Dear Listener,
Within my first couple of weeks at Lemuria, I caught book fever. If you are not familiar with this disease, I’ll have you know it can be very deadly (to your bank account). The symptoms include, but are not limited to: salivating over first editions, feeling a yearning to take books home with you every day, and searching the dense data base for interesting editions of books you may already have.
This is how I ended up ordering an annotated version of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884) by Edwin A. Abbott, a book I already own twice over. As densely written as it is, this new annotated edition (annotated by Ian Stewart) brought to light so many ideas that I had not understood in previous readings.
Isaac Asimov said this about Flatland:
Edwin A. Abbott
Why has the book remained so popular for almost a hundred years? Because, like Mark Twain, Professor Abbott must have thought: I refuse to be serious about a serious subject. Churches brim with seriousness and snoozers snooze. Scientific conferences of one denomination or another drone on through endless and ungoiden afternoons and one chooses the catnap as against suicide. The only medicine is high spirits and good humor.
If you find 19th century mathematical science fiction to be dense and un-interpretable, this timeless song from Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea might help you feel more willing in your artistic acceptance.
by Simon
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