books & arts That extra dimension

Flatland: The Movie On our Princeton Univ. Press: 2008. 35 min. $29.95/£19.99 bookshelf

Science fiction is like jazz — people think they (except if you were female) and stringent know what it is, but finding a precise definition conformity (especially if you were female). On the is another matter. In which case, my two cents other, A. Square is a hero in the mode of Gulliver, Beyond the Nanoworld: are as worthy as anybody’s: the most enduring Winston Smith in 1984 or the Savage in Brave Quarks, Leptons, and science fiction is a mode of expression in which New World — the everyman outsider who sees Gauge Bosons our current concerns are explored in fantastic the world in new ways that his contemporaries by Hans Günter Dosch surroundings, the better to understand their cannot accept. This, together with its setting in contemporary impact. The fiction of the late which ordinary people are shown living in exotic A. K. Peters: 2008. Arthur C. Clarke, for example, was almost circumstances whose differences from our own 282 pp. $39 always about the reaction of people to advanced world are made scientifically explicit, perhaps technology; that of H. G. Wells, in contrast, often explains why SF readers have gathered Flatland A clear introduction to had an explicitly social dimension. The effete Eloi into their collective bosom. Flatland has never the subatomic building and the industrious Morlocks in The Time Machine been out of print, and has attracted many imitators blocks that make up are, quite deliberately, satires on the stratified and spin-offs such as Dionys Burger’sSphereland our Universe, with social structure of late-Victorian England. (1965) and Ian Stewart’s Flatterland (2001). minimal mathematics, Satire was at least an occasional preoccupation Flatland has also been filmed, several aimed at a general of another Victorian, Edwin A. Abbott (1838– times — from a 1965 animation featuring reader interested in 1926). Abbott was a schoolmaster, philologist Dudley Moore as A. Square, to a 98-minute feature particle physics. and theologian. He wrote on Shakespeare, film directed by Ladd Ehlinger, released last year. Francis Bacon and St Thomas Becket, as well as Flatland: The Movie, directed by Jeffrey Travis, is a theological treatises and religious romances. His 35-minute all-star animation (Martin Sheen as claim to fame, however, is the curious novella A. Square) and is packaged as an educational short. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884). The DVD contains features exploring the idea of Flatland is set in a universe of two dimensions. dimensions, and is accompanied by a beautiful The residents are geometric figures who rise book that includes a facsimile of Abbot’s story, as in society according to their sidedness. Rank well as the screenplay and stills from the movie. increases with each generation — triangles are the The movie softens the totalitarian aspects of lower orders; squares are professional men, and Flatland in two respects only. First, women are their children are successively more polygonal, geometric shapes, rather than lines, and contribute until, one day, their descendents reach the exalted to society. The screenplay changes the genders state of circles — the priests and lawmakers. of some characters — notably Hex, A. Square’s Women, however, are always straight lines, kept granddaughter, a grandson in the novella — and From Physicist to Priest: confined in case their points puncture a male. introduces new ones. Second, it has a Hollywood An Autobiography The tale is told by a clerk, A. Square, who happy ending, with the general population by John Polkinghorne begins to wonder about the existence of a accepting the idea of a third dimension, and the SPCK: 2007. 182 pp. third dimension — a heresy punishable by tyranny of the circles overthrown. My children £15.99 imprisonment or death. He is visited by a sphere (aged 10 and nearly 8) enjoyed it, but more for from three-dimensional Spaceland, and his the comedic aspects (Tony Hale as the King of “I am a scientist– incredulity is compared with the reaction of the Pointland is a treat) and the sumptuous visuals and theologian, someone residents of one-dimensional Lineland and zero- music than for the educational value, but I suspect who is both a dimensional Pointland to his own intercessions. that at least some of that will have sunken in, in physicist and a These are as fruitless as his attempts to convince some higher (or lower) dimension. priest — a statement other Flatlanders that the third dimension exists, that sometimes arouses and the story ends with A. Square in jail. Henry Gee the kind of curiosity or On one level the brutal theocracy of Flatland Henry Gee is a Senior Editor of Nature. He edits the suspicion that might is a vicious satire on Victorian England, a society Futures series of SF stories in both Nature Physics follow the claim to be a that offered a paradoxical mix of self-advancement and Nature. vegetarian butcher.” nature physics | VOL 4 | MAY 2008 | www.nature.com/naturephysics 34 © 2008 Nature Publishing Group