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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
A bit tedious at times, but the second half of the novel, when Square meets Sphere makes it worthy of its cult status. This would be a great novel to read alongside Death’s End because of that novel’s discussion of both higher and lower dimensions.
My 2008 bookcrossing journal:
Oh it´s been a horrid day for weather in York with the rain so I have spent the afternoon indoors reading this. What a wierd book. And that it was written in the 1800s. The man had such an odd imagination. Got to admit maths isn´t my favourite subject in the world, but I did enjoy reading this - although I am also glad that it wasn´t any longer than it was as well.
Clever play with geometry and looking at the different dimensions, as well commentating on society, hierarchy and a lot of the ridiculousness of it all. Although a fair bit probably went straight over my head!
Oh it´s been a horrid day for weather in York with the rain so I have spent the afternoon indoors reading this. What a wierd book. And that it was written in the 1800s. The man had such an odd imagination. Got to admit maths isn´t my favourite subject in the world, but I did enjoy reading this - although I am also glad that it wasn´t any longer than it was as well.
Clever play with geometry and looking at the different dimensions, as well commentating on society, hierarchy and a lot of the ridiculousness of it all. Although a fair bit probably went straight over my head!
Boring. Demeaning to women. Goes nowhere.
If you want a good book about travelling the various dimensions, go read the boy who reversed himself by William Sleator.
If you want a good book about travelling the various dimensions, go read the boy who reversed himself by William Sleator.
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Intriguing thought experiment, reflective on society and ALL ABOUT PERSPECTIVE
Do you ever think about the fact that although we live in 3 dimensions, we see the world in 2D? If we looked at the world through a grid, we could only pinpoint the x- and y- coordinates of something we were looking at; we'd have to infer the z- coordinate from the secondary clues we use for depth perception. This is why looking at a photo -- which doesn't even pretend to have more than 2 dimensions -- is not that different from looking at reality.
So, if we see our world with one spatial dimension stripped away, what would life look like to someone stuck in a 2D world? That is the perspective that Flatland's central character, A. Square, is here to convey to us hyperspace beings.
A curious 19th-century novella by a mathematically-inclined schoolteacher, Flatland is narrated by a polygon who is writing from his two-dimensional world to us, his three-(spacial)-dimensional readers. He starts with a description of the practical aspects of what it might mean to live in 2D (like us, he also sees the world with one dimension turned off). Quickly, however, the narrative transitions to a fairly protracted explanation of social interactions and hierarchies in this 2D world.
A novel of two dimensions indeed, Flatland is both a geometry treatise and a satire of Victorian-era English society. However, the geometry ideas are no longer revolutionary, and the societal norms are long gone. To a reader who's picking this book up a century and a half after its creation, Flatland is at risk of falling a bit, well, flat.
It is easy to bristle at one particular aspect of this novella - namely, the way it satirizes women's inequality and mistreatment. In 2024, when a character makes a prejudiced comment, it is expected that another character will call it out to indicate that the hurtful words are wrong (and not the writer's actual opinion). That is not the case in Flatland. Instead, the author here did an "opposites day", taking the misogynist attitudes of his contemporaries and dialing them up to eleven to ridicule them. Through today's lens, this approach can leap off the page and look malicious (which I don't believe is the case).
As a story, Flatland didn't really blow me away. I got a distinct "math teacher" vibe from the narrative, with the first half reading straight up like a manifesto on societal hierarchy with no plot at all. But Flatland has certainly made an imprint on science fiction and popular science works that followed it. There are some good reasons to read it if one is inclined -- the primary one being to see firsthand how this classic of mathematical fiction pioneered a way to explore non-Euclidean geometry in our minds.
So, if we see our world with one spatial dimension stripped away, what would life look like to someone stuck in a 2D world? That is the perspective that Flatland's central character, A. Square, is here to convey to us hyperspace beings.
A curious 19th-century novella by a mathematically-inclined schoolteacher, Flatland is narrated by a polygon who is writing from his two-dimensional world to us, his three-(spacial)-dimensional readers. He starts with a description of the practical aspects of what it might mean to live in 2D (like us, he also sees the world with one dimension turned off). Quickly, however, the narrative transitions to a fairly protracted explanation of social interactions and hierarchies in this 2D world.
A novel of two dimensions indeed, Flatland is both a geometry treatise and a satire of Victorian-era English society. However, the geometry ideas are no longer revolutionary, and the societal norms are long gone. To a reader who's picking this book up a century and a half after its creation, Flatland is at risk of falling a bit, well, flat.
It is easy to bristle at one particular aspect of this novella - namely, the way it satirizes women's inequality and mistreatment. In 2024, when a character makes a prejudiced comment, it is expected that another character will call it out to indicate that the hurtful words are wrong (and not the writer's actual opinion). That is not the case in Flatland. Instead, the author here did an "opposites day", taking the misogynist attitudes of his contemporaries and dialing them up to eleven to ridicule them. Through today's lens, this approach can leap off the page and look malicious (which I don't believe is the case).
