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If you like this, you'll like Planiverse (1984) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planiverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planiverse A bit like the classi

If you like this, you'll like Planiverse (1984) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planiverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planiverse A bit like the classic Flatland book, this also imagines a 2D world, and also fosters thinking about higher dimensions. But there's a nice shift: if there's an "up" in Flatland, it points out of the world, whereas in Planiverse, the up is in-world, and we visit the world by looking at it from the side, rather than from above. So the creatures of Planiverse would be great at playing MAR1D. Planiverse also creatively thinks through a lot of the physical and mechanical realities of living in a 2D world, and is wrapped in a poignant narrative about using computers to connect to alternate realities. (ah shoot I just learned that the author has turned into a 9/11 truther, but Planiverse remains a cool book)

hobo_in_library 4y ago
> I just learned that the author has turned into a 9/11 truther I don't get those folks. Personally, I identify as a 9/11 falser.
lioeters 4y ago
Planiverse is one of my all-time favorite books. Some tasty morsels: The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World - Engineering Designs in Planiverse - https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2005-06/planiverse/designs.html https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/project... --- > Dewdney wrote The Planiverse as..an allegory for his search for a reality deeper than that of scientific enquiry, and his subsequent conversion to Sufiism. We're the ones living in flatland, a planiverse of limited 3D perspective, who yearn for higher dimensions of experience, a glimpse of the beyond. Unfortunately it's not without risk, as this way madness lies - either as a trap of illusion, or at least as a step toward fundamental truth (if any).
- egypturnash 4y ago
  subsequent conversion to Sufiism. Huh. That makes a lot of sense from what I remember of the way the whole thing ended, with Yendred's time under the tutelage of Drabk the Sharak. Hello weird names still stuck in my head after thirty or so years. Not that this wasn't also a theme in Abbot's earlier Flatland, most of his other writing was theology, and it, too, climaxes with a mystical experience for its 2D protagonist. But A. Square ends up back in his flat world, writing from a madhouse, rather than transcending it and going on to... something inexplicable. I have spent time poking against this sort of thing and madness is definitely a possible result.

hobo_in_library 4y ago

> I just learned that the author has turned into a 9/11 truther I don't get those folks. Personally, I identify as a 9/11 falser.

lioeters 4y ago

Planiverse is one of my all-time favorite books. Some tasty morsels: The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World - Engineering Designs in Planiverse - https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2005-06/planiverse/designs.html https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/project... --- > Dewdney wrote The Planiverse as..an allegory for his search for a reality deeper than that of scientific enquiry, and his subsequent conversion to Sufiism. We're the ones living in flatland, a planiverse of limited 3D perspective, who yearn for higher dimensions of experience, a glimpse of the beyond. Unfortunately it's not without risk, as this way madness lies - either as a trap of illusion, or at least as a step toward fundamental truth (if any).

egypturnash 4y ago
subsequent conversion to Sufiism. Huh. That makes a lot of sense from what I remember of the way the whole thing ended, with Yendred's time under the tutelage of Drabk the Sharak. Hello weird names still stuck in my head after thirty or so years. Not that this wasn't also a theme in Abbot's earlier Flatland, most of his other writing was theology, and it, too, climaxes with a mystical experience for its 2D protagonist. But A. Square ends up back in his flat world, writing from a madhouse, rather than transcending it and going on to... something inexplicable. I have spent time poking against this sort of thing and madness is definitely a possible result.