So funny story. The other day a buddy came up to me and asked if I had any familiarity with organizing a book club, specifically with a sci-fi focus. So I'm gonna jump in on that one. And I thought, why not do it in parallel here? I haven't read this one and don't know what it's about yet.
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate by Ted Chiang
Lets see if a week is enough for people to tackle it.
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For those who want to listen - LeVar Burton Reads (links fixed - thanks bhrgunatha!) Part 1 https://omny.fm/shows/levar-burton-reads/the-merchant-and-the-alchemists-gate-part-1-by-ted Part 2 https://omny.fm/shows/levar-burton-reads/the-merchant-and-the-alchemists-gate-part-2-by-ted
loved it. Nothing Sci-fi about it. There is something fascinating about Arabian stories. I dont know if it's the exoticism of the name, the richness of the setting, or the scariness of the magic and the fear of Allah I discovered (and loved) Michael Crichton with such a story : eaters of the dead . My reading was only impacted by another similar story about a magician, and traveling through time : The Wizard that was made to wait by Borges Wondering how the alchemist could let 20 year span go by for the gate to work, I expected a bad ending, as in the Borges story (itself inspired from the Arabian tales, but I dont know which, if someone knows, I'm curious to read the original) A recounting of The Beowulf but made interesting... proving that adding Arabian flavor to anything make it fascinating. ( I had to post it myself on my old blog because I could only find a pdf version, of all Borges books online)
I just read it and kinda had the same thought: very tangentially sci-fi. So when my bud introduced me to the material, we listened to a couple other short stories by the author on audio book. One had a very similar mechanism to what’s going on here, but went in a different direction with it. Both the shorts were more like plotless monologues than stories, so I found it kinda funny that this was literally a monologue.