Flatterland

Flatterland is full of puns and science. Really, if it weren't for the name "Ian Stewart" on the front, I'd suspect it had somehow been written by me. Flatterland is a "sequel" of sorts to Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland, which I suppose you should technically read first, although I think Flatterland stands perfectly well on its own. Still, a quick review/summary of Flatland is in order.

Boop. Just did a quick review. Two paragraphs. It doesn't even have a picture of the cover. Go read it, if you'd like.

Anyways, back to Flatterland. As the tagline says, it's like Flatland, only more so. And with a healthy helping of Alice in Wonderland to boot. Flatterland is set about a hundred years after Flatland, and follows the adventures of Victoria "Vikki" Line, a woman who finds her some-number-of-greats-grandfather's book, which is entitled Flatland. (Yes, they are actually the same book.) Anyways, Vikki reads Flatland, and in it finds instructions for summoning a being from Spaceland, in a way that is kind of hilarious.

So, Vikki summons someone from Spaceland. However, she gets a bit more than she bargained for. Instead of the stuffy, boring old Sphere from Flatland, she meets a loud, energetic, grinning creature known as the Space Hopper, who can travel through much more than just stuffy, boring old Spaceland. The Space Hopper equips Vikki with a Virtual Unreality Engine, or VUE, and takes her on a tour of all sorts of spaces and geometries, meeting many strange people along the way. They pay special attention to a strange place called Planiturth, and the fact that its inhabitants don't really know which space they're in.

Personally, I really liked Flatterland. I'm a big fan of puns, and math, and paradoxes, and big toothy grins, and winks directed at the fourth wall, so what's not to like? I think Ian does a good job of describing and explaining all the spaces, and why they're all cool. If I had one complaint, it would be that there aren't enough pictures. Actually, I do have that complaint. A book about geometries should have more pictures in it. But, besides that, it's a fun read, and it stays crazy enough to always keep you guessing. If you like bending your brain a bit, and you don't mind a good pun every once in a while (or a bad pun (or twenty)), then I think you should try Ian Stewart's Flatterland.

Expedition

Expedition: being an account in words and artwork of the 2358 A. D. voyage to Darwin IV. That's the title, because I'm not sure you can read it in the tiny font on the picture.
Anyways, Expedition probably has the coolest alien world I've ever seen. That includes Snaiad, and you know how know how much I love OH WAIT YOU DON'T BECAUSE RAMJET STILL HASN'T MADE A SNAIAD BOOK.
Ahem.
Expedition probably has the coolest alien world I've ever seen. It's called Darwin IV (that's a four) and is a self-consistent planet with an odd ecology and a big ol' map. It's unique among alien worlds in that it doesn't try super hard to make the aliens look weird, they just kinda end up that way.
The story is about the author, Wayne Barlowe, who lives in the dying Earth of the 2300s. Most life on earth is dead, and humans have only survived because of their partnership with the Yma, a friendly alien race.
After receiving a mysterious picture of what appears to be an alien from the faster-than-light satellite on Darwin IV, the Yma and the humans prepare an expedition to the planet. The Yma choose Wayne Barlowe as one of the candidates for the expedition, because of his skill at drawing extinct Earth wildlife.
Barlowe is the artist of the crew. That's nice, because the reader isn't bogged down by the biology and geology of Darwin IV, and can just sit back and read Barlowe's stories about encountering these odd creatures.
The book is in six parts, each with a biome of sorts: Grasslands and Plains, Forest and Periphery, Amoebic Sea and Littoral Zone, Mountains, Tundra, and Air. Each of these sections as a few stories about Barlowe's adventures. Most of these adventures involve large wildlife and strange adaptations, and all are SUPER COOL.
I'm not really sure what else to say. Look, if you like what you heard so far, then read the book. It is super expensive, but I think it's worth it. This book. Is good.

The Deep Time Diaries, by Gary Raham

Deep time is the time deep in the past. The Deep Time Diaries is about two kids named John and Neesha Olifee and their parents. The Olifees one day found a pair of asteroids, Beta and Alpha. When they went into one of them, Neesha found a "room". One day when she was exploring the room she found what she thought was a bug on the wall. When she looked closely, she found out that the bug was a robot. Then the robot did something weird. He went into a keyboard of some kind and formed itself into one of the keys. Then, Neesha called her family. All four of them tried to pull the bug out but they couldn't do it. Then the accident happened. The room was a space ship. The bug made the ship work, and it zoomed to a wormhole made out of two black wholes in the middle of the asteroids. That was the beginning of the Time Travel Tour.

They measure the times that they have been by jumps. Jump 1 is terators and tar pits. In this jump, they discover a mini buggie in the ship and go out exploring finding lots of species from the ice age. With each jump they go farther back in time and understand more about the ship and the bugs it contains. They go all the way to Jump 8 where they discover a mysterious truth which I will not tell you because you will be looking forward to discovering it at the end of the book, but I will tell you that there is a truth. This book also has a few things for "21st century explorers" to do, like places to visit where you can dig fossils, research projects, and other books to read.

If you like science, prehistoric creatures, getting scared out of your wits (just kidding!), and laughing, read this book.