Science Fiction, Art, and the Fourth Dimension

Linda Dalrymple Henderson
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Linda Dalrymple Henderson: Texas University, Department of Art and Art History

A chapter in Imagine Math 3, 2015, pp 69-84 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The notion of a higher geometrical dimension, “the fourth dimension of space,” has been a vital stimulus for both writers of science fiction and artists since the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Indeed, it was science fiction writers like H. G. Wells who first responded to the new popular interest in the fourth dimension, over a decade before artists began to engage the idea. And before that, both E. A. Abbott’s Flatland of 1884 and the “Scientific Romances” of hyperspace philosopher Charles Howard Hinton, published in the mid-1880s and mid-1890s, contributed significantly to the popularization of the idea of higher spatial dimensions. This essay explores the usages of the spatial fourth dimension by wells and subsequent science fiction writers as well as cubist painters and the artist Robert Smithson.

Keywords: Science Fiction; Fourth Dimension; Spatial Fourth Dimension; Block Universe; Twisted Cube (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-01231-5_7

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-01231-5_7

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