Abbott's classic novel, Flatland, Rucker gives us a tour of higher mathematics and visionary realities.

Rudy Rucker is a past master at turning mathematical concepts into rollicking science fiction adventure, from Spacetime Donuts and White Light to The Hacker and the Ants. Suddenly the fate of all life here in Spaceland is at stake.

Joe is having the time of his life, until Momo's scheme turns out to have angles he couldn't have imagined. After that it's a wild ride through a million-dollar night in Las Vegas, a budding addiction to tasty purple 4-D food, a failing marriage, eye-popping excursions into the All, and encounters with Momo's foes, rubbery red critters who steal money, offer sage advice and sometimes messily explode. The upside potential becomes much clearer to him once she helps him grow a new eye (on a stalk) that can see in the fourth-dimensional directions, and he agrees. Momo has a business proposition for Joe, an offer she won't let him refuse. He has just met Momo, a woman from the All, a world of four spatial dimensions for whom our narrow world, which she calls Spaceland, is something like a rug, but one filled with motion and life. When Joe sees a set of lips talking to him (floating in midair) and feels the poke of a disembodied finger (inside him), it's not because of the champagne he's drunk. It brings no new warmth to their cooling relationship, but it does attract someone else's attention. On New Year's Eve, hoping to impress his wife, he sneaks home the prototype. Joe Cube is a Silicon Valley hotshot-well, a would-be hotshot anyway-hoping that the 3-D TV project he's managing will lead to the big money IPO he's always dreamed of.

Tom doherty associates