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Book Review: Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So, Volume 49

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Book Review: Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So, Volume 49 Book Review Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So Reviewed by Jody Trout Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So Because of its special Ian Stewart relation to Einstein’s Perseus Press, April 2001, theories of relativity, ISBN 0-7382-0675-X the geometry of the 320 pages, $25.00 fourth dimension— along with its resident Geometry, the Final Frontier. These are the math- hypercubes and such ematical voyages of Vikki Line of Flatland….Wait twisted topological a minute. Does this sound like a review of a math- beasties as the Klein ematics book or a science fiction novel? Mathematics bottle and the Möbius and science fiction? For several generations, the strip—has provided reading public has assumed that the main focus of the most popular science fiction (SF) was mainly, well, science and its mathematical morsel. technological toys. Lasers, spaceships, robots, time But, with apologies to machines, atomic reactors, intelligent computers, Euclid, no element of warp drives, and genetic engineering are just geometric literature some of the familiar literary devices of mainstream could be more famous SF. But, why not curved surfaces, hyperspheres, or enjoyable than that satirical Victorian romance fractals, Hamming metrics, projective lines, and of many dimensions, Flatland. non-Euclidean geometries? Couldn’t mathematics Written in 1884 by the school headmaster, also be the queen and servant of science fiction, to clergyman, Shakespearean (and decidedly non- corrupt that famous saying? mathematical) scholar Edwin Abbott Abbott, that Of course, as many sci-fi fans and readers of the delightful little book has charmed generations of Notices know, mathematical concepts have appeared readers and tempted many of them to become math- in several science fiction stories over the past century ematicians, including me. Many of you already know or so. The main examples, from a literary viewpoint, the plot by heart. Flatland tells the tale of how the are the fourth dimension of time in the classic lowly A. Square, a four-sided inhabitant of a two- novel The Time Machine (1895) by H. G. Wells and a dimensional Euclidean universe, receives heretical hypercubical home in Robert A. Heinlein’s timeless knowledge of higher dimensions from a visit by that tale “—And He Built a Crooked House” (1940). most symmetric of Solids, The Sphere. Armed with the Theory of the Third Dimension, our planar hero sets out on a crusade to convert the narrow-minded Jody Trout is associate professor of mathematics at and sexist polygonal citizens of Flatland to a Dartmouth College. His e-mail address is jody.trout@ dartmouth.edu. more enlightened higher-dimensional view of the 462 NOTICES OF THE AMS VOLUME 49, NUMBER 4 mysteries of space and time. However, like Galileo, spacetime, parallel and curved universes, projective A. Square discovers the timeless truth that those geometry, other non-Euclidean geometries, and who put the prevailing cosmic paradigm on trial are topology. And, of course, Flatland was the perfect all too often the subject of a trial themselves. starting point for the course, as well as a useful source Since it first appeared, Flatland has been in of metaphors and analogies for more advanced continuous print in numerous editions and in many geometric concepts. foreign languages. And, as many good books do, it Had Ian Stewart’s novel been published sooner, has spawned several sequels. The main examples we would have surely considered it for our course are the story An Episode of Flatland (1907) written syllabus since it discusses all of the topics we cov- by the colorful logician Charles Howard Hinton, ered and then some! Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only the novel exposition of curved spaces Sphereland More So is the latest sequel to the tri-dimensional (1965) crafted by the Dutch physicist Dionys Berger, journey of A. Square. Stewart is a mathematician and The Planiverse (1984) by the computer scien- at the University of Warwick, where he also directs tist A. K. Dewdney, which develops the physics, the Mathematics Awareness Center. A well-known astronomy, and biology of a 2D universe in a more popular writer about science and mathematics and rigorous and consistent manner. By the way, it is the author of over sixty books, Stewart was awarded rumored that C. H. Hinton is the person to whom the prestigious Michael Faraday Medal from the Abbott obliquely refers in the dedication of Flatland Royal Society for his contributions to furthering when he writes, “To the Inhabitants of Space In the public’s understanding of science and mathe- General And H. C. In Particular….” Hinton was matics. In 1999 he received the Communications influential in getting the public at the turn of the Award from the Joint Policy Board for Mathemat- twentieth century interested in the fourth dimen- ics. Stewart has also written the “Mathematical sion by writing popular science articles and books Recreations” column in Scientific American. on the