#that being the Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges

[mxwhore]

this book is rewiring my brain

[bracketsoffear]

Vast Leitner Reading List

The full list of submissions for the Vast Leitner bracket. Bold titles are ones which were accepted to appear in the bracket. Synopses and propaganda can be found below the cut. Be warned, however, that these may contain spoilers!

Abedi, Isabel: Forbidden World Adams, Douglas: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Asimov, Isaac: Nightfall

Borges, Jorge Luis: El Aleph Bradbury, Ray: Kaleidoscope Bradbury, Ray: No Particular Night or Morning

Caine, Rachel: Weather Wardens Clarke, Arthur C.: Maelstrom II Clarke, Susanna: Piranesi Coates, Darcy: From Below Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Curtis, Wardon Allan: The Monster of Lake LaMetrie

Foster, Alan Dean: He

Gardner, Martin: Thang Godwin, Tom: The Nothing Equation Gonzalez, J.F.: Clickers Gorky, Maxim: The Song of the Stormy Petrel Grant, Mira: Into the Drowning Deep

Hawking, Lucy and Stephen: George's Secret Key to the Universe Hardinge, Frances: Deeplight

Inglis, James: Night Watch

King, Stephen: The Jaunt

Lewis, C.S.: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Liu, Cixin: The Dark Forest (Three Body Problem Book 2) Lovecraft, H.P.: Dagon

Macfarlane, Robert: Underland Marquitz, Tim and Nickolas Sharps, ed.: Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters Melville, Herman: Moby Dick Mortimore, Jim: Beltempest

North, Claire: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Oesterheld, Héctor Germán: El Eternauta

Poe, Edgar Allen: A Descent into the Maelström Pratchett, Terry and Steven Baxter: The Long Earth series Purser-Hallard, Philip: Of the City of the Saved...

Reed, Robert: An Exaltation of Larks Reisman, Michael: Simon Bloom: The Gravity Keeper

Sanderson, Brandon: Firefight Seuss, Dr.: Horton Hears a Who! Simmons, Dan: The Terror Swift, Jonathan: Gulliver's Travels

Tennyson, Alfred: The Kraken Tolstoy, Leo: War & Peace

Verne, Jules: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Abedi, Isabel: Forbidden World

"Reginald has gained a dangerous power. He can shrink anything he likes. And he wants nothing less than the world's most famous buildings. The originals in miniaturized form, of course. Gradually he builds up a huge landscape in his cellar. But Reginald has overlooked something, or more precisely someone. Otis was locked in the Statue of Liberty and Olivia had fled from the police into the famous Berlin department store KaDeWe, when suddenly at night the buildings shrank. Now the children are the size of a fingernail... While they fight for their lives, chaos breaks out in the world outside: where have the monuments gone? And who has stolen them?" Vast stuff: Otis' fear of heights is a huge plot point and he was born on a plane. While Olivia wants to become a pilot. Many scenes of being in high places and terrified, and focus on being very small in a big world.

Spoilers: This book contains two Djinns one that can change the sizes of things one that can make them small and one that can make them big. But they are running out of magic fuel so staying small is the big fear of the characters.

Adams, Douglas: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The series swings wildly between cosmic dread and comedy, from the insignificance of the Earth's destruction to the chaotic results of the Infinite Improbability Drive to the very notion of the Total Perspective Vortex, the story hammers home again and again the infinitesimal nature of our existence in the vastness of the universe.

***

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy": Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.

"The Restaurant at the End of the Universe": Facing annihilation at the hands of warmongers is a curious time to crave tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his comrades as they hurtle across the galaxy in a desperate search for a place to eat.

"Life, the Universe and Everything": The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky- so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals can avert Armageddon: mild-mannered Arthur Dent and his stalwart crew.

"So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish": Back on Earth, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription conspires to thrust him back to reality. So to speak.

"Mostly Harmless": Just when Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life, all hell breaks loose. Can he save the Earth from total obliteration? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save his daughter from herself?

The incomprehensible vastness of the universe is a theme repeated throughout the 'Trilogy". Notable examples include the guide initially describes Earth as 'harmless", after being stranded there for several years, Ford revises this to "mostly harmless". The Total Perspective Vortex, a machine that extrapolates a model of the entire universe, along with a microscopic dot labeled "you are here" this sense of perspective destroys the victim’s mind.

Asimov, Isaac: Nightfall

Lagash's six suns means an Endless Daytime, except for once every 2,049 years, when five suns set and the only sun left in the hemisphere is eclipsed by the moon. The scientists are trying to prepare civilization and themselves for the upcoming nightfall, but when it does occur, no-one is prepared for the thirty thousand stars that suddenly appear in the night sky. This leads to the far more devastating revelation how tiny and insignificant they are by comparison.

"Aton, somewhere, was crying, whimpering horribly like a terribly frightened child. 'Stars — all the Stars — we didn't know at all. We didn't know anything. We thought six stars in a universe is something the Stars didn't notice is Darkness forever and ever and ever and the walls are breaking in and we didn't know we couldn't know and anything —'"

Borges, Jorge Luis: El Aleph

In Borges' story, the Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping, or confusion.

Bradbury, Ray: Kaleidoscope

First published in the October 1949 edition of Thrilling Wonder Stories this describes a scene where a spaceship is hit by a meteor and torn apart – ejecting the crew into space. Each astronaut flies off on his own trajectory, hurtling to his doom. For a time they can all communicate through their helmet comms, but slowly, as the separation becomes millions of miles apart, they wind up as solitary figures, alone with his thoughts.

Bradbury, Ray: No Particular Night or Morning

This story takes place during a long interstellar journey. The destination and purpose of the journey are unclear. There are many men (it seems only men) on a large ship. Among them are friends Hitchcock and Clemens. Hitchcock begins to struggle with the idea that there is anything that exists outside of him, that none of it can be proven to exist. Clemens tries to argue with him until Hitchcock is finally treated by the ship’s psychiatrist with the captain’s knowledge, but to no avail. He finally dons a space-suit and leaves the ship. Over the radio he can be heard muttering about how even his own body does not exist.

