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
How/why is this not sci-fi? Does it have to call out by name deterministic timeline, Einstein-Rosen bridges and dangle the fact that even if multiverse theory is true, one cannot escape or notice the escape from theirs? It's about consequences of time travel through alchemy so advanced it is indistinguishable from magic. Also, mk - this post managed to make a shout-out to an inactive account (e.g. francopoli), which I thought wasn't possible. Bugski?Spacewing commander has undoubtedly already grasped this, but it was only then that I understood: whatever happened on the right side of the device was complemented, a few seconds later, by an event on the left side. "Is this nanomachines, professor?" I asked.
"No, sir, I have never met a sentient nanoconstructor, and if I did, I would not trust it to do my programming. This is a form of spacetime science."
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.