As a story, Flatland didn't really blow me away. I got a distinct "math teacher" vibe from the narrative, with the first half reading straight up like a manifesto on societal hierarchy with no plot at all. But Flatland has certainly made an imprint on science fiction and popular science works that followed it. There are some good reasons to read it if one is inclined -- the primary one being to see firsthand how this classic of mathematical fiction pioneered a way to explore non-Euclidean geometry in our minds.
That was crazy. But crazy in a bad way. This book has not aged well even a little bit. Many reviews for this book tell you it can't be judged by it's plot but needs to be read for the satire and theory. I'm here to tell you the mathematics is the only reason to read this book. I was really looking forward to that too. I knew the premise of the book and enjoy those kinds of theoretical experiments. But I didn't even think it was that great. Maybe because the ideas first written about almost 150 years ago have been ingrained in other media I consume that were wasn't original material left in the book (how ironic).
Wow, this one took me a long time. By no means it is a bad book at all. It is just that the first chapter needs a lot more than one can accomplish on a normal day. I could only go through with it when I did take the time to delve into the world of Flatland and learn how this two-dimension world is built. It required some better knowledge of geometry than I was able to accomplish hahaha. Mathematics is not an ability of mine.
There may be spoilers ahead.
The first chapter introduces us to the world of Flatland: its social structures; how houses are built on account of the form of males and females; how their genetics work in order to allow lower geometrical forms into higher ones, thus allowing some kind of "evolutionary progression"; how one can determine the social status of another being by vision or hearing and not by "feeling" (a very indelicate act), etc.
Men of respect are portrayed as polygons, and throughout the generations, one can always breed their offsprings into more regular shapes, being the Circle the perfect shape to be achieved. Women are always a line and can be very dangerous as they can accidentally or deliberately stab men to death. They are shown as not able to think too much and are sentimental beings.
It is to be noted that the author, Abbott, was accused of misogyny in respect to the way he created women in Flatland. But it is necessary to understand that this book, published in 1884, is also a satire of Victorian society and its hierarchical order. The same happens in what concern Isosceles triangles, they are always shown as workers and soldiers, quite dull to evolve into something else, but one might also pay attention to them because they can also stab other shapes to death by its tapered tip.
The second chapter is a joy to read. Our narrator, the historian A Square, starts having weird dreams. On the Eve of the year 2000, he dreams about a visit lower and higher dimensions than his, like the one-dimensional world, called Lineland. The third-dimensional world called Spaceland. A no dimensional world called Pointland.
It all triggers A Square to think of the existence of other higher dimensions than that of Spaceland. The fun here is that in each world visited, their inhabitants can't conceive of some higher dimensions than theirs. One cannot apprehend what one cannot conceive by means of the intellect. It took the coming of a new century and a mind like that of Einstein to conceive such higher dimensions and link time to the three-dimensional world we live at.
In my humble opinion, if we take this inability to see beyond our reality into the social norms of societies, one can perceive how satirical this book is. Yet, it is a pretty amazing and amusing Maths book.
If you are reading Flatland and it takes longer to read the first chapter, give it a second and third try, the second chapter is just great, you won't be disappointed. And please, don't read it with a nowadays judgemental mind; do always remember, you are in the face of a satire written around 140 years ago.
There may be spoilers ahead.
The first chapter introduces us to the world of Flatland: its social structures; how houses are built on account of the form of males and females; how their genetics work in order to allow lower geometrical forms into higher ones, thus allowing some kind of "evolutionary progression"; how one can determine the social status of another being by vision or hearing and not by "feeling" (a very indelicate act), etc.
Men of respect are portrayed as polygons, and throughout the generations, one can always breed their offsprings into more regular shapes, being the Circle the perfect shape to be achieved. Women are always a line and can be very dangerous as they can accidentally or deliberately stab men to death. They are shown as not able to think too much and are sentimental beings.
It is to be noted that the author, Abbott, was accused of misogyny in respect to the way he created women in Flatland. But it is necessary to understand that this book, published in 1884, is also a satire of Victorian society and its hierarchical order. The same happens in what concern Isosceles triangles, they are always shown as workers and soldiers, quite dull to evolve into something else, but one might also pay attention to them because they can also stab other shapes to death by its tapered tip.
The second chapter is a joy to read. Our narrator, the historian A Square, starts having weird dreams. On the Eve of the year 2000, he dreams about a visit lower and higher dimensions than his, like the one-dimensional world, called Lineland. The third-dimensional world called Spaceland. A no dimensional world called Pointland.
