*Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions* (1884) by **Edwin Abbott Abbott** is a satirical novella in which a two-dimensional narrator, **A. Square**, discovers the shocking possibility of higher dimensions - and pays the price for trying to explain them.
# Publication & context * **Author:** Edwin Abbott Abbott (English schoolmaster and theologian) * **Year:** 1884 * **Form:** Short satirical/science-fiction novella, framed as a “memoir” by A. Square * **Why it’s famous:** Uses dimensional analogy to poke at Victorian class, gender norms, and intellectual dogma - while inventing a crisp way to think about 4D space.
# Part I: “This World” - The world is a **two-dimensional plane**. Inhabitants are **geometric figures**. - **Class = number of sides:** Isosceles triangles (soldiers/workers) → Equilateral triangles → Squares/Pentagons (middle/learned classes) → Circles (the priestly elite). - **Women are line segments**, considered dangerously sharp; draconian “safety” rules reflect Victorian anxieties. - Social control appears as: **the Colour Revolt** (briefly allowed, then banned), rigid education, eugenic “regularization” of irregular polygons, and severe penalties for dissent. - **Perception:** With no “up,” Flatlanders identify shapes by **touch** and by carefully managed **sight recognition** (fog and lighting tricks).
# Part II: “Other Worlds” 1. **Dream of Lineland (1D):** A. Square tries—and fails—to convince a one-dimensional king that “sideways” exists. The king can only imagine forward/back along a line. 2. **Visit from the Sphere (3D):** A being from **Spaceland** passes through Flatland, appearing first as a point, then a growing/shrinking circle—demonstrating the third dimension by **cross-sections**. 3. **Lessons in analogy:** The Sphere uses the chain **Pointland → Lineland → Flatland → Spaceland** to argue for higher dimensions. A. Square, newly awakened, speculates about a **fourth**—which the Sphere rejects, revealing even enlightened minds have limits. 4. **Aftermath:** Back home, A. Square’s attempts to preach “Upward, not Northward” are branded **heresy**; he’s **imprisoned**, where he writes his account.
# Plot in brief A precise, rule-bound Square catalogs his society, dreams of a lower-dimensional world, is forcibly enlightened by a 3D visitor, glimpses a vaster reality, and is punished for challenging orthodoxy. The memoir survives as a cautionary/how-to guide for thinking past one’s dimensional—and social—blinkers.
# Key themes & ideas * **Dimensional analogy:** Understand the unimaginable by stepping down a dimension, then back up. * **Perception vs. reality:** What we can sense (or are allowed to sense) constrains what we think exists. * **Satire of hierarchy:** Class, gender, and “fitness” are rendered absurd by geometry. * **Dogma vs. inquiry:** Institutions suppress paradigm shifts; even reformers can be parochial. * **Communication across worlds:** Explainers must choose **experiments and metaphors** the audience can grasp.
# Notable cast - A Square: Educated everyman, narrator, accidental heretic. - The Sphere: Pedagogue from 3D Spaceland; open-minded—up to a point. - King of Lineland: One-dimensional sovereign, comic study in epistemic limits. - The Circles: Priest-class in Flatland; guardians of order and orthodoxy. - A. Square’s grandson (a budding Polygon): Hints at generational progress in reason and regularity.
# Why it still matters * A classic **thinking tool** for math, physics, and philosophy (from cross-sections to projections and beyond). * A durable **satire** on social rigidity and the risks of telling unwelcome truths. * A compact **template** for “guide-style” writing: clear definitions, rules, diagrams, and travel-between-worlds etiquette.
# Use it in Hitchhikers * **Explainers:** Show 3D→2D cross-sections (slices of a sphere as circles) before leaping to **4D→3D** analogies. * **Guide entries:** “How to Recognize a Higher-Dimensional Visitor,” “Etiquette for Visiting Lower Dimensions,” “On the Proper Storage of Spheres.” * **Satirical sidebars:** Translate Flatland’s caste rules into playful planetary “customs & laws” notes.
# Public-domain note Published in **1884**; the text is **public domain** in the U.S. and many other jurisdictions. You can freely quote, adapt, illustrate, and remix—do credit the edition/source you use.