mysterious topic. (He even claimed he Flatterland begins with the discovery of an old could see four-dimensionally and, by the way, also family copy of A. Square’s original testimony one invented the baseball throwing machine!) hundred years later by his lineal great-great- There have also been several short stories in- granddaughter Victoria Line. Upset by her father’s volving Flatland or discussing it in some detail, pigheaded insistence to make sure that the em- such as a Flatland spoof by A. G. Birch called “An barrassing memories of the imprisonment of crazy Adventure in the Fourth Dimension”, which appeared old Albert and the suppression of his subversive in the October 1923 edition of the famous pulpzine 3D Theory no longer cause the family any shame, Weird Tales. Nelson Bond wrote “The Monster from the precocious Vikki secretly scans the ancient Nowhere” (1974), a creepy story about a 4D being scroll into her personal computer before handing captured by a human, and there is Rudy Rucker’s it over to her father to be burned. Studying the files, dark tale “Message Found in a Copy of Flatland”, she finds a secret message from her ancestor on which appeared in Mathenauts (1997), the anthol- how to contact Those from the Third Dimension. ogy he edited (but which, sadly, is now out of print). Vikki is soon visited by the Space Hopper, a In this story, Rucker places the physical location of tame horned sphere homeomorphic to the original Flatland in the basement of a questionable Indian spatial sage. (Alexander’s wild horned sphere makes restaurant in the city of London! a brief appearance later when they visit Topolog- In fact, over the past several decades there have ica.) The Space Hopper promises to take her on a been so many science fiction tales involving ideas fantastic voyage of the Mathiverse (short for the streaming from Flatland, the fourth dimension, and Mathematical Universe), that Platonic realm where mathematics in general, that “mathematical science mathematical objects, geometries, and spaces have fiction” should be treated now as its own subgenre their own Alice-in-Wonderland existence. To help of SF. Indeed, three years ago I collaborated with my his one-dimensional charge understand and visu- Dartmouth colleague Laurence Davies, who is in the alize the multidimensional marvels of the Mathi- comparative literature and English departments, in verse, the Space Hopper equips the “Flatty” Vikki designing a course to study this emerging literary with a Virtual Unreality Engine (VUE) and then form. The course, which we called Mathematics and whisks her away from her planar home, without her SF: The Fire in the Equations, was developed under even saying goodbye. the auspices of the Mathematics Across the Cur- First they explore Spaceland, the idealized three- riculum (MATC) project. The MATC grant was part dimensional world of Euclid, which is separate of a multi-institutional effort by the National Sci- from the “Planiturthian” Universe of the earth-bound ence Foundation to foster interdisciplinary courses humans, whose mathematical mindsets give rise to involving mathematics. We taught the course for the the quasi-independent existence of the Mathiverse. second time during the spring 2001 term and con- Running throughout the story is a philosophical centrated mainly on sci-fi stories involving geomet- chicken-and-egg conundrum about the exact nature ric ideas, such as the fourth dimension, relativistic of the relationship between mathematics and the APRIL 2002 NOTICES OF THE AMS 463 Mathiverse. They take a hike through the Fractal For more information concerning Edwin Abbott and Flatland, Forest where they meet the infinitely-crinkly Helge as well as the mathematics and applications of higher dimen- the Snowflake on their way to the infinitely-paved sions, visit the “Math Spans All Dimensions” website Quadratic City, which has streets and avenues for each (x, y) in the plane. A simple recursive rule for http://mam2000.mathforum.com/765/index.html taxi drivers leads to mass confusion if one tries to leave this complex city! So, of course, the perfect designed by Thomas Banchoff of Brown University and David fractal for the job of Taxi Controller is none other Cervone of Union College. A math-sf bibliography and related than the “Mandelblot” himself! (Groan…) Next, they links can be found at our course website warp themselves to the continuously deforming landscape of Topologica, the Rubber-Sheet Conti- http://math.dartmouth.edu/~c18s01/. nent, where they meet such Carrollian characters as the Doughmouse, who can turn himself into a Other useful bibliographic references are Alex Kasman’s saucer, and Moobius the Cow, that half-twisted “Mathematical Fiction” website strip of beef that keeps her milk in…you guessed it…a Klein bottle. (Double groan…The word play http://math.cofc.edu/faculty/MATHFICT/ is cute at first but then becomes a bit tiresome.) Afterwards, they take a safari out to infinity in the (discussed in the August 2000 issue of the Notices) and Ap- Projective Plain to capture Projective Lions, which pendix B of Clifford Pickover’s delightfully X-File-ish book are always polite when meeting each other and Surfing through Hyperspace.
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