Why infinite libraries are treated skeptically in the annals of science fiction and fantasy

In The Book of Sand, Jorge Luis Borges tells the story of an unexpected visit from a Bible salesman, who has in his collection a most unusual object. “It can’t be, but it is,” the salesman says. “The number of pages in this book is no more or less than infinite. None is the first page, none is the last.”

The strange book is so engrossing as to be sinister. This is a theme that comes up repeatedly in Borges’s work. “Paradise is a library, not a garden,” he famously said. But libraries, he warned, can be hellish, too.

From The Human Fear of Total Knowledge – The Atlantic

June 11, 2016 by Blake Uncategorized 0

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