Flatland: A Forgivably Flat Classic

I recommend the movie too. There's 2 of them, make sure you watch the half hour one with Martin Sheen, Michael York and Kristen Bell:<p><a href="http://www.flatlandthemovie.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.flatlandthemovie.com</a><p>The full length 95 minute one is less favorably held.

I also recommend A.K. Dewdney's The Planiverse, published in 1984. It tells the story of computer science students who communicate with denizens of a 2D world. The diagrams and graphics are delightful.<p>I read it when it came out (I was 13) and it's one of the reasons I entered computing.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planiverse" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planiverse</a>

Wikipedia: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland</a> with links to e-versions: epub, kindle, etc. via Project Gutenberg.<p>And, new to me, Project Gutenberg provides QR codes for phone download. Nice.

Another great book from a similar period: The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Pierce - <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/972" rel="nofollow">http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/972</a> - Definitely one to have in the toilet.

If you're thinking of getting the annotated version, another classic in the same spirit is The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner. It exposes a lot of double entendres, mathematical games, and other historical stuff about Alice in Wonderland that shows how much of a playful mathematician Lewis Carroll was.

It's a truely brilliant book, pretty short and an excellent holiday/weekend read.<p>Link to a html version of the book with original illustrations: <a href="http://xahlee.org/flatland/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://xahlee.org/flatland/index.html</a>

seconding dewdney's planiverse. Also, I loved rudy rucker's spaceland.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceland_(novel)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceland_(novel)</a>

Flatland is a great little book, highly recommended. It's from a time when writers would stop when they had no more to say instead of being paid by the word or to fit a particular format so don't be surprised by how much stuff is crammed in to it's 100 pages, if it were released in 2011 it would surely be 300 pages at a minimum, and it would lose a lot of its power because of that.

I read it recently. Great short read. Extremely sexist, but I guess it's a book of its time. Got me thinking hard about higher dimensions for a while, until my head started hurting :)

<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/201/201-h/201-h.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.gutenberg.org/files/201/201-h/201-h.htm</a> -- read the book here.. got to love Gutenberg

I found this book to be quite tedious. The whole class analogy (a satirical story line in which many-sided polygons are regarded as more refined than, say, triangles and squares) was just unbearably long-winded to me. I've read the whole critique so many times before.<p>And the notion that the reader will appreciate the three-dimensional space we live in (or 4-dimensional space-time, if you're like that) by going through a novella-length treatment of a 2d world...did not work for me, let's just say.<p>If you like the book, and many do, I'm glad. But it's not unanimous.

Flatland now always reminds me of the Big Bang Theory:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmiXemW_oBQ" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmiXemW_oBQ</a>