4 ms·
If you liked the "Library of Babel", let me highly recommend another story by Borges, "The Immortal". It is perhaps an even stronger match for Ballard's story
by a_e_k 6y ago
If you liked the "Library of Babel", let me highly recommend another story by Borges, "The Immortal". It is perhaps an even stronger match for Ballard's story here and has an especially good depiction of the sort of results that you get from procedural generation:
> /This palace is the work of the gods,/ was my first thought. I explored the uninhabited spaces, and I corrected myself: /The gods that built this place have died./ Then I reflected on its peculiarities, and told myself: /The gods that built this place were mad./ I said this, I know, in a tone of incomprehensible reproof that verged upon remorse--with more intellectual horror than sensory fear. The impression of great antiquity was joined by others: the impression of endlessness, the sensation of oppressiveness and horror, the sensation of complex irrationality.
(There's more to it, but I don't want to spoil it. Suffice to say that this one has something of the antithesis of the nice, neat hexagons in "Library".)
- voldacar 6y agoI will check that out, thank you. I should read more Borges. His ability to write very short pieces of text that are interesting and thought-provoking is unmatched.