Hinton, whose biography is a
little too weird for me to believe and whose essays on the fourth dimension
(see for example A New
Era of Thought) leave me wondering how much he really believed that the
fourth dimension was the key to unifying humanity, wrote this short story
based on Abbott's Flatland.
It is now available on-line at Eldrich Press's Hinton site. Contributed by
Andrew
The story, from my recollection, is more based on a human's observations of the Flatland world than anything else.
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Contributed by
Sarah-Marie Belcastro
Pretty boring (like much of Hinton's writing), and not much in the way of math. Actually, this was the least boring of all of Hinton's fiction that I've read. Some of the characters believe that they can save their planet from disaster by using the 3rd dimension, but how they would accomplish this in practice is not revealed in the narrative. No 3D creatures come to save them... the text ends with nothing resolved.
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Contributed by
Marcus L. Rowland
Just to let you know - I have a complete version of Hinton's An Episode of Flatland on my web site, not the abridged version found on most sites.
I'm also the author of a Flatland Role Playing Game published in PDF and sold in aid of Doctors Without Borders. Any publicity you feel able to give it would be appreciated.
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As of July 2023, the links above do not seem to be working. I have left the broken links as historical records and refer anyone interested in this story or Hinton himself to: (a) the Wikipedia entry on Hinton, (b) a historical novel about Hinton, and (c) this scanned version of the story provided by forgottenfutures.co.uk. |