At one point, Hitchcock is asked why he wanted to go on this journey in the first place. Was he interested in the stars? In seeing other places? In travel? He responds that “It wasn’t going places. It was being between”

Caine, Rachel: Weather Wardens

A speculative fiction series about the secretive bureaucracy that controls the weather. Consequences of this include severely pissing off Mother Earth, sentient storm fronts, and falling from great heights. Often.

Clarke, Arthur C.: Maelstrom II

This short story revolves around an astronaut named Cliff Leyland drifting in a low orbit around the moon after an accident with his capsule's launch. Much of his time is spent waiting to see if he can be rescued and reunited with his family, or is doomed to crash and die.

Clarke, Susanna: Piranesi

Piranesi lives in a place called the House, a world composed of infinite halls and vestibules lined with statues, no two of which are alike. The upper level of the House is filled with clouds, and the lower level with an ocean, which occasionally surges into the middle level following tidal patterns that Piranesi meticulously tracks. He believes he has always lived in the House, and that there are only fifteen people in the world, all but two of whom are long-dead skeletons. The status that decorate the halls and walls of the House are all gigantic and the halls themself are immense and bigger than what any human would be able to build on their own.

Coates, Darcy: From Below

"No light. No air. No escape. Hundreds of feet beneath the ocean's surface, a graveyard waits... Years ago, the SS Arcadia vanished without a trace during a routine voyage. Though a strange, garbled emergency message was broadcast, neither the ship nor any of its crew could be found. Sixty years later, its wreck has finally been discovered more than three hundred miles from its intended course...a silent graveyard deep beneath the ocean's surface, eagerly waiting for the first sign of life. Cove and her dive team have been granted permission to explore the Arcadia's rusting hull. Their purpose is straightforward: examine the wreck, film everything, and, if possible, uncover how and why the supposedly unsinkable ship vanished. But the Arcadia has not yet had its fill of death, and something dark and hungry watches from below. With limited oxygen and the ship slowly closing in around them, Cove and her team will have to fight their way free of the unspeakable horror now desperate to claim them. Because once they're trapped beneath the ocean's waves, there's no going back."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

This epic poem of a sea voyage beautifully encapsulates the horrors of the ocean, from the terrific force of horrific storms and whirlpools to the unsettling infinity of life, both beautiful and strange, that inhabits the depths below. Most of all, however, it shows the horror of being stranded at sea as the ship is becalmed in the doldrums.

"Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink. The very deep did rot: Oh Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea."

The crew perish one by one, apart from the narrator. He, by killing the albatross, invoked the wrath of the sea. He alone must live on while the others are permitted to escape in death.

Curtis, Wardon Allan: The Monster of Lake LaMetrie

The story of Dr. James McLennegan and his sickly companion Edward Framingham who travel to a lake high up in the Wyoming mountains. When they reach the lake, McLennegan discovers it is home to an Elasmosaurus which attacks him, but he manages to kill it and removes the brain. Shortly afterwards Framingham seemingly commits suicide and McLennegan decides to place Framingham’s brain into the body of the Elasmosaur, as one does. While this works for a bit, the remainder of the story explores the horror of scale as Framingham's inability to adjust to his new size results in him snapping and devouring his now-insignificant former friend.

Foster, Alan Dean: He

A short story detailing an oceanographer's encounter with the last megalodon, a colossal shark that has lived for millions of years. He is feared by all other creatures and the sight of him installs a primal terror in humans.

Gardner, Martin: Thang

https://vintage.failed-dam.org/thang.htm The titular creature is large enough to grasp Earth between two fingers. It clears off all water and ice before chewing the planet, core and all, before it, in turn, is also eaten by a planet-eater eater.

Godwin, Tom: The Nothing Equation

A short story about how being stationed alone in an empty section of space drives a man mad. Like stories about lighthouses, but bigger. Short enough to link a complete ebook.

Gonzalez, J.F.: Clickers

"Phillipsport, Maine is a quaint and peaceful seaside village. But when hundreds of creatures pour out of the ocean and attack, its residents must take up arms to drive the beasts back. They are the Clickers, giant venomous blood-thirsty crabs from the depths of the sea. The only warning to their rampage of dismemberment and death is the terrible clicking of their claws. But these monsters aren't merely here to ravage and pillage. They are being driven onto land by fear. Something is hunting the Clickers. Something ancient and without mercy."

Basically, kaiju crabs invade the land -- because they're fleeing from something even bigger.

Gorky, Maxim: The Song of the Stormy Petrel

"A short poem, text can be found here. It describes the storm, vast and careless masses of water, roaring and ruthless skies, and a mighty storm petrel fearlessly taking on both elements. it even dares the tempest to get more intense, as all other oceanic forms of life (seagulls, grebes, a penguin) hide in horror before the face of the storm. stormy petrel in russian (буревестник), if translated literally, means 'the announcer of the storm'. there is a short old cartoon which depicts how this poem would function as a leitner, although the cartoon is very comedic and lighthearted. unfortunately, i wasn't able to find a version with english subtitles, but i think it would be clear just from the visuals"

Grant, Mira: Into the Drowning Deep

Seven years ago, the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a “mockumentary” bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy. Now, a new crew has been assembled. But this time they’re not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life’s work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost. Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves. But the secrets of the deep come with a price.

Hawking, Lucy and Stephen: George's Secret Key to the Universe

The space aspects of it, as well as the fact that a character gets trapped in a black hole at one point, gives off Vast vibes to me. Synopsis for more info: The main characters in the book are George Greenby, Susan Bellis, Eric Bellis, Annie Bellis, Dr. Reeper, and Cosmos, the world's most powerful computer. Cosmos can draw windows allowing people to look into outer space, as well as doors that act as portals allowing travel into outer space. It starts by describing atoms, stars, planets, and their moons. It then goes on to describe black holes, which remains the topic of focus in the last part of the book. At frequent intervals throughout the book, there are pictures and "fact files" of the different references to universal objects, including a picture of Mars with its moons.

Hardinge, Frances: Deeplight

"In the old days, the islands of the Myriad lived in fear of the gods, great sea monsters that rose up from the Undersea to devour ships and depopulate entire islands. Now, the gods are no more. They tore each other apart in an event known as the Cataclysm. Fragments of their bodies (known as godware) are dredged up and sold. Hark and his best friend Jelt are petty criminals. When they embark on a dangerous scavenging expedition, they stumble across a strange, pulsing piece of godware and things begin to go very, very wrong."

