Jorge Luis Borges

writer
Short Story

El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan

  • The garden of forking paths
  • The Garden of Forking Paths
  • by Jorge Luís Borges
  • in El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan, (Sur, 1941)

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  • Science Fiction
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

El milagro secreto


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  • Science Fiction
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

La otra muerte

  • The other death
  • The Other Death
  • by Jorge Luís Borges
  • in El Aleph (Editorial Losada, 1949)

I’ve read many translated stories of Jorge Luis Borges, and many of those have surreal time elements, but this is the only one that I’ll deem to have time travel with a sophisticated branching universe, no less!

In the story, Borges himself tells of a man, Dom Pedro Damián, who first has a history as a soldier who lost his nerve at the 1904 Battle of Masoller and then lived out a long, quiet life. But after Damián dies some decades later, a second history appears in which the soldier was actually a dead hero at that very same battle, and no one remembers anything of the earlier life.

Motivated by the final part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Borges argues that the only complete explanation involves God granting a death-bed wish to the 1946 Damián, allowing him to return to the 1904 battle, causing time to branch into two universal histories, the first of which is largely—but not wholly—suppressed.
In the fifth chapter of that treatise, Pier Damiani asserts—against Aristotle and against Fredegarius de Tours—that it is within God’s power to make what once was into something that has never been. Reading those old theological discussions, I began to understand Pedro Damiá’s tragic story.
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  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Une nuit interminable


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  • Undetermined
  • Undetermined Time Travel
Short Story

El informe de Brodie


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  • Undetermined
  • Undetermined Time Travel