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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting yet confused, March 6, 2004
A sequel, of sorts, to Edwin Abbott's classic novel, 'Flatland'. Joe Cube is a high tech executive waiting for his company to be IPOed. One night, while playing with his company's product (a TV screen that turns standard television broadcasting into a 3D image), Joe is contacted by Momo, a creature from the fourth dimension. Momo 'augments' Joe, giving him the ability to see into the fourth dimension, and also the ability to see into our dimension using a four dimension perspective. This gives Joe the unique ability of seeing inside people and objects, naturally, Joe tries to use this to make money... Momo only asks (demands, to be more exact) that Joe start a company that will create a specific product that she will supply. The plot gets complicated when another race of four-dimensional creatures, the Wackles, seem intent on stopping Joe. What is going on? Try the book and see. This sounds like a very cool premise and it really is. The author truly captured the feeling of a 4D universe, a 3D universe from a 4D perspective, as well as a one dimensional and a two dimensional universe. The book is worth reading if only for this.. or perhaps, only for this: The book suffers from the worst characterization I've ever read in a book. The characters are completely unbelievable, obnoxious, annoying, self-contradicting. They are ridiculous. It feels like a cartoon of a cartoon. Maybe that was the purpose? I've never read any other book by the author, so I can't really say if it's his style. It's a pity, because the book could've been so much better. At the end I couldn't stand any of the characters (including the protagonist). Another weakness is the plot itself: Until the middle of the book it's really quite a good story, but then the quality goes downhill from there.. Shame. I'm giving the book 4/5 stars, but if I could, 3.5/5 would be more appropriate.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Space Falls a Little Flat, March 4, 2007
I'm a big fan of Rudy Rucker, and the sheer power of his imagination continually blows the reader's mind. Unfortunately, this novel overdoes the imaginative science at the expense of a readable story. Granted, the backdrop of this novel is quite fascinating, as the misguided dot-commer protagonist Joe Cube finds himself in the fourth dimension. Rucker does an amazing job with prose, because he himself is exploring what 4D would look like to us spacelanders who are hopelessly stuck in 3D. It's also true that Rucker has engagingly built upon the influential "Flatland" by Edwin Abbott, which concerns a 2D person in our third dimension. But while the science of this novel is mindbending, and the 4D characters and their climactic battle are freaky, you eventually get the impression that Rucker was so interested in exploring his concept that he didn't get around to a useful plotline or likeable characters. The personalities of the characters and their interactions are either stereotypical or implausible, and the love story subplot is poorly constructed and dangerously close to sappy treacle. Rucker also dabbles briefly in some pseudo-religious big thoughts that go nowhere, and the storyline wraps up very awkwardly with implausible resolutions for everyone involved. Of course, this book is still a fine display of Rucker's remarkable imagination, but the story is what matters. And here that story is disappointingly two-dimensional. [~doomsdayer520~]
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nice mix of math with humor and saving the universe, June 21, 2002
Joe Cube's marriage is in trouble and he's frustrated with his life. On the turn of the Y-2-K, none of his fantasies of disaster are coming true. What does happen, however, is even weirder. A fourth dimension woman slides into his life, gives him a fourth dimension skin and a third eye at right angles to the three dimensions of "spaceland" and sets him up with a can't lose business opportunity--cellphones that can communicate without interference by transfering their messages through fourth dimension space. Even with his marriage down the tubes, Joe thinks he is on something. Better, with his third eye, he can see the upcoming cards in Las Vegas blackjack. The opportunities are without limit. Joe soon learns that the fourth dimensional actors are far from united. The three dimensional Spaceland of normal space separates two fourth dimension universes that would war on one another if the Spaceland barrier were to vanish. Meanwhile, back on earth, Joe is having trouble finding another woman, and gangsters are after him. Author Rudy Rucker has created a light and fun novel with a bit of a message, a bit of math, and some intriguing drawings of Flatland space and linear space. Joe, with his worries about his marriage and women, his dreams of making millions in an IPO, and his increasing addiction to a fourth dimension drug makes a sympathetic anti-hero who is finally given a chance to save the universe--and trundled off to jail for doing so. SPACELAND is a thought-provoking and amusing tale with a bit of a slanted--maybe even fourth dimension--moral to it.
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