Gods, the ocean depths, and poverty all play into the themes of insignificance in this novel.

Inglis, James: Night Watch

Concerns an interstellar probe which is still functional when our Galaxy is dying. The story ends with the community of probes launched by various races and drawn together by the fact that very few stars are still shining, setting out on the long voyage to a distant and still-young galaxy as the last star of our galaxy burns out behind them.

King, Stephen: The Jaunt

“As a family prepares to be "Jaunted" to Mars in the 24th century, the father entertains his two children by recounting the curious tale of the discovery and history of this crude form of teleportation. He explains how the scientist who serendipitously discovered it quickly learned that it had a disturbing, inexplicable effect on the mice he "sent through"—eventually concluding that they could only survive the "Jaunt effect" while unconscious. That, the father explains, is why all people must undergo general anaesthesia before using the Jaunt.

The father spares his children the gruesome semi-apocryphal account of the first human to be Jaunted awake, a condemned murderer offered a full pardon for agreeing to the experiment. The man "came through" and immediately suffered a massive heart attack, living just long enough to utter a single cryptic phrase: It's eternity in there...

The father also doesn't mention that since that time, roughly thirty people have, voluntarily or otherwise, jaunted while conscious; they either died instantly or emerged insane. One woman was even shoved alive into eternal limbo by her murderous husband, stuck between two jaunt portals. The man was convicted of murder; though his attorneys attempted to argue that he was not guilty on the grounds that his wife was not technically dead, the implications of the same argument served to secure and hasten his execution.

After the father finishes his story, the family is subjected to the sleeping gas and Jaunted to Mars. When the father wakes, he finds that his inquisitive son held his breath in order to experience the Jaunt while conscious…Hair white with shock, corneas yellowed with age, clawing out his own eyes, the boy reveals the terrible nature of the Jaunt: "Longer than you think, Dad! It's longer than you think!"”

Lewis, C.S.: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

"The Dawn Treader is the first ship Narnia has seen in centuries. King Caspian has built it for his voyage to find the seven lords, good men whom his evil uncle Miraz banished when he usurped the throne. The journey takes Edmund, Lucy, and their cousin Eustace to the Eastern Islands, beyond the Silver Sea, toward Aslan's country at the End of the World."

I mean it's a story about trying to get to the end of the world. What's more Vast than that?

Liu, Cixin: The Dark Forest (Three Body Problem Book 2)

I considered other books in the series but this book more than the others deals with the impact of discovering there is other life out in the universe and the distance between worlds as humanity learns an alien fleet is approaching earth at near-light speed. This book is both vast in the scale of the universe but also on a time scale as it covers the 400 years between the fleet’s departure and arrival at earth.

Lovecraft, H.P.: Dagon

Link

The narrator tells of being on a cargo ship that was captured by a German sea-raider in the Pacific. He would eventually escape and drift until he found himself a “black mire”, which was full of rotting fish and more foul stenches. The things that he witnesses in the vast expanse drive him to madness, and eventually he kills himself rather than face the creatures he witnessed there.

Macfarlane, Robert: Underland

A series of essays on "deep time" - that is, viewing the world over timeframes of billions of years, rather than the shorter timeframes we live within & understand. It is essentially the vastness of time. This concept stretches eons into the past and future and is very daunting to read about. The essays all revolve around things underground and often focus on how they're so much larger than us, existing far before us and stretching far beyond.

Also there's a chapter where the author talks about a calving glacier he saw surge upwards hundreds of feet from the sea, unbelievably huge. He recounts how the ice at its base hadn't seen sunlight in eons, and had never even been seen by human eyes, it was so ancient - it then sank underwater again, to once more be hidden. And if that doesn't sound like the origin of a vast avatar idk what does

Marquitz, Tim and Nickolas Sharps, ed.: Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters

From the forward: "Enter Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters. This collection of Kaiju shorts continues the traditions begun by Kaiju pioneers, bringing tales of destruction, hope and morality in the form of giant, city destroying monsters. Even better, the project was funded by Kickstarter, which means you, Dear Reader, made this book possible. And that is a beautiful thing. It means Kaiju, in pop-fiction, are not only alive and well, they’re stomping their way back into the spotlight, where they belong. Featuring amazing artwork, stories from some of the best monster writers around and a publishing team that has impressed me from the beginning, Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters is a welcome addition to the Kaiju genre and an anthology of epic proportions. My inner nine-year-old is shouting at me to shut-up and let you get to the Kaiju. So, without further delay, let’s all enjoy us some Kaiju Rising."

Notable for the fact the majority of the stories within are downer-ending horror short-stories versus more upbeat monster-fighting ones. Several also tackle concepts of an unstoppable, implacable force, themes of religious horror, and other Vast-aligned concepts.

Melville, Herman: Moby Dick

Okay so Ahab is Hunt, but the thing he's hunting is 1000% Vast. The book is very detailed in its descriptions of the enormity of whales and of the sea. Also, Moby Dick is basically outright stated as being God.

***

We all know what The Whale is about. Ahab has beef with Moby Dick, so he vows to hunt it. This is a particularly intelligent, huge whale that everyone advises to steer clear of, and possibly an allegory of God. The book itself is large, it's 135 chapters and a lot of pages and for some reason mandatory reading in some schools. It's a classic and rightfully so. Trying to read it in one sitting is like trying to hunt the proverbial whale, a foolish endeavor no mortal man should attempt. Infinity is best consumed one day at a time, and so is the book. Otherwise you'll drown in (mostly descriptions of) whales.

***

Man attempts to fight a giant whale that apparently is representative of the unfathomably great and terrible power of nature/fate/God, and thus almost everyone on his crew ends up drowning.

Mortimore, Jim: Beltempest

Synopsis: "The people of Bellania II see their sun, Bel, shrouded in night for a month following an impossible triple eclipse. When Bel is returned to them a younger, brighter, hotter star, it is the beginning of the end for the entire solar system...

100,000 years later, the Doctor and Sam arrive on Bellania IV, where the population is under threat as disaster looms — immense gravitational and dimensional disturbances are surging through this area of space.

