Edwin Abbott Abbott's satirical 1884 novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, is "on the surface" an examination of multiple dimensions. Its author, writing anonymously as "A Square" takes us on a fantastical trip to a completely flat, two-dimensional world whose inhabitants are geometric shapes. These shapes think that the "planar" world of length and width are all that exist, until one shape discovers the existence of a third physical dimension, which ultimately is expanded to the concept of a fourth.

As a given shape, one's class and intelligence is determined by one's number of sides. Men are depicted as polygonal, while women are straight lines (now hang on a minute!)….Flatland illustrates marvelously the difficulty a person or group might have seeing a greater reality, or different reality, than its own. In this world of "plane geometry" with "Euclidian Geometric" shapes, each dimension can only perceive the one below it - so if one has evidence of a third, what about a fourth? Flatland has so many dimensions to it - mathematical, philosophical, social, religious - that it's hard to believe it's only 82 pages. But don't let size fool you: to grasp every element of the book will take a close reading. A brilliant exploration of higher dimensions while satirizing the social hierarchy of the Victorian caste system.

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