The Library of Babel (Discussion Article)
Since the dawn of time, mankind has pondered the nature of the Universe
and our place in it. For our earliest ancestors the Universe consisted of the
immediate surrounding lands. As we grew more and more sophisticated, our species
expanded the definition of the Universe to include more and more distant-yet
still earthly-places. Later we turned our attention to the sky above; and
formulated some rather interesting beliefs about what we saw. In the past century,
we have ventured out of our planetary cradle and now stand on the edge of eternity,
the vastness of interstellar space taking our significance down a notch, and
overwhelming our field of vision.
LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING
Along the way many ideas have been offered to help us visualize a universe that
is in fact too big for the human mind to comprehend. One interesting metaphor
that has been proffered is that the Universe is like a vast library. Argentinean
writer Jorge
Luis Borges presented such an idea in his short story The Library
of Babel, one of his brushes with the genre of SF that displays his masterful
ability to comment on the human condition. As SF & Society guest author
Shaun Michael Jex put it in his article "El
Hacedor," "It is the sign of a true maestro when they possess
the ability to see universes in a speck of dust, and in turn make us see them
as well, and lose ourselves in them." This is just what Borges has done
in The Library of Babel.
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