While the time travellers attempt to help the survivors and ease the devastation, a religious suicide-cult leader is determined to spread a new religion through Bel's system — and his word may prove even more dangerous than the terrible forces brought into being by the catastrophic changes in the sun... "

Why it's Vast: The main conflict revolves around the massive natural disasters caused by changes to the Bel System's sun. Moons are ripped from their orbits, gravity waves create planetary earthquakes, and the void of space is rocked by solar flares. In response to these unstoppable disasters, a religion springs up in worship of the star -- as Simon Fairchild noted, religion was once a strong vector for the Vast, though it wasn't explored in much depth within the podcast.

North, Claire: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

"The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August" is about the titular protagonist Harry August. He is born, he lives, he dies... Except he does this a lot more than most regular people. Harry is a kalachakra (or ouroborus, the names are used interchangeably), a member of a select few people who, upon dying, simply return to when they were born with all the memories and knowledge of their past lives. This is all well and good until, while on the deathbed of his eleventh life, Harry is warned by a little Kalachakra girl that the world is ending, and he must stop it from doing so."

Vast realised in endless lives of the characters stretching before them till infinity. Vast realised in the perfect endless memory of the main character and some others. Vast realised in eternity.

Oesterheld, Héctor Germán: El Eternauta

Juan Salvo, the inimitable protagonist, along with his friend Professor Favalli and the tenacious metal-worker Franco, face what appears to be a nuclear accident, but quickly turns out to be something much bigger than they had imagined. Cold War tensions, aliens of all sizes, space―and time travel―this one has it all.

Poe, Edgar Allen: A Descent into the Maelström

Inspired by the Moskstraumen, it is couched as a story within a story, a tale told at the summit of a mountain climb in Lofoten, Norway. The story is told by an old man who reveals that he only appears old—"You suppose me a very old man," he says, "but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves." The narrator, convinced by the power of the whirlpools he sees in the ocean beyond, is then told of the "old" man's fishing trip with his two brothers a few years ago.

Driven by "the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens", their ship was caught in the vortex. One brother was pulled into the waves; the other was driven mad by the horror of the spectacle, and drowned as the ship was pulled under. At first the narrator only saw hideous terror in the spectacle. In a moment of revelation, he saw that the Maelström is a beautiful and awesome creation. Observing how objects around him were attracted and pulled into it, he deduced that "the larger the bodies, the more rapid their descent" and that spherical-shaped objects were pulled in the fastest. Unlike his brother, he abandoned ship and held on to a cylindrical barrel until he was saved several hours later when the whirlpool temporarily subsided, and he was rescued by some fishermen. The "old" man tells the story to the narrator without any hope that the narrator will believe it.

Pratchett, Terry and Steven Baxter: The Long Earth series

Blueprints for an easily to build device that allows people to "step" into a nigh infinite series of alternate earths get published online. The series deals with the exploration of these alternate earths, and the way their existence and accessibility changes human society over the next 50 or so years. The earths next to our own are similar to ours except that there are no humans, but further earths diverged from our own earlier in geological history; millions of earths away are worlds where the KT extinctions never happens, billions of earths away there are worlds where jellyfish live in the sky. It's emphasized throughout the books that all of these earth's are entire planets with billions of years of history that no one will ever fully understand because there's just too much space.

Purser-Hallard, Philip: Of the City of the Saved...

It's set in a city where every human or descendant of humanity who has ever lived has been reborn all at once, and the book makes sure you understand the scope of that. To pull out a few statistics, the city is the size of a spiral galaxy and has a population of a hundred undecillion - or 1 followed by 38 zeros. There's a watchtower at the city's centre which is the width of a continent and the height of one astronomical unit (the distance of Earth to the sun), and a city council ampithetre the size of a gas giant. When I think of a book emphasising physical vastness, I think Of the City of the Saved, because it doesn't just gloss over the size and call it incomprehensible, it makes sure you begin to grasp the scale of things. And that every character in the book is just one person on that scale.

Reed, Robert: An Exaltation of Larks

The book shows the heat death of the universe, where the stars have long since burned out, and stellar formation ceased, leaving behind a dark, cold, and empty universe. Time travelers from the end of time have steadily been working their way back to the Big Bang to prevent this gradual death from happening by turning the universe into an effectively Perpetual Motion Machine that expands, contracts, and expands again.

Reisman, Michael: Simon Bloom: The Gravity Keeper

A boy inadvertently discovers the book that controls the laws of physics and learns to play with gravity and velocity, which on multiple occasions results in him taking an uncontrolled fall into the sky.

Sanderson, Brandon: Firefight

This is the second book in The Reckoners Trilogy, which is about the eponymous group hunting Epics--people who were granted superpowers by the mysterious red star Calamity, but also turned evil and destroyed society as we know it.

In this one, the Reckoners go to Babylon Restored, a.k.a NYC. The city was flooded by the hydrokinetic Regalia, killing thousands and leaving the survivors to inhabit the rooftops of the sunken buildings. Regalia has immense control over water, able to manipulate it on both a mass scale and in a more precise way to attack with tentacles and create clones of herself. Most terrifyingly, she can see out of the surface of any exposed water--which means almost nowhere in Babilar is safe from her eyes.

The fact that the city is flooded is especially problematic for protagonist David, who can't swim and discovers he has a fear of drowning--especially after he is nearly executed in this way. To make matters worse, the Reckoners' base of operations is an underwater bunker with a window open to the water. This culminates in him facing his fear in attempt to save his love interest by shooting at the window to get out of the bunker. While Regalia saves him for her own ends, she also reveals something even more grand and incomprehensibly terrifying--Calamity itself is sapient and apparently malicious.

Seuss, Dr.: Horton Hears a Who!

Hey kids! Take a minute to think about what would happen if the whole planet existed on a single speck of dust, and how easily everything you know could be eradicated by complete cosmic accident!

Simmons, Dan: The Terror

Being trapped in the Arctic? Not just in the Arctic but in the middle of an ice sheet on the ocean? With the only land being a 3 day trek away? So all you can see before you is open plains of snow and ice and knowing underneath you is also the cold, uncaring, freezing ocean? That's not even taking into account the monster hunting you and your men is easily the size of 3-4 polar bears

Swift, Jonathan: Gulliver's Travels

Plays a lot with perspective -- Gulliver is a giant on one island, and an ant on another. There's also an island that flies and blots out the sun to conquer the lands below it.

