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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Four-Dimensional World for Imaginative Minds, September 11, 2001
The four-dimensional world treated in this book is not the space-time of the theory of relativity, but the world with a fourth spatial direction different from all the directions of our normal three-dimensional space. A number of books on the fourth dimension had already been published. So, why did Pickover, an IBM researcher who published many popular books, write this book? He gives an answer in the preface: The main purpose of the book is to tell the reader the physical appearance of four-dimensional beings, what they can do in our world, and the religious implications of their penetration into our world, with a few simple formulas and computer programs to aid the understanding of the four- and more-dimensional spaces (those who are not interested in computing can easily skip them). The author presents an SF story, in which an FBI agent, "you," gives personal lectures on hyperspace to his younger fellow agent Sally. Finally they both experience surfing into a four-dimensional world. Meanwhile the reader learns concepts and terms such as "hyperspheres," "tesseracts," "enantiomorphic," "extrinsic geometry," "quaternions," "nonorientable surfaces," etc. The author succeeds in achieving his aim rather well by the use of many illustrations and computer graphics, though he cites too much from Edwin Abbott's "Flatland" in early chapters and from Karl Heim's "Christian Faith and Natural Science" in later chapters. The book has nine Appendixes (one is a list of SF stories and novels about the fourth dimension), "Notes" and "Further Readings" sections, and Addendum about recent publications dealing with parallel universes and cosmic topology. These are also interesting and informative. This is a good book especially for theologians, philosophers, artists, and general readers who like wild imaginations or computer experiments. To the serious reader who wants to know the implications of hyperspace in modern physics, I would like to recommend Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace."
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Surfing Through Hyperspace is thought at it's peak., October 1, 1999
By A Customer
Most people are not ready or willing to accept the idea of a fourth dimension, but, Pickover seems to actually live there a few months out of the year. He steps back into our realm only long enough to create another volume to help the rest of us understand the higher universes he's been traversing. Hyperspace is very thoughtfully researched and written with such talent the world has not seen before and may not see again. It contains just the right amount of imagination without being too speculative. Just enough science without being bogged down with math, and a story to help you understand where he wants to go without resorting to "technobabble". All of the visual ideas are accompanied by simple, easy to digest illustrations. I seriosly recommend this and any other Pickover books that enter your range of interest. I promise you will not be wasting your time or money and you will come away from your experience wiser and able to see the world in a wonderful new way.
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30 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A profound disappointment in six easy lessons!, June 15, 2005
Queen Victoria almost certainly would have been amused if she had thought to pick up a copy of Edwin Abbott's inventive story "Flatland" when it was first published in 1884. But it's unlikely that she would be amused at the degree to which Pickover has chosen to rehash all of the same ideas - and, not just once, but seeking to dress the same material up as different chapters over and over again. My goodness, there are only so many ways that one can say a three dimensional sphere projects as a circle in two dimensions. Therefore, a four dimensional hypershpere projects into three dimensions as a sphere. OK, OK - I got it the first time!
It's bad enough that Surfing Through Hyperspace barely rises above plagiarism. But Pickover has tried to tart the presentation up with a bizarre, pretentious narration that is also a simple rip off from Scully and Mulder of X-Files fame! This silly repetitious presentation borders on insulting to any intelligent reader who, after reading a couple or three chapters, will realize they would have been better off going to the store to buy the original item - Flatland.
Any other material that is beyond Flatland - wormholes, Many Worlds Theory, quantum mechanics and superluminal contact, to name a few examples - are explained more completely and more clearly in any number of other sources. I did briefly get excited when one chapter headed down a road that looked really promising - multidimensional variations on games like chess and monopoly; knights that weren't allowed to effectively jump into the 3rd dimension by leaping over men on the board; 3-D chess play inside an 8x8 cube; a chess board on a Möbius strip. Then Pickover pulled the ultimate cop out - "We leave exploration of these interesting variations as an exercise to the reader." For crying out loud, if I was a mathematician, a physicist or a game theorist, somehow I doubt I would have purchased the book in the first place!
Surfing Through Hyperspace promised a deeper understanding of higher dimensions but, for me, it was a profound disappointment.
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