Ian Stewart's one-century-on sequel to Edwin Abbott's Flatland is far longer and in many ways more wide-ranging than its Victorian original. Almost taking hypergeometry for granted, it also treats qualitative dimensionality, fractals, topology, projective geometry, and an assortment of geometric issues implicated in theoretical physics: relativistic cosmology, quantum physics, and M-theory. These last topics may have aged a bit, but my own physics understanding is still back around the 2001 date of this book, so nothing put me off there, and the mathematical issues haven't changed at any rate.

Protagonist Vikki Line's psychopomp is the Space Hopper, inspired by a UK-model hippity-hop bouncing toy, and he equips her with a "Virtual Unreality Engine" that allows her (if not always the reader) to visualize and operate in all of the exotic geometries treated in the story. There is a rather comical Faust and Mephistopheles air to the relationship here.

Flatterland is full of nods to Lewis Carroll, with Vikki clearly taking the role of Alice in a "mathiversal" wonderland. This homage reaches its peak in Chapter 6 "The Topologist's Tea Party." The book is thick with puns and dadjokery. I am glad that I was already sufficiently well-read mathematically to perceive the conventional names of the topics and concepts sometimes screened behind layers of wordplay. Humans are "Planiturthians," whose proper names are given without breaks, like Ianstewart.

Stewart recognizes and praises the social satire in Abbott's original Flatland, but his own version of it is a feminism that was hardly daring at the turn of the millennium. As the book progressed into more diverse mathematical topics, I thought he had even left the social commentary behind, but he did return to it in a mildly satisfying manner at the end. The text makes it clear that "Flatterland" doesn't have anything to do with flattery; or does it?

Pretty disappointed with this really, stopping 2/3 through. ( )

Non so quanti di voi abbiano letto Flatland, il testo scritto da Edwin Abbott alla fine del XIX secolo che con la scusa di raccontare la storia di una figura bidimensionale che scopre le meraviglie del mondo a tre dimensioni fa una feroce satira dell'epoca vittoriana. Ian Stewart riprende l'idea e la espande, per così dire, tanto che persino il titolo del libro è un comparativo: "Flatterland" significa letteralmente "terra più piatta". Stewart non è interessato tanto alla satira sociale, anche se ne lascia qualcosina, quanto alla divulgazione matematico-fisica, arrivando anche alla spiegazione del Big Bang e alla teoria delle stringhe e della supersimmetria. La parte divulgativa è fatta indubbiamente bene ed è alla portata di tutti; bisogna però che il lettore apprezzi lo stile umoristico di Stewart che alla lunga può risultare stucchevole, visto che è sempre alla caccia del bieco gioco di parole. A questo riguardo, onore al merito di Filippo Demonte-Barbera per la sua perfetta traduzione in italiano: nella prefazione spiega anche alcune delle scelte da lui fatte, permettendo al lettore di vedere anche l'originale inglese. Il libro termina con una postfazione di Michele Emmer, che colloca Flatterlandia (e Flatlandia) nel contesto storico e visivo di quello che è capitato negli ultimi centoventi anni. ( )

The main issue I have with this book is that, in relation to the concepts presented, I found it 'too much, too soon'. While the themes themselves were extremely interesting, half of it flew over my head - there were just too many concepts, too many 'spaces', and too many theories to take in at once if you don't have some background knowledge on these topics already.

As far as the story telling goes, the main character is A. Square's granddaughter, which will continue his journey many years later. The story was really just a setting for presenting the topics at hand though, and for me it is one of the weakest points in the book. Story-wise, I found it pretty poor - it's really just Victoria Line and her guide travelling through the several universes/topologies. They do get stuck in a black hole near the end, but apart from that it was pretty uneventful overall.

In hindsight, I think I would have liked (and understood) this book a lot better if it was only just a 'story book', or a science book. The way it's done, while remarkable for the attempt, leaves the presentation of both 'parts' sub par.
( )

chuck out by A & N.