In the second part, Mr Square travels in a dream to the one-dimensional universe of Lineland, whose inhabitants are unable to conceive of a two-dimensional universe he is in turn visited from Spaceland by a three-dimensional visitor - named Sphere because he is spherical - whom Mr Square cleverly persuades to believe in four-dimensional worlds as well. The first is a highly entertaining description of the two-dimensional world of Flatland, in which inhabitants' shapes establish their (planar) hierarchical status.

Narrated and illustrated by Mr Square, the novel falls into two parts. ABBOTT, EDWIN A(BBOTT) (1839-1926) UK clergyman, academic and writer whose most noted work, published originally as by A Square, is FLATLAND: A ROMANCE OF MANY DIMENSIONS (1884). In The Monkey-Wrench Gang (19) and its sequel, Hayduke Lives! (1990), this pessimism is countered by prescriptions for physically sabotaging the polluters of the West which, when put into practice, nearly displace normal reality structure-hitting, as practised by 21st century saboteurs in Bruce STERLING's Heavy Weather (1994), seems to derive from EA's premise Good Times (fixup 1980) is set in a balkanized USA after nuclear fallout has helped destroy civilization an Indian shaman, along with other characters similar to those in The Monkey-Wrench Gang, fights back against tyranny. SF&F encyclopedia (A-A) ABBEY, EDWARD (1927-1989) US writer, perhaps best known for his numerous essays on the US West, in which he clearly expresses a scathing iconoclasm about human motives and their effects on the world. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction by John Clute, Peter Nicholls

The Craghold Creatures by Edwina Noone