I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.

Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows—only hard with luminous edges—and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said "my universe:" but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things.

In such a country, you will perceive at once that it is impossible that there should be anything of what you call a "solid" kind; but I dare say you will suppose that we could at least distinguish by sight the Triangles, Squares, and other figures, moving about as I have described them. On the contrary, we could see nothing of the kind, not at least so as to distinguish one figure from another. Nothing was visible, nor could be visible, to us, except Straight Lines; and the necessity of this I will speedily demonstrate.

Place a penny on the middle of one of your tables in Space; and leaning over it, look down upon it. It will appear a circle.

But now, drawing back to the edge of the table, gradually lower your eye (thus bringing yourself more and more into the condition of the inhabitants of Flatland), and you will find the penny becoming more and more oval to your view, and at last when you have placed your eye exactly on the edge of the table (so that you are, as it were, actually a Flatlander) the penny will then have ceased to appear oval at all, and will have become, so far as you can see, a straight line.

Flatland is written in the form of a letter from an inhabitant (a square, to be exact) of the two-dimensional world of Flatland. He first describes how he perceives his world using a very limited (compared to ours) sense of vision, combined with hearing and touch. After that he explains the social structure and history of the Flatlanders, a part that holds some pointed and funny satire, which could make the novella interesting for those not so inclined to enjoy the more mathematical musings. In next part, our narrator tells how he once visited the one-dimensional Lineland, the none-dimensional Pointland, our own three-dimensional Spaceland, and finally how he concludes from these experiences that there should be ad infinitum even more dimensions beyond that, dimensions that will be as difficult for us to understand and accept as it was for the Linelanders to understand Flatland, and for the Flatlanders the third dimension.

I found this novella very inspiring. It almost makes me want to try learn some graphics programming, in order to make little games that simulate how a Flatlander must perceive his world. There are a couple of computer games based on Flatland already (this Flash game looks really cool), but they all seem to present the world in a bird's eye view, which arguably makes it more accessible. I will also try to watch the recent movie and short film adaptations and see what take they have on the visuals.