Abbot Edwin A. Flatland

Princeton University Press, 2015. — 101 p.Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is a satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott. Written pseudonymously by "A Square", the book used the fictional two-dimensional world of Flatland to comment on the hierarchy of Victorian culture, but the novella's more enduring contribution is its examination of dimensions.The story describes a two-dimensional world inhabited by geometric figures (flatlanders); women are line segments, while men are polygons with various numbers of sides. The narrator is a square, a member of the caste of gentlemen and professionals, who guides the readers through some of the implications of life in two dimensions. The first half of the story goes through the practicalities of existing in a two-dimensional universe, as well as a history leading up to the year 1999 on the eve of the 3rd Millennium.