Tennyson, Alfred: The Kraken

Link to the poem

Vivid imagery of deep-sea colossi and the enormous weight of the ocean and eternity.

Tolstoy, Leo: War & Peace

real world leitner - inspires dread and fear in the hearts of millions of russian high schoolers with its enormous page count, oppressively large cast of characters and incomprehensible fragments of french inserted directly into the narrative

Verne, Jules: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Themes of insignificance and descriptions of colossal terrors abound.

[now-a-witch]

Listen I tried starting the Bungo Stray Dogs manga like 7 years ago or smt, but I was falling out of the reading manga train so I have not read it or watched BUT I'm watching a guy react to it and it finally convince me to give it another shot.

That said what I made this post for was because them exploring more worldwide things in s5 made really want some latino autors like:

I want Carlos Fuentes, I want his gift to be "Aura" which allows him to bring people back from the death by summoning their soul into a living persons body, stealing it away.

I want Gabriel García Márquez, "Cien años de soledad" (one hundred years of solitude) being his gift would be the obvious choice, allowing him to capture people in a time prison or something could be cool but "El amor en los tiempos del colera" (love in the times of cholera) would be funny and "Crónica de una muerte anunciada" (chronicle of a death foretold) would be cool if we didn't already had 2 characters who could forsee their own death.

Jorge Luis Borges having "El Aleph" giving him a kind of omnipresence allowing his spirit to leave his body and percive from above and great distance.

Julio Cortazar havin "Rayuela" as his gift allowing him to chose between possible futures that things could have at the moment, I don´t know what Juan Rulfo's gift would be since I don't know how to make his most iconic work "Pedro Paramo" into a gift, Like forcing dead beat dads to take accountability? who knows, the possibilities are endless.

Just Latin American autors being anime boys you know.

(honorary mention to the autor of "Por amor a Feliciana" (For love of Feliciana) whom I actually met, he signed my book then I proceeded to lend it to someone I can't remember and they never returned, also my watercolour teacher bashed him when she saw me reading the book, because I think his gift would be the ability to teleport next to a person as long as he is horny enough for them)

[cscclibrary]

Some of the world's most beloved and influential authors were born in August! Click their names to find their work in our collection or via OhioLINK.

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819), fiction writer and poet. Notable works: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, "Bartleby, the Scrivener," Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative).

James Baldwin (August 2, 1924), writer and activist. Notable works: Go Tell It on the Mountain, "Sonny's Blues," Notes of a Native Son.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792), poet, novelist, playwright, and husband of Mary Shelley. Notable works: "Ozymandias," "A Defense of Poetry," The Cenci.

Guy de Maupassant (August 5, 1850), author of the Naturalist school. Notable works: "The Necklace," "The Horla," Pierre and Jean.

Wendell Berry (August 5, 1934), farmer, environmental activist, writer, and winner of the National Humanities Medal. Notable works: The Unsettling of America, Citizenship Papers, "The Vacation."

Walter Dean Myers (August 12, 1937), author of children's and young adult literature. Notable works: Hoops, Monster, Fallen Angels.

William Maxwell (August 16, 1908), writer and long-time fiction editor at The New Yorker. Notable works: So Long, See You Tomorrow, The Heavenly Tenants.

Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920), influential author of innumerable science-fiction short stories and novels, many adapted into other media. Notable works: Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, "The Veldt."

Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893), poet, fiction writer, and satirist; member of the Algonquin Round Table. Notable works: Enough Rope, Death and Taxes, Laments for the Living.

Jorge Luis Borges (August 24, 1899), author and translator. Notable works: The Aleph and Other Stories, The Book of Imaginary Beings, "The Library of Babel."

Theodore Dreiser (August 27, 1871), journalist and author of Naturalist fiction. Notable works: Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy.

Mary Shelley (August 30, 1797), novelist and early author of science fiction. Notable works: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Mathilda.

Current Columbus State students and employees can check out items with their photo ID, or view ebooks using their Columbus State login and password. For help with research or finding items, contact our Reference department.

[whilereadingandwalking]

I bring a lot of books with me on vacation. Traveling solo brings a lot more downtime than when you travel with someone. My trip to Argentina includes a few plane rides (including the two big ones). My itinerary includes spending relaxing afternoons at pretty cafés or in stunning bookstores. And of course, nights or mornings in lovely airbnbs, enjoying coffee or a drink. A huge part of being able to travel solo is being able to have books as my companions. I read a book every 2.5 days, and I will be away from home for 18 days—so mathematically, I need at least 7 books (yes, I do know ereaders exist, they’re just not for me). Once upon a time, any books would do. But now, I think quite a bit about which books to bring. My book stack for Argentina is all Argentinian, except for one Uruguayan author (I’ll be in Colonia de Sacramento as a day trip), and one author of a book about getting lost, which I fittingly forgot to include in this photo.

The list:

Brickmakers by Selva Almada, tr. Annie McDermott

Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig, tr. Thomas Colchie

The Tango Singer by Tomás Eloy Martínez, tr. Anne McLean

Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz, tr. Sarah Moses & Carolina Orloff

The Rooftop by Fernanda Trías, tr. Annie McDermott

Fictions and The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges, tr. Andrew Hurley

Slum Virgin by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, tr. Frances Riddle

The Promise by Silvina Ocampo, tr. Suzanne Jill Levine & Jessica Powell

I’m particularly looking forward to reading Borges, one of my favorite authors, in the winding streets of his city, and to read another book by Cámara. Good book-friends of mine might wonder why Mariana Enríquez isn’t on my reading list. The answer is simple: I’m not looking to freak myself out while reading late at night in a quiet, blustery Patagonian town...

