The Garden of Forking Paths
by Jorge Luis Borges · first published 2018
43% recommend57% neutral
Why HN recommends it
A short, tightly built story that serves as an accessible entry point to Borges. It offers an exciting narrative, a twist ending, and an exploration of his larger themes. Well suited to readers new to him.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Fantastical tales of mazes, puzzles, lost labyrinths and bookish mysteries, from the unique imagination of a literary magician.
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…10. A Scanner Darkly 11. The Man in the High Castle 12. Do Androids dream of Electronic Sheep 13. Ubik 14. Valis, basically almost every book by Phil Dick. 15. Life on the Mississippi. 16. The Garden of Forking Paths 17. Dhalgren 18. The Gods of Pegāna, basically all the fantasy work of Dunsany. 19. The Lathe of Heaven. Anything by LeGuin. 20. Their Eyes Were Watching God 21. The Master and Margarita 22. The…
on “Ask HN: What is your favorite fiction book?” ↗Borges short stories - some of my favourites are very accessible: The Garden of Forking Paths and The Aleph. Some of his stories are difficult to read and make more sense as you know the author better. He wrote interesting works such as reviews on fictitious books. If you are looking for 'not…
on “The Desk of Haruki Murakami” ↗If you want to get a taste of Jorge Luis Borges, I strongly recommend the short story, The Garden of Forking Paths. Especially if you like twist at the end.
on “Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?” ↗IIRC "The Garden of Forking Paths" is an interesting story by J. L. Borges, from where the title of the paper is probably taken.
on “Experiment that ended in 1767 still linked to higher incomes, education levels” ↗For anyone looking for an intro to Borges I would recommend "The Garden of Forking Paths." It's a tight, exciting narrative that also explores his great themes. https://archive.org/stream/TheGardenOfForkingPathsJorgeLuisB...
on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?” ↗I'd recommend anyone new to Borges to begin with "The Garden of Forking Paths." It's a sort of spy thriller story but also includes his trademark meditations on time and infinity.
on “A Jorge Luis Borges Reading List” ↗Obligatory Borges mention for magical realism. Read his Garden of Forking Paths and Lottery in Babylon. Short stories which leave you with much to think about
on “Magical Realism: "Northern Exposure" 25 Years Later (2015)” ↗…Unmentioned, after commenting that Borges reviewed Dunne's work in 1940, however, is that the permanence of objects in time relates thematically to Jorge Luis Borges' own writing, recalling in particular The Garden of Forking Paths [1941]. I couldn't prove a causal connection, but it seems to cast a a commentary on Borges' post-1940 short stories. Nabokov also played with the idea of reverie or dream-like states of consciousness.…
on “A forgotten theory of dreams that inspired Vladimir Nabokov” ↗> “I looked at Neurocracy and thought: this is perfect. It gave me vibes of Deus Ex, the SCP wiki, and of Borges’ Garden of Forking Paths.” https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/14/22577088/neurocracy-wikip...
on “Neurocracy” ↗Borges loved to explore the idea of infinity. Another story of his, The Garden of Forking Paths, explores the idea of a multiverse. One other interesting tidbit that always intrigued me about Borges is that he became completely blind while he was the director of the Argentine National Library.…
on “Borges: The Library of Babel [pdf]” ↗…book (as a collection of essays) might already exist, with an impressive list of writings. Look at "The New Media Reader" http://www.amazon.com/The-Media-Reader-Noah-Wardrip-Fruin/dp... Includes "The Garden of Forking Paths" (Borges), "As We May Think" (Bush), "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (Turing), "Man-computer Symbiosis" (Licklider), "Augmenting Human Intellect" (Engelbart), "Skecthpad" (Sutherland", and many…
on “C.S. on the cheap” ↗…Fictions was : is it some kind of joke ? For those who read the House of Leaves, it's good to know that Danielewski took a lot of inspiration from Borges (among other things). If I recall correctly The Garden of Forking Paths is very similar in its purpose and construction.
on “A Lecture on Johnson and Boswell by Jorge Luis Borges” ↗> I've yet to see anyone make the claim that Borges originated any of the important philosophical ideas in his stories. The publication of The Garden of Forking Paths predates Hugh Everett's PhD on the "Many Worlds" interpretation by 15 years.
on “Gabriel García Márquez, Literary Pioneer, Dies at 87” ↗Borges's short stories are almost perfect nuggets for computer scientists, seemingly covering such topics as recursion (Garden of Forking Paths), the consequences of infinite memory (Funes), complexity theory (Library of Babel), virtualization (Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius), and so on.
on “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins” ↗…were each paragraph comprises an idea that deserves a full book on its own. Some Stapledon readers were clearly inspired by it, e.g. Dyson spheres were first postulated there, and Borges got the "The Garden of Forking Paths" idea also from it.. and also Virtual Reality (not bad for 1937!) . Asimov was also an Stapledon admirer and he said that Stapledon expanded s.f. to a cosmic scale, so I think that Stapledon influence…
on “Isaac Asimov: The Last Question” ↗