Post by Max Sinister on Jan 4, 2023 10:35:52 GMT
Jorge Luis Borges is an Argentinian author (meanwhile dead) who's quite high-brow (but not of the unreadable kind, fortunately) and had influence on e.g. Umberto Eco.
Mentioning him here because he also wrote two short stories which are AH-related.
Watch out, spoilers!
"The Garden of the Forking Paths" ("El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan") is meta-AH, so to speak: A story about AltHist. The Chinese Dr. Tsun meets Dr. Albert, an Expert about the Life and Work of Dr. Tsun's ancestor, a Ts'ui Pên. The latter had given up his Post as a Province Governor to write a long, intricated novel, and to build a Labyrinth, in which every man was supposed to lose his way. Dr. Tsun thinks that his ancestor had failed, because the book is a mess - in the second chapter the hero dies, in the third one he's alive again - and nobody ever found the Labyrinth. Dr. Albert explains to him that the ancestor actually was successful, because (SPOILER!):
{Spoiler}
The novel is the Labyrinth - you just have to read it in a way that it forks like a Labyrinth, and ALL the possible Alternatives are covered. (This includes the possibility of two TLs merging, as we'd say. Example given: There's an army on the way to a battle. In one TL, they spend the night before in a desert, after which life seems meaningless to them, so they're not afraid in battle and easily win. In another TL, they spend the last night celebrating in a palace - and on the next day, they're in high spirit, the battle seems like an extension of the feast, and they also win easily.)
The novel is the Labyrinth - you just have to read it in a way that it forks like a Labyrinth, and ALL the possible Alternatives are covered. (This includes the possibility of two TLs merging, as we'd say. Example given: There's an army on the way to a battle. In one TL, they spend the night before in a desert, after which life seems meaningless to them, so they're not afraid in battle and easily win. In another TL, they spend the last night celebrating in a palace - and on the next day, they're in high spirit, the battle seems like an extension of the feast, and they also win easily.)