[onpyre]

do you have any book recommendations that go with the aesthetics of the toothsome tv universe?

hmm this is a great question! honestly i don’t read as much fiction as i used to so i don’t have a ton of recs.

i think house of leaves by mark z. danielewski is a no-brainer.

there are books associated with the the shows in the toothsome tv universe as well, chief among them being the secret diary of laura palmer and my life my tapes (dale cooper’s autobiography).

the king in yellow by robert w. chambers is somewhat inspirational of true detective (carcosa), but that’s more high cosmic horror.

i haven’t yet read the books the terror and sharp objects are based on (by dan simmons and gillian flynn respectively) but i’d bet they’d bear fruit!

i don’t know if i can recommend the thomas harris novels that hannibal is based on, but that is the source material (i’ve only read red dragon and it was alright)

but! i think grotesque stories are always worth it so:

perfume: story of a murderer by patrick süskind

rabbits by kanai mieko

anything by southern gothic queen flannery o'connor

i will have to think about your question more tho!

Edit: i should have added jorge luis borges’s works to this. his collection of short stories, particularly The Aleph and Other Stories is very much in this vein!

[ofallingstar]

List of books I read this year

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Morirás Lejos by José Emilio Pacheco

Devotions by Mary Oliver

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky

Mrs. Dolloway by Virginia Woolf

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Collected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

Twelve Moons by Mary Oliver

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien

New Selected Poems 1966-1987 by Seamus Heaney

Ulysses by James Joyce

The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore by W. B. Yeats

Normal People by Sally Rooney

The Dark by John McGahern

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Une sirène à Paris by Mathias Malzieu

Atonement by Ian McEwan

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

After the Quake by Haruki Murakami

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R. R. Martin

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire

E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings

No me preguntes cómo pasa el tiempo: Poemas 1964-1968 by José Emilio Pacheco

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Beloved by Toni Morrison

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats by W. B. Yeats

The Collected Poems of Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde

Breath, Eyes, Memory of Edwidge Danticat

Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

El Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges

Selected Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Adonis by Adonis

If Not, Winter by Sappho

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-García

The Trial by Franz Kafka

The Iliad by Homer

Collected Poems, 1909-1962 by T.S. Eliot

The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Odyssey by Homer

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

The Tattoist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin

Arráncame la vida by Ángeles Mastretta

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

32 Candles by Ernessa T. Carter

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami

Collected Poems, 1912-1944 by H.D.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Hannibal by Thomas Harris

The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings by Edgar Allan Poe

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

The Shining by Stephen King

The Complete Poems by John Keats

The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis

The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

La ciudad de vapor by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde by Audre Lorde

Hiroshima by John Hersey

Selected Poems: 1965-1975 by Margaret Atwood

Selected Poems II: 1976-1986 by Margaret Atwood

Dearly: New Poems by Margaret Atwood

Uncollected Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

Circe by Madeline Miller

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Poems: 1962-2012 by Louise Glück

Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde

You can follow me or add me as a friend on Goodreads.

[leportraitducadavre]

Sasuke haters think we’re cringy for trying to point out Konoha’s mistakes and saying the massacre was wrong lmao they are like ‘it ain’t real bro u should be showing this much reaction to actual world problems’ and then go and worship naruto and write essays about how much sakura sucks and how that one time lee kicked sasuke’s ass also how they think we have problems with a fictional massacre but we just don’t care about real life massacres or racism is beyond me honestly

Ah, I honestly hate that type of argument, “Naruto is not real tho”, like -congratulations, Christopher Colombus, you discovered America.

That doesn’t mean I can’t see real issues reflected in that fictional piece -nor that I can’t enjoy it by doing the type of metas I like to read. They do know that many great works of fiction are inspired by both real-life events and other works of art, right?

For instance, there’s a marvellous petit story written by no other than Jorge Luis Borges (internationally known argentinian writer), called Emma Zunz in The Aleph (1941) - and if you haven’t read it -do so, it’s just a few pages long and is so incredible is still being studied to this day. I’ll leave a link here in english -but if you understand spanish, try to read it in that language. It became so famous that years later, argentinian writer Martin Kohan published Erik Grieg (1990), that tells the story of one of the secondary characters that Borges introduced (in the original, he didn’t even have a name, Kohan brilliantly took advantage of an ellipsis created by Borges to pay tribute to his work -don’t you just love literature?).

They love metas who give complexity to issues/notions/character that don’t have them to begin with, yet, when what is canonically presented as a well-layered issue reachs fans that enjoy picking it appart as to see the contents, they get mad and suddenly develop a superior complex over “not caring for fictional characters because they have a life” -analyzing is a wonderful thing, writing is a wonderful thing, and if people as Martin Kohan can do so and get away with it, why can't we? Let haters hate.

[academiaoscura]

2020 in books

Twenty-twenty... a year full of tragedy and wreckage and surprisingly pleasant moments. Really makes you appreciate the present.

No one asked for this list, but this is what I read this year. Let me know if you’re curious about any of them and would like to know my opinion. Happy New Year, everyone. May this new year bring success, health and joy.

January - two books: 

“The Aleph and Other Stories” by Jorge Luis Borges

“The Sappho History” by Margaret Reynolds

February - four books:

“Dreamers” by Yuyi Morales

“With a Little Help from My Friends” by John Lennon

“The Well of Loneliness” by Radclyffe Hall

“On Being Different: What It Means to Be a Homosexual” by Merle Miller

March - four books:

“Geopolitics” by Saul Bernard Cohen

“The Vegetarian” by Han Kang

“The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali” by Sabina Khan

“Catch and Kill” by Ronan Farrow

April - two books:

“Carry On” by Rainbow Rowell

“Wayward Son” by Rainbow Rowell

May - twenty-one books:

“Reflection” by Elizabeth Lim

“Venus in Retrograde” by Susan Lilley

“Cults Uncovered” by Emily G. Thompson

“Loki: The God Who Fell to Earth” by Daniel Kibblesmith

“Stories” by Katherine Mansfield

“The Secret History” by Donna Tartt

“The Silence of the Girls” by Pat Barker

“Unsolved Murders” by Emily G. Thompson

“Pan’s Labyrinth” by Guillermo del Toro

“Daytripper 1-10″ by Fabio Moon

“Happy and You Know It” by Laura Hankin

“Latin American Folktales” by John Bierhorst

June - nine books:

“Gender” by Meg-John Barker

“The Red Pyramid” by Rick Riordan

“The Lightning Thief” by Rick Riordan

“The Sea of Monsters” by Rick Riordan

“The Titan’s Curse” by Rick Riordan

“The Stockholm Octavo” by Karen Engelmann

“Poems” by Sappho

“The Library Book” by Susan Orlean

“The Manson Women and Me” by Nikki Meredith

July - five books:

