2 Flat 2 Furious

Now, if you're anything like me you've had no end of trouble visualizing what fourth dimensional figures would look like. Yeah, we've all seen that little animated gif of that spinny tesseract on wikipedia. And if we can model 3D objects in 2D, surely the same can be said of higher dimensions?

But no, I just don't get 4D space. That is, until I read Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, the OG dimensional thought experiment written in 1884 by one Edwin A. Abbot. Now I still don't get 4D space but I understand why and more about how a fourth dimensional being would view three dimensional us. The novella takes place in Flatland, and it's about a square who spends most of the time describing flat society and how they roll. Then, he has a vision of Lineland, and receives a visit from a fantastical sphere, who introduces him to spaceland and beyond.

Really, pick this book up. You can probably even read it for free because I can't imagine a world where it's not in the public domain, and it's very neat and surprisingly readable to the modern eye.

Let's get straight to the point, though. The back cover promised "sex between consenting triangles." Now, the way things work in flatland is that all the figures are male and the women are lines, and the gay sex thing was Not Done back in those days. Needless to say, there is absolutely nothing titillating in any way about this book. Not that that's a bad thing given the subject matter, but it really bothers me when they outright lie to you about the contents on the back of a book.