The Planiverse by A.K. Dewdney

To give it its full title "The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World" and tauted as "Flatland for computer scientists".

This is one of the books I bought for Christmas 2006. I only managed to read it last Christmas. It was quite an enjoyable book. Written with the same purpose of "Flatland" i.e. to provide a fictional story of two dimensional beings to help the reader imagine what the 4th spacial dimension would be like to us three dimensional beings.

It ended up not being what I first imagined. I dreaded to think that story would somehow be about creating life within the bounds of a '80s super computer, which it thankfully didn't try to suggest. It was more fantasy than that. Instead we are told that the computer is just a means of communication with an already existent real 2d world. We follow "Yndrd" on his travels across his home world "Arde". Two dimensional technology, biology, sociology etc. are explained (and theorised) as the story develops. Seldom is the reader left wondering how an object works. Never is there a case of, "oh theres a 2d clock, damned if I know how its meant to work". Indeed the whole point of the book is to explain how things might work in a dimensionally challenged world. Explanation is helped by the fact that we can see into everything, simply because of the nature of viewing 2d objects in three dimensional space. Objects in 2d don't need a third dimensional skin to keep things in place.

The story gathers momentum as the books goes on and by the final chapter I was totally engrossed. As often happens when talking about hyperdimensional spaces, a possible explanation for supernatural forces arises and other than that I'll say no more.

A very nice book, which is more flavorsome than the original Flatland. If you ever had an interest in wondering how higher dimensions might work, its certainly a good place to start. It has nice diagrams on nearly every second page and starts off on taking nothing for granted. I've included the google preview of the book below in an iframe. Theres a lot of pages to look at but most of the diagrams have been removed. Just hit the "Full Screen" button and once on the "zoom out" icon and youre ready to go.