“The New York Times Book of Crime” by Kevin Flynn

“Essential Thor, Vol. 3″ by Stan Lee

“The Paris Hours” by Alex George

“Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?” by Jeanette Winterson

“Erotic Poems” by E.E. Cummings

August - seven books:

“Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit” by Jeanette Winterson

“Crier’s War” by Nina Varela

“Autobiography in Red” by Anne Carson

“The Beauty in Breaking” by Michele Harper

“Sex and Lies” by Leila Slimani

“Black Chalk” by Christopher J. Yates

“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” by Caitlin Doughty

September - five books:

“I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up” by Kodama Naoko

“Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Vol. 1″ by Naoko Takeuchi

“Gold Dust Woman” by Stephen Davis

“Hurricane Child” by Kacen Callender

“Coraline” by Neil Gaiman

October - six books:

“Mythology” by Edith Hamilton

“The Pagan Book of Living and Dying” by Starhawk

“The Night of the Gun” by David Carr

“Interview with the Vampire” by Anne Rice

“Restaurant to Another World Vol. 1″ by Junpei Inuzuka

“Of Light and Darkness” by Shayne Leighton

November - six books: 

“Beneath a Ruthless Sun” by Gilbert King

“Frankissstein” by Jeanette Winterson

“A Burning” by Megha Majumdar

“Dionysos: Exciter to Frenzy” by Vikki Bramshaw

“Norma Jean Baker of Troy” by Anne Carson

“In the Dream House” by Carmen Maria Machado

December - six books:

“The Virgin Suicides” by Jeffrey Eugenides

“The Penguin Book of Mermaids” by Cristina Bacchilega

“Thirst” by Mary Oliver

“Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon #2” by Naoki Takeuchi

“Dance in Classical Greece” by Alkis Raftis

“Howl and Other Poems” by Allen Ginsberg

[dicennio]

What are your favorite books ?

Hi, here’s a small list, 

These are prose only, it doesn’t include poetry books or science books but if you’re interested in either of them just let me know. I include two books per author only

The Suicide Club / Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Of love and shadows / The house of the spirits by Isabel Allende

Tear this heart / Women with big eyes by Ángeles Mastreta

The complete short stories / The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Stories of Love, Madness, and Death / The feather pillow by Horacio Quiroga

Kafka on the shore / Sputnik sweetheart Murakami Haruki

The bluest eye / Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting / The unbearable lightness of being Milan Kundera

The bell jar / The Letters of Sylvia Plath I & II by Sylvia Plath

Exodus / Mila 18 by Leon Uris

Gone Girl / Dark places by Gillian Flynn

She came to stay / The second sex by Simone de Beauvoir

The aleph / The book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges

Mrs Dalloway / Orlando by Virginia Wolf

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea / Thirst for love Yukio Mishima

One hundred years of solitude / Chronicle of a death foretold by Gabriel García Márquez

In search of lost time Vol 1-7 by Marcel Proust

The setting sun / No longer Human by Osamu Dazai

Peter Camenzind / Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse

The plague / The Strange by Albert Camus

The Trouble With Being Born / On the heights of despair by Emil Cioran

Nausea / No exit by Jean Paul Sartre

Human all too Human / Thus spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

[relatablepoetryandquotes]

“There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal; with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal.” - Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph

[lessfamiliarsouls]

“There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal; with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal.”

—Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph and Other Stories

[angryautodidact19]

Shit Borges I used to be a bouncer at a night club in Heston Service Station. Every Saturday night we would get all the major execs from the paper company in Heston proper come down and have a small bacchanalian get together. They would have been really decadent if they had the money, but all they could afford was computer dusting gas- difluoroethane or tetrafluoroethane I believe. They would huff it by the large fibreglass statue we had in the centre of club, the one of Eric Hobsbaum that weeped Prosecco when you kicked it in the balls. One night, the very night I stopped being a bouncer coincidentally, one of the execs had started to damage the leftist historian’s pouch really rather severely in an attempt to get enough free alcohol to sell it to his mates. I had to ask him to pay for the statue or leave. It was then I discovered to my shock that this would be the last time they would be coming here, as the Heston branch was closing down, and all the jobs being moved to Bahrain. As I said it had probably not been wise to make these trips to the service station a regular thing, he blew air duster into my face, and something amazing happened. I realised I had found what the writer Jorge Luis Borges referred to as “The Aleph”, and Gottfried Wilhelm Liebnitz “The Monad” the discovery that reveals the true nature of the universe, and allows the user to experience all of existence at once. The computer cleaner I had Inhaled had allowed me to reach the god spot in my brain, and I at once experienced the entire life of every single one of my forebears from the first Protozoa in the primordial soup to my own father, who’s eyes I now saw through as he left me on my 5th birthday in the care of my sodium bicarbonate snorting mother. “Why?” I shouted, “why did you leave me?” But it was to late. He had already left, and I was on the floor of Heston services’ Waitrose, shitting into a bag of own brand vegetable crisps, having broken in there during my psychotic episode. A the police dragged me away to life imprisonment for my act of sacrilege, I received my last philosophical awakening: there is no life- only Jam.

[thecomicsnexus]

Wavelength

SWAMP THING #62 JULY 1987 BY RICK VEITCH, ALFREDO ALCALA AND TATJANA WOOD

SYNOPSIS (FROM DC DATABASE)

Near the Source Wall, Metron examines the plight of two giants who hoped to gain access to the Source by enlarging themselves. Suddenly, he hears a signal and follows it into the sleeve of one of the giants' spacesuits. Inside, he finds some interesting flora growing, but beyond that, he discovers a giant Mother Box. After shrinking it down to a manageable size, he sets a course for Highfather's staff.

Unfortunately, he finds himself immobile. His Mobius Chair's energy source was depleted by the shrinking process. Angrily, Metron kicks the Mother Box, which rendered his chair useless, away. However, he is surprised when that same Mother Box transmits the consciousness of the Swamp Thing there, and into the plant life which Metron had collected earlier.

Swamp Thing discovers the Mother Box, and believes that it has told him that he was brought there because Metron wishes to enter the Source. Metron responds that he merely wants to go to Apokolips. Swamp Thing states that no, Metron's destiny lies with the Source, and so does his own. With the help of the Motherbox he can transport Metron into the Source and back out again.

