that conduct depends upon will, effort, training, encouragement, praise, or anything else but Configuration.
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prophets and inspired people are always considered by the majority to be mad;
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First Sentence edit
I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.
Table of Contents edit
PART 1: THIS WORLD
1. Of the Nature of Flatland
2. Of the Climate and Houses in Flatland
3. Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland
4. Concerning the Women
5. Of Our Methods of Recognizing One Another
6. Of Recognition by Sight
7. Concerning Irregular Figures
8. Of the Ancient Practice of Painting
9. Of the Universal Colour Bill
10. Of the Suppression of Chromatic Sedition
11. Concerning Our Priests
12. Of the Doctrine of Our Priests
PART 2: OTHER WORLDS
13. How I Had a Vision of Lineland
14. How I Vainly Tried to Explain the Nature of Flatland
15. Concerning a Stranger from Spaceland
16. How the Stranger Vainly Endeavored to Reveal to Me in Words the Mysteries of Spaceland
17. How the Sphere, Having in Vain Tried Words, Resorted to Deeds
18. How I Came to Spaceland and What I Saw There
19. How, Though the Sphere Shewed Me Other Mysteries of Spaceland, I Still Desired More; and What Came of It
20. How the Sphere Encouraged Me in a Vision
21. How I Tried to Teach the Theory of Three Dimensions to my Grandson, and With What Success
22. How I Then Tried to Diffuse the Theory of Three Dimensions by Other Means, and of the Result
Authors & Contributors edit
- Edwin A. Abbott (Author)
- Edwin A. Abbott (Illustrator)
Other Contributors:
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Seely & Co.
Country: United Kingdom
Publication Date: 1884
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 100
Publisher: Seely & Co.
Country: United Kingdom
Publication Date: 1884
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 100
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: QA699 .A13 1980
- Dewey: 530.11
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Movie Connections edit
- Flatland: The Movie (IMDb): This 34-minute animated film by Dano Johnson and Jeffrey Travis was released to video in 2007. It features the voices of actors Martin Sheen, Kristen Bell, and Tony Hale.
- Flatland (IMDb): This 95-minute animated film by Ladd Ehlinger Jr. was released in 2007. The setting is updated from Victorian England to modern-day United States.
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