Science Fiction and Fact
1941
"The Garden of Forking Paths"
In 1941, Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges writes a short story
called, in English, "The Garden of Forking Paths." Borges' work
focuses on a story-within-a-story: The protagonist, Yu Tsun, meets a
man who shows him a text written by Tsun's ancestor. The text, also
titled "The Garden of Forking Paths," is full of seeming
contradictions. In one chapter the hero is dead, in the next he is
alive, and no explanation is given for the change. At the conclusion
of the story Tsun makes a startling realization. The text isn't
inconsistent. It is intended to express a "web of time"—a
metaverse of parallel worlds that contain every possible reality.
When Tsun commits murder and faces execution for his crime, he
remains unconcerned, because he realizes that his crime and
approaching death are only one of many parallel chronologies, which
all contain different outcomes.