acknowledgments and disclaimers

Dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form When within thee the universe is folded?

Bahaullah quoting Imam Ali, the first Shia Imam

I owe a special debt of gratitude to mathematician Dr. Rudy Rucker for his wonderful books and papers from which I have drawn many facts regarding the fourth dimension. I heartily recommend his book The Fourth Dimension for further information on higher dimensions in science and spirituality. I also thank Dr. Thomas Banchoff, author of Beyond the Third Dimension , for his pioneering work in visualizing the fourth dimension. Among his many talents, Dr. Banchoff is also an expert on the nineteenth-century classic Flatland , which continues to be an excellent introduction to the interrelationship between worlds of different dimensions. The various works of Martin Gardner, listed in the Further Readings section, have also been influential in my formulating an eclectic view of the fourth dimension. I thank Kirk Jensen, my editor at Oxford University Press, for his continued support and encouragement, and Brian Mansfield, Lorraine Miro, Carl Speare, Arlin Anderson, Clay Fried, Gary Adamson, Ben Brown, Sean Henry, Michelle Sullivan, Greg Weiss, and Dan Platt for useful advice and comments. Brian Mansfield prepared many of the illustrations and April Pedersen drew the wonderful small cartoons used in the chapter openings on . Some of the drawings of Earthly animals, such as the seashells and trilobites, come from the Dover Pictorial Archive; one excellent source is Ernst Haeckels Art Forms in Nature .

Many of the science-fiction books listed in Appendix B were suggested by Dr. Sten Odenwald. The twisted bottle in and are courtesy of the National Library of Medicines Visible Human Project. Don Webb is the author of the poem, Reflections on a Tesseract Rose.

The Chinese calligraphy in the Introduction was contributed by Dr. Siu-Leung Lee, who has been practicing the art of calligraphy for more than forty years. Capable of writing in many styles, Dr. Lee has created his own form evolving from those of the Han and Jin dynasties. Roughly translated, his calligraphy is: We surf in higher dimensions. The calligraphy uses lettering that combines archaic structure and fluid movements to symbolize the dynamic nature of the universe.

This book was not prepared, approved, or endorsed by any entity associated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, nor was it prepared, approved, licensed, or endorsed by any entity involved in creating or producing the