Animating Flatland
Like shadows, the denizens of Flatland flit about freely on the surface of their two-dimensional world. All Flatland's inhabitants—straight lines, triangles, squares, pentagons, and other figures—are trapped in their planar geometry. They lack the power (and the imagination) to rise above or sink below the flat surface of their strictly limited realm.
That's the idea behind a remarkable book called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, written in 1884 by Edwin A. Abbott (1838–1926), the head of a school for boys in London. Conceived as a satire, this slim volume has long served as a doorway to the fourth dimension and beyond for many explorers of geometry.
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Still available in a variety of editions, Flatland has attracted all sorts of attention over the years. Mathematician Thomas F. Banchoff of Brown University has looked extensively into Abbott's life and background, pursuing the question of how Abbott came to write this book. Banchoff himself provides some hints in the introduction to a Princeton University Press edition of Flatland.
Mathematician Ian Stewart of the University of Warwick produced not only an annotated edition of Flatland but also an entertaining sequel that he titled Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So.
Now, a team of filmmakers is creating an animated version of Abbott's classic. You can find out more about this production at http://www.flatlandthemovie.com/. The 30-minute movie is slated to be part of an educational DVD that will also include the original text of the book, teacher notes, games, and quizzes.
It's hard to tell from the glimpses available at the filmmaker's Web site how true the production will be to the original book, but the early signs aren't encouraging. The final result may very well be entertaining, educational, and visually stimulating, but the story and characters will apparently differ significantly from those in Abbott's book.
It'll be interesting to see what finally comes out of this effort. In the meantime, the original Flatland is as accessible as ever—in print.
References:
Abbott, E.A. 2005. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, with an introduction by Thomas F. Banchoff. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
______. 2002. The Annotated Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, with introduction and notes by Ian Stewart. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus.
______. 1992. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. Dover.
Banchoff, T.F. 1990. From Flatland to hypergraphics. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 15(No. 4):364-372. Available at http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/ISR/ISR.html.
Peterson, I. 2000. Views from Flatland. Muse 4(October):26-27. Available at http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/pages/puzzlezone/muse/muse1000.asp.
______. 2000. A stranger from Spaceland. Science News Online (Jan. 1). Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20000101/mathtrek.asp.
The full text of Flatland is available at http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/Flatland/.
Comments
Came across this while looking for reviews of a role-playing game I publish based on Flatland - don't know if it's of interest to your readers, but since it's sold in aid of charity I'm keen to give it as much publicity as possible.
It's The Original Flatland Role Playing Game, and can be downloaded as a 97-page PDF, price $6.99, from
http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=ROW003
The game includes the complete text etc. of the original book, role playing rules, adventures, a wargame, and a section on the biology and other science of Flatland.
Posted by: Marcus Rowland | July 25, 2006 04:58 PM
Very good article. I didn't find all references books to read more about this .
-good job
Posted by: Gariel | September 4, 2006 02:24 PM
Thomas Banchoff has made the subject of extra dimensions interesting in regards to the computer modelling that is being done, and the fith dimensinal perspective offered from our computer screens.
Posted by: Plato | September 20, 2006 12:22 AM