Books within Books

I reading this brilliant book called “The End of Mr Y” by Scarlett Thomas. It’s exactly my kind of thing, jumping about from one idea to the next, delving into spiritually, multi-dimensions, time travel and requiring me to stop every few pages to look something up to make sure I know what they are talking about. It’s an exercise in information and I love the way it is working to link all these things together to create the story. Plus, within the first few chapters it got me thinking about the genius that is Flatland.

Flatland was written by Edwin Abott in 1884. I’d almost forgotten about this book, the idea behind it is so simple, it is used now to explain the idea behind multi-dimensional and this can be extended to the idea of multiverses.

The Plot:
The story is about a two-dimensional world referred to as Flatland. The unnamed narrator, a Square has a dream about a visit to a one-dimensional world (Lineland), and attempts to convince the worlds leader of a second dimension, without success.
Square is then visited by a three-dimensional Sphere, which he cannot comprehend until he sees Spaceland for himself. The Sphere, spends millenniums trying to educate the population of Flatland of the existence of Spaceland. However, the leaders of Flatland decide to hide the truth of the Sphere and Spaceland and ban its mention, leading to the imprisonment and death of anyone found speaking of Spaceland.
Square then tries to talk to Sphere about the theoretical possibility of the existence of a fourth (and fifth, and sixth ...) spatial dimension. Ironically, Spehere finds these ideas preposterous and returns square to Flatland in disgrace.
Square then dreams about visiting Pointland. The point (sole inhabitant, leader, and universe in one) perceives any attempt at communicating with him as simply being a thought originating in his own mind. The Square recognises that all these worlds suffer the same problem of ignorance and denial over the existence of other dimensions.
Once returned to Flatland, Square finds it difficult to convince anyone of Spaceland's existence, and is imprisoned for speaking of it in line with the leader proclamation.


Its just beginnig to talk about quantum theory, and I’ve got two-thirds of the book to go! This is going ot be good.