For some reason, I can't add this book to my shelf, but I'm about a quarter of the way through Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. I get that it's a classic of science fiction for how it imagines the immense enlightenment of second, third, and fourth dimensional space, and it's my go-to allegory on the subject. So far, I really dislike it, though. I know it's old, but it's still shockingly sexist and classist to my sensibilities. It also creates lore wholecloth that isn't necessary to underscore the point of the thought experiment, and unless our author Edwin Abbott explains himself later on, I'm convinced he hasn't thought it all the way through to its many conclusions. If the isosceles people are so prevented from achieving the ranks of the polygons, but equilateral people are so easily graduated into having more sides, the middle class of Flatland is going to disappear in only a handful of generations, and not into the lower class, as is the case in my reality today, but into the circle realm, which just doesn't stand to reason given the power dynamics of the revered yet gatekept circle class. Flatland is revolutionary in its base concept, but for me, it's the epitome of not throwing out the baby with the bathwater in short novel form. And this bathwater stinks.

How are you guys doing?

.Floating City