Most worlds of this type are populated on only one surface, but some are explicitly inhabited and inhabitable on both sides. A variant found specifically in science fiction is the Alderson disc, a flat construct roughly the size of the inner solar system with a hole at its center for the sun to stay in and wildly different environments depending on each region's distance from the sun. Waterfalls pouring off into the void are a common aesthetic touch questions about where the water goes or how it's replenished are rarely addressed, although the disk may be hemmed in by walls or mountains to prevent the issue to begin with. 'Hard edges': The most archetypal kind, a flat disk floating in space.The idea of it being about if the earth is flat or round dates from Washington Irving's 1828 novel A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, and has survived as an illustration of Medieval Morons.įlat worlds typically only appear in fantasy, but some science fiction works include artificial megastructures that are for the most part equivalent in appearance.įlat worlds can be broadly divided between several kinds: His opponents were right in saying the Earth is much larger. Rather, he thought it was much smaller than it's turned out to be. Contrary to popular belief, Christopher Columbus didn't have to try and convince people that the earth was round. Certainly, the curvature is so slight that it wasn't until the Greeks that the spherical Earth theory took hold, though some earlier people possibly knew it was round as well, such as Hindus and the early Hebrews. In ancient history, many cultures believed the Earth was flat.

If you walk far enough, you'll fall off the edge of the world. 'The Edge of the World', Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

Flat earth society edge of the world