Tesseract

Hypercubes in science fiction

Robert Heinlein mentioned hypercubes in at least two of his science-fiction stories. "?And He Built a Crooked House?" (1940) described a house built as a net (i.e. an unfolding of the cells into three-dimensional space) of a tesseract. It collapsed, becoming a real 4-dimensional tesseract.

Related Topics:
Robert Heinlein - Science-fiction - "?And He Built a Crooked House?" - 1940

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Glory Road (1963) included the foldbox, a hyperdimensional packing case that was bigger inside than outside. It is unclear if Glory Road was influenced by the debut of the science fiction television series Doctor Who on the BBC that same year. In Doctor Who, the main character pilots a time machine called a TARDIS, which is built with technology which makes it "dimensionally transcendental", that is, bigger inside than out.

Related Topics:
Glory Road - 1963 - Science fiction television - Doctor Who - BBC - Time machine - TARDIS

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In addition, a reference can be found in The Number of the Beast (1980), wherein the Burroughs continua device uses the hypercube principle to travel interdimensional universes to the incredible number of the beast.

Related Topics:
The Number of the Beast - 1980 - The incredible number of the beast

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A hypercube is also used as the main deus ex machina of Robert J. Sawyer's book Factoring Humanity.

Related Topics:
Deus ex machina - Robert J. Sawyer - Factoring Humanity

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The tesseract is mentioned in the children's fantasy novel A Wrinkle In Time, by Madeleine L'Engle, as a way of introducing the concept of higher dimensions, but the treatment is extremely vague. In that book she uses the tesseract as a portal, a doorway which you can pass through and emerge far away from the starting point, as if the two distant points were brought together at one intersection (at the tesseract doorway) by the folding of space, enabling near-instantaneous transportation.

Related Topics:
A Wrinkle In Time - Madeleine L'Engle

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In Alex Garland's 1998 novel "The Tesseract", the author uses the term to mean the three-dimensional net of the four-dimensional hypercube rather than the hypercube itself. It is a metaphor for the characters' inability to understand the causes behind the events which shape their lives: they can only visualize the superficial world they inhabit.

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The movie ' focuses on eight strangers trapped inside a "hypercube", or a net of connected hypercubes.

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Hypercubes and all kinds of multi-dimensional space and structures star prominently in many books by Rudy Rucker.

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The DC Comics crossover DC One Million showed a future Earth in which cities occupied extradimensional areas called tesseracts, leaving the planet's surface unspoiled. Similar technology was used for Superman's current Fortress of Solitude, and was used as storage space in the headquarters of the original incarnation (pre-Zero Hour) of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Related Topics:
DC Comics - Crossover - Superman - Fortress of Solitude - Zero Hour - Legion of Super-Heroes

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The television series Andromeda makes use of tesseract generators as a plot device. These are primarily intended to manipulate space (also referred to as phase shifting) but often cause problems with time as well.

Related Topics:
Television series - Andromeda

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Another TV series, Strange Days at Blake Holsey High (also known as Black Hole High), features an episode (The Tesseract) where Lucas gets trapped in a tesseract. Lucas calls someone he thinks will help (Corrine), but she gets sucked into the tesseract. Eventually, the school folds up in time as well as space. With the help of a "disappeared" teacher, Lucas unfolds the tesseract. The episode gave a good description of a tesseract (see http://www.tvtome.com/StrangeDaysatBlakeHolseyHigh/).

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In the Nickelodeon TV show Jimmy Neutron, Jimmy doesn't want to eat his corn. So he casually puts it into his Four Dimensional Hypercube that he made himself.

Related Topics:
Nickelodeon - Jimmy Neutron

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In the Infocom text adventure, Spellbreaker, the climax of the story features a tesseract constructed by various featureless white cubes, each of which has magical property corresponding to the base elements of the universe.

Related Topics:
Infocom - Text adventure - Spellbreaker - Climax

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