Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott (Book Review)

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
By Edwin A. Abbott
Published by Penguin Books, 1998
Price: $12.00

There is a place unknown to us called Flatland and every being that lives there is a two dimensional shape. In Flatland, social status is conveyed by the number of angles a person has, with isosceles triangles making up the lowest class of workers and soldiers and circles serving as the highest. Women are even lower than the isosceles, with no angles, consisting of only straight lines. In Flatland, females are seen as mindless and temperamental. In fact, because they are straight lines they have pointed ends and when they get enraged, sometimes they murder other people by piercing them like spears. Sometimes they kill just by not being mindful of where they're moving.

Most of the book is a description of the inhabitants of Flatland, their different shapes, laws, and society. It's only in the last 1/4th of the book that any action really occurs. When Flatland came out in 1884 it did not have much success and faded into obscurity until Einstein introduced his theory of relativity. After that scientists and the public began to see this book as an oracle predicting the existence of other dimensions besides just the three we believed we existed in. Some have said that that is the reason why Flatland is a "classic". Simply because of its influence on being a precursor of scientific thought which has become generally accepted in our time. I agree with that statement but also find it a forerunner in other ways.

One of the things that makes this book really relevant to me is its satire. Abbott was making fun of the rigid English class system of his time which still exists today, although possibly in a less rigid form. The hierarchy of angles in Flatland, at least to me, is symbolic of money and nobility. Anyone with less angles than you is to be looked down upon.

Abbott was accused of misogynistic views in this book even back in his time when the norm was for women to be treated only as homemakers and baby factories. I do not think this book had it in for women. I believe that Abbott was actually trying to bring attention to how women were treated in that era, much as he was commenting on the absurdity of male rank and privilege. Uneducated men and soldiers were given a bad rap as well.

I would say that Flatland is the earliest book I've read that paints a portrait of a dystopia that would later be riffed on by works such as 1984, Brave New World, and more recently, young adult series like The Hunger Games and Divergence. The inhabitants of Flatland believe they live in the best of all possible worlds. Rules can't be changed. All the laws are for the common good. It's just too bad that if you rebel against society or are born deformed, you either have to be imprisoned for life or killed. It's for your own good.

I know this book is a satire but the treatment of deformity and nonconformance gave me the chills because it made me start thinking that about 60 years later a man named Hitler would put some of these ideas from Flatland into actual action. If you are born with uneven sides or odd angles, medical teams try to surgically modify them so you can look normal, but the majority of infants die in the process. If they can't modify you, the baby is put down. It also reminded me of the coming age of cosmetic genetics when parents will be able to change their baby's genes to suit their own tastes.

Flatland was a pretty dull book. I admit that freely. It's a novel of ideas and intellectual horseplay grounded on mathematics. The ideas that Abbott presents are pretty interesting and the fact that it still mirrors a lot of what is going on in our society kept me reading. It also helped that it's a really short book, clocking in at 117 pages. I would also recommend reading it because it's an example of early hard sci-fi.

My Grade: C