think or thwim

Edwin Abbott Abbott (I didn’t stutter. That’s really his name) wrote Flatland in 1884. It’s a cool little 100 page novel about a society two dimensional beings (flatlanders) who literally can’t see anything outside their plane of existence. Things get interesting when a sphere from the 3 dimensional world (spaceland) starts to interact with the 2d world.

Since its old enough to be in the public domain you can read it online or buy it.

There have been a couple of movies made about it in 1956 and 1982 (with Dudley Moore). Now there are two new versions coming out simultaneously:

Flatland the Movie

Flatland the Independant Film

The filmmaker says he tried to stay closer to the novel than the movie makers did. Flatlanders internal organs are visible to spacelanders, and they don’t cross because that would require a 3rd dimension. There are no cars because they would require three dimensions. It’ll be interesting to compare to two approaches.