The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World

The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World
by A.K. Dewdney

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Book Summary Information

Author: A.K. Dewdney
Edition: Paperback
Audio: German (Original Language); German (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2000-10-12
ISBN: 0387989161
Number of pages: 247
Publisher: Springer
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Book Reviews of The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World

Book Review: In the 1980's some students and a Professor meet YNDRD...
Summary: 5 Stars

The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two Dimensional World by AK Dewdney

The setting is a graduate program in the early 1980's. Computers are mainframes, time and resources are precious, and programs are primitive at best.

A group of students led by their professor decide to model a two dimensional world--with the deptyh and horizontal axis rather than the horizontal and vertical axes of Flatland. It starts as an exercise in pure physics, mathematics and computer science, until their model somehow connects to a real two-dimensional world, and an inhabitant, YNDRD, who can hear them in his mind.

And with YNDRD as our guide, we begin to learn about himself and the two dimensional Planiverse that makes his home...

Its a classic for good and many reasons. Dewdney's characters, with the exception of a little unnecessary and half-baked melodrama, are easily recognized academic types, jealous of their prize, and eager to learn more and more about the world they have inadvertently contacted. The Planiverse is a marvel of a gedankenexperiment--how could an inhabitable two-dimensional world exist and what would it be like? YNDRD goes on what is ultimately a spiritual quest (the novel can be thought of, really as a sufi story)--so there is a fair dollop of philosophy mixed in with the science.So we get to see a wide swath of his world, his beliefs and his life,and learn about it all as he makes his journey.

Although the technology has changed over time, the novel can comfortably be thought of as taking place in the early 1980's rather than as a contemporary novel. Once upon a time, computers really were this primitive.

There are lots of asides and text boxes exploring some of the concepts touched upon, as well as appendices that give the Planiverse even more depth. It's an amazing book and definitely suited to those who would want to think about the implications and puzzle of a two-dimensional world. The narrative itself is pretty basic and straightforward--but the universe, man, is where this novel shines. Dewdney's conceit in making the novel at first seem like a first hand account of a real event gives it verisimilitude, and the level of detail, as said above, sells it.

Highly Recommended.

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Summary of The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World

The year is 1981, and in the computer lab of a large university a group of graduate students and their professor are hard at work on their mainframe, graphically modeling an imaginary two-dimensional world. The project is going well, extraordinarily well, when one student suddenly notices that the world they are building with their graphics program is . . . inhabited!

So begins A.K. Dewdney?s newly republished 1984 tale of trans-dimensional discovery and communication. The students and their professor find, to their astonishment, that they are communicating with Yendred, their only contact in the 2D world of Arde. At first disbelieving, they are soon entranced by a universe in which astonishing tiny creatures?indeed an entire astonishing world?exist solely on an x-y plane.

This book, following in the footsteps Edward Abbot?s nineteenth century classic Flatland, is a cult favorite among mathematicians and computer scientists. As a kind of mental puzzle or brain-teaser, it challenges and delights, inviting readers to imagine just how a two-dimensional world might work. But the book is also a parable, serving as a cautionary tale about the difficulties of communication from one totally alien world to another, and suggesting that it is not only two-dimensional Ardeans who fail to see beyond the the obvious world before their eyes.

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