It all triggers A Square to think of the existence of other higher dimensions than that of Spaceland. The fun here is that in each world visited, their inhabitants can't conceive of some higher dimensions than theirs. One cannot apprehend what one cannot conceive by means of the intellect. It took the coming of a new century and a mind like that of Einstein to conceive such higher dimensions and link time to the three-dimensional world we live at.
In my humble opinion, if we take this inability to see beyond our reality into the social norms of societies, one can perceive how satirical this book is. Yet, it is a pretty amazing and amusing Maths book.
If you are reading Flatland and it takes longer to read the first chapter, give it a second and third try, the second chapter is just great, you won't be disappointed. And please, don't read it with a nowadays judgemental mind; do always remember, you are in the face of a satire written around 140 years ago.
This book is split into two parts, the first half, a cumbersome and detailed description of “Flatland,” a land of two dimensions in which the main character resides. The world is incredibly misogynistic, referring to the women in this world as mindless and incapable of rational thought. This alone is problematic, but the world is additionally also incredibly classist and what I would call ableist, promoting the execution of “irregular” shapes, as they would never be capable of being anything more than amoral and problematic.
Because I hoped for a resolution for this despicable system when the main character entered “Spaceland,” I continued reading, in hopes that Flatland was just an exaggerated description of a dystopian world. Unfortunately, though the second half of the book was not as cumbersome, there was no great truth unearthed in a way that made the rest of the book worth reading.
Overall, this book was not worth the time it took to read it, though only 84 pages. I could’ve spent less time learning the same truth in a shorter story, or longer, perhaps in one that wasn’t so incredibly painful to ingest.
Because I hoped for a resolution for this despicable system when the main character entered “Spaceland,” I continued reading, in hopes that Flatland was just an exaggerated description of a dystopian world. Unfortunately, though the second half of the book was not as cumbersome, there was no great truth unearthed in a way that made the rest of the book worth reading.
Overall, this book was not worth the time it took to read it, though only 84 pages. I could’ve spent less time learning the same truth in a shorter story, or longer, perhaps in one that wasn’t so incredibly painful to ingest.
This book is very interesting as it uses geometry to explain the first two dimensions, and it is a precursor to string theory way before mathematics had even come close to this area. However, it is supposed to be a satire, and the way in which women and the lower classes are described is totally demeaning.
adventurous
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is a satire using the laws of mathematics (specifically geometry and it’s properties in 1, 2, and 3 dimensional spaces) to comment on various aspects of Victorian society. Despite this being written in the 1800s, there are many parts that feel relevant today. Though perhaps not in the way the author had originally intended.
One thing that filled my math nerd heart with glee was all the geometric drawings throughout the book. The concept of flatland was a little mind bending at first but once I understood it was fun to visualize in my mind how the people of Flatland would live. The book is written from the perspective of the Square, a respectable middle-class lawyer and mathematician in Flatland. In Flatland, men are 2-dimensional shapes from a lowly isosceles triangle to the revered Circles, while women are 1-dimensional lines.
I’ve seen many people critique this book for blatant misogyny. Though there is misogyny displayed in the book, it is antithetical to Flatland’s core message. Abbott’s preface included in the second and revised edition states, “[The Square] was writing as a Historian, he has identified himself (perhaps too closely) with the views generally adopted by Flatland and (as he has been informed) even by Spaceland, Historians; in whose pages (until very recent times) the destinies of Women and of the masses of mankind have seldom been deemed worthy of mention and never of careful consideration.” This preface shows me that the Square is an unreliable narrator and sexism, and classism, he describes is meant to parallel and critique the Victorian social hierarchy.
This particular dialogue between the Sphere and the Square is further evidence:
Sphere: “This omnividence, as you call it-it is not a common word in Spaceland-does it make you more just, more merciful, less selfish, more loving? Not in the least. Then how does it make you more divine?”
Square: "More merciful, more loving!" But these are the qualities of women! And we know that a Circle is a higher Being than a Straight Line, in so far as knowledge and wisdom are more to be esteemed than mere affection.
Sphere: “It is not for me to classify human faculties according to merit. Yet many of the best and wisest in Spaceland think more of the affections than of the understand, more of your despised Straight Lines than of your belauded Circles.”
The Spheres home country of Spaceland is implied to be significantly more evolved than Flatland. In addition, this book certainly makes a statement on the influence of knowledge and how authoritarian governments seek to control who has access to this knowledge, including women’s education. While this book does not resolve woman’s rights in Flatland, neither are any of the other multitude of issues raised.
It’s been a minute since I have actually finished a piece of classic literature, and while this 96 page book took me over 300 days to finish (I started it and didn’t pick it back up until MONTHS later), I am so happy I did! I feel much more motivated to read more classic works of literature now that I feel the dopamine boost of finishing one :)