很难简单概括《平面国》这本书。
它可以是：首次解释"维度"概念的科普读物、脑洞大开的科幻小说、煞有介事的数学童话、剑走偏锋的精神启蒙、辛辣讽喻英国维多利亚时代的社会寓言。
这本一百年前横空出世的小书，通篇在一本正经地胡说八道，散发着浓浓英式幽默，有趣、迷人，令人捧腹 。
它启发过无数大师，深刻影响了现当代科学。“平面国”已然成为全球范围内的超级文化符号。
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作者在平面宇宙设定基础上，展开细节详实的“平面国”生活画卷。平面国的各形状居民操心自己的国家社会，就像我们操心自己的日常生活。他们住在平面房子里，通过雾气和光线识别他人，靠彼此触摸识别“角度”区分地位。平面国史上还发生通过染色消除阶级而引发的大事件，比起空间世界的人类历史也不遑多让。
故事的主角，一位体面的正方形先生突然遇到了从三维国前来平面国传福音的“球”。他决定跟随这位导师向平面国传播立体空间的真理，却无法用平面国居民能理解的语言去解释高度和上（而不是北）。被人当做疯子后，他写出了这部传世的《平面国》。
作为读者的我们，将在这个故事中获得上帝视角，得以审视自身，以科学的态度，理解“科学的谦卑”
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*** 题 献 ***
写给所有空间中的居民
特别献给H·C
本书的作者是一位谦卑的平面国居民
他一开始只知道两二维的世界
后来才有幸被引入三维的空间
作者把这本书献给天空之国的臣民们
希望本书能激励你们不断立下更高的志向
去探索四维、五维、甚至六维的秘密
立体人，你们是比作者更高级的物种
愿探索能拓宽你们的想象
并孕育出最少见、最卓越的美德——谦虚
—— 本书作者正方形

Thomas Pynchon brings us to New York in the early days of the internet
It is 2001 in New York City, in the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11th. Silicon Alley is a ghost town, Web 1.0 is having adolescent angst, Google has yet to IPO, Microsoft is still considered the Evil Empire. There may not be quite as much money around as there was at the height of the tech bubble, but there’s no shortage of swindlers looking to grab a piece of what’s left.
Maxine Tarnow is running a nice little fraud investigation business on the Upper West Side, chasing down different kinds of small-scale con artists. She used to be legally certified but her license got pulled a while back, which has actually turned out to be a blessing because now she can follow her own code of ethics—carry a Beretta, do business with sleazebags, hack into people’s bank accounts—without having too much guilt about any of it. Otherwise, just your average working mom—two boys in elementary school, an off-and-on situation with her sort of semi-ex-husband Horst, life as normal as it ever gets in the neighborhood—till Maxine starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm and its billionaire geek CEO, whereupon things begin rapidly to jam onto the subway and head downtown. She soon finds herself mixed up with a drug runner in an art deco motorboat, a professional nose obsessed with Hitler’s aftershave, a neoliberal enforcer with footwear issues, plus elements of the Russian mob and various bloggers, hackers, code monkeys, and entrepreneurs, some of whom begin to show up mysteriously dead. Foul play, of course.
With occasional excursions into the DeepWeb and out to Long Island, Thomas Pynchon, channeling his inner Jewish mother, brings us a historical romance of New York in the early days of the internet, not that distant in calendar time but galactically remote from where we’ve journeyed to since.
Will perpetrators be revealed, forget about brought to justice? Will Maxine have to take the handgun out of her purse? Will she and Horst get back together? Will Jerry Seinfeld make an unscheduled guest appearance? Will accounts secular and karmic be brought into balance?
Hey. Who wants to know?

由出品四届艾美奖最佳影集【广告狂人】、两届艾美奖最佳影集【绝命毒师】、艾美奖四项提名作品【谋杀】和金球奖最佳影集提名及美国最高收视电视作品【行尸走肉】的金奖电视网AMC，与出品BAFTA英国电影和电视艺术学院奖最佳电视影集【乌托邦】、 【小镇疑云】的英国电视4台，跨越国界，双剑合璧，携手联合制作的八集电视影集《真实的人类》将于六月廿八日晚上九时在美国首映。这出全新科幻影集改编自备受评论界激赞的瑞典获奖科幻影集《Real Humans》，并由英国编剧Sam Vincent 和Jonathan Brackley (【反恐谍报战】) 执笔重新创作剧本。该剧设定在机器人Synth被繁忙都市人广泛使用的世界，呈现人类与机器人的界限愈发模糊后，扣人心弦的矛盾冲突、心理冲击与道德拷问。

Caleb, a coder at the world's largest internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain retreat belonging to Nathan, the reclusive CEO of the company. But when Caleb arrives at the remote location he finds that he will have to participate in a strange and fascinating experiment in which he must interact with the world's first true artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot girl.