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From: OC.Trei%CU20B@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: The Planiverse, by AK Dewdney.
Message-ID: <126@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Mar-84 01:15:25 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.126
Posted: Mon Mar 26 01:15:25 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 22-Mar-84 02:19:53 EST
Lines: 61

From:  Peter G. Trei 

	The Planiverse (Computer contact with a two-dimensional world).
by A.K. Dewdney. Poseiden Press (1984). $9.95, 267 pp., trade paperback.
0-671-46363-2 (-4 for hardback).

	Back when I was in high school, one of my math teachers, aware
of my interest in SF, loaned me his copy of A. Abbott's Flatland, a
fantasy written back in 1884 describing a society inhabiting a
2-dimensional universe. It was fascinating, and certainly one of the
earliest alternate-universe stories I can think of (do check it out if
you can).

	A.K. Dewdney, a CS professor at the University of Western
Ontario, has updated the Abbott's idea, and drawn it out in far
greater detail. With the collaboration of many scientists, he has
restructured Flatland, giving it astrophysics, geology, chemistry,
gravity, biology, and politics. In the book we follow Yndrd, an
inhabitant of the planet Arde, as he travels across his world. He
sees, (and we get to watch) two-dimensional fishing boats, housing,
monsters, steelmills, and cities. He visits the local equivalent of a
university, and we learn of two-dimensional biology, chemistry, and
computer science (beleive it or not, you CAN make two signal paths
cross in 2D, but it's tricky.) The 2D steam-engine is particularly
elegant, and his people also travel by balloon and rocket. There is
even a space station in orbit around his world.

	What makes this all SF rather than just a travelogue is the
way we are in contact with Yndrd; Dr. Dewdney presents the contact as
an accidental byproduct of an experimental simulation of a 2D world,
which somehow resonated with a real Flatland, and put him into contact
with it. On the periphery of the story are the efforts of himself and
the few students in on the contact to keep it a secret from the
university administration, which is firmly opposed to strange goings
on in the CS building late at night.

	I cant say this is deathless prose, but if you saw the early
report on this project which Martin Gardner made in Scientific
American a couple years back, I know you will rush out to get it. If
you liked Hal Clement's "Mission of Gravity" or Forward's more recent
"Dragon's Egg", you will also like it. As an alternate-world story, it's a
little weak on plot, but very strong on ideas and imagination.

	I cannot leave this review forgetting to mention that The
Planiverse is copiously illustrated by the author, to its great
advantage (try describing a two-dimensional piano without drawing
it!). There is also an appendix which describes many of the facets of
his world which Yndrd never get gets around to.

	Despite the price, this is a must-read book for anyone with an 
imagination.

						Peter Trei
						oc.trei%cu20b@columbia-20


PS: Has'nt the MZB/feminisim debate gotton a little out of hand? We are having
comments on peoples comments on peoples comments! (Is that a self-referential
sentence?).
								PT
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