clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org

acknowledgments and disclaimers
Dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form
When within thee the universe is folded?
—Baha'u'llah 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 pages 8, 43, 69, 96,
129, 155, and 163. Some of the drawings of Earthly animals, such as the seashells
and trilobites, come from the Dover Pictorial Archive; one excellent source is Ernst
Haeckel's Art Forms in Nature.
Many of the science-fiction books listed in Appendix B were suggested by Dr.
Sten Odenwald. The twisted bottle in Figure 5.10 is courtesy of artist/writer Paul
Ryan of the Earth Environmental Group and was drawn by Gary Allen. Figures 3.3,
3.8b, and 5.2 and are courtesy of the National Library of Medicine's Visible Human
Project. Don Webb is the author of the poem, "Reflections on aTesseract 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 X-Files TV show.
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