Swamp Thing alters his appearance into that of a chair, and uses the Mother Box to lift off, and fly toward the Source. He explains that having learned how to control his electromagnetic field, he can transcend the barrier by altering his vibrations.

After an uncomfortable transition through the barrier, they burst into the domain of the Transmuters – beings posted along the fringes of reality, working the compost of creation into higher matter. One of them notices them, and they are forced to escape before they are transmuted. Swamp Thing alters his vibrational pattern at the last second, bringing them past the final barrier. What the two of them see in the Source is too much for Swamp Thing to handle. Metron manages to focus on certain elements, seeing all of creation's marvels and follies.

Metron recounts the tale to Darkseid, who laughs, revealing that what they had seen was not the Source, but an Aleph – a point from which one can view all other points in time and space. This information depresses Metron, as he'd hoped to barter the information gleaned from the source in exchange for X-Element, the fuel for his Mobius chair. Even so, Darkseid wonders if information about the Swamp Thing's nature could help him solve the Anti-Life Equation. Metron explains the Swamp Thing's nature, and notes that he has already left for earth.

Metron reveals that the Mother Box had to remove most of Swamp Thing's memories of the Aleph. Darkseid asks to view the record of those memories. The record shows that Swamp Thing thought only of his wife, Abby. The moments he observed spread from past to future, but all ending in fire and death. The images drove Swamp Thing mad.

In exchange for the information, Darkseid offers Metron the X-Element, then, crushing the Mother Box in his fist, he curses that he had forgotten to add the element of love to his equation.

ALEPHS (FROM WIKIPEDIA)

Aleph or Alef (א), is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the number 1 in Hebrew. Its esoteric meaning in Judaic Kabbalah, as denoted in the ancient theological treatise Bahir, relates to the origin of the universe, the "primordial one that contains all numbers." The aleph (ﺍ, or ʼalif) is also the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, as well as the Phoenician, Aramaic, and Syriac alphabets. Aleph is also the first letter of the Urdu and Persian alphabet, which are both written using Arabic script.

THE ALEPH, BY JORGE LUIS BORGES (ALSO WIKIPEDIA)

"The Aleph" is a short story by the Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. First published in September 1945, it was reprinted in the short story collection, The Aleph and Other Stories, in 1949, and revised by the author in 1974.

In Borges' story, the Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping, or confusion. The story traces the theme of infinity found in several of Borges' other works, such as "The Book of Sand".

As in many of Borges' short stories, the protagonist is a fictionalized version of the author. At the beginning of the story, he is mourning the recent death of a woman whom he loved, named Beatriz Viterbo, and resolves to stop by the house of her family to pay his respects. Over time, he comes to know her first cousin, Carlos Argentino Daneri, a mediocre poet with a vastly exaggerated view of his own talent who has made it his lifelong quest to write an epic poem that describes every single location on the planet in excruciatingly fine detail.

Later in the story, a business on the same street attempts to tear down Daneri's house in the course of its expansion. Daneri becomes enraged, explaining to the narrator that he must keep the house in order to finish his poem, because the cellar contains an Aleph which he is using to write the poem. Though by now he believes Daneri to be quite insane, the narrator proposes without waiting for an answer to come to the house and see the Aleph for himself.

Left alone in the darkness of the cellar, the narrator begins to fear that Daneri is conspiring to kill him, and then he sees the Aleph for himself:

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand...

Though staggered by the experience of seeing the Aleph, the narrator pretends to have seen nothing in order to get revenge on Daneri, whom he dislikes, by giving Daneri a reason to doubt his own sanity. The narrator tells Daneri that he has lived too long amongst the noise and bustle of the city and spent too much time in the dark and enclosed space of his cellar, and assures him that what he truly needs are the wide open spaces and fresh air of the countryside, and these will provide him the true peace of mind that he needs to complete his poem. He then takes his leave of Daneri and exits the house.

In a postscript to the story, Borges explains that Daneri's house was ultimately demolished, but that Daneri himself won second place for the Argentine National Prize for Literature. He also states his belief that the Aleph in Daneri's house was not the only one that exists, based on a report he has discovered, written by "Captain Burton" (Richard Francis Burton) when he was British consul in Brazil, describing the Mosque of Amr in Cairo, within which there is said to be a stone pillar that contains the entire universe; although this Aleph cannot be seen, it is said that those who put their ear to the pillar can hear a continuous hum that symbolises all the concurrent noises of the universe heard at any given time.

You can read it online.

REVIEW

So how did I know this was a reference to that short story? Well, Borges appears in this comic-book (I just updated the DC Database with this little fact). He is the blind writer in Buenos Aires.

The Alpeh allows us to take a look at recent events in the DCU and the Saga of the Swamp Thing as well, so it also works as a “greatest hits” issue. It also brings Darkseid closer to learning the anti-life equation. But in the end, if you skip this issue... well... you wouldn’t really miss much for the ongoing arc. It is a nice story though, and it is a good thing they didn’t reveal what’s behind the wall.

This is also Rick Veitch’s first solo issue of Swamp Thing.

I give this issue a score of 7

[lacrimis]

The Cimetière des Rois or Cimetière des Plainpalais, is a cemetery in Genève, Switzerland.

Writer's Phrases:

Only fools never change their minds.

When you reach my age, you will have lost your sight almost completely. You will see the yellow color and shadows and lights. Do not be worried. Gradual blindness is not a tragic thing. It's like a slow summer evening.

We publish so that we do not spend our lives correcting what we write. The truth is that it is published to free itself from the book and think of another. As for me, I reread very little of what I wrote. Although from time to time I reread passages of what I wrote and sometimes they please me. And I say: where did I get all this? Surely it must be plagiarism, because it's good.

I do not reread, I forget easily, but everything I publish supposes ten or twelve versions, the last one adding an obvious oversight to make it appear spontaneous.

Prisons seem abhorrent to me ... Certain men should be killed instead of directly imprisoned. Neither my enemies can I desire imprisonment, but death.

A blind man is a prisoner. I've been blind for a long time. I started to go blind when I started to see ...

I think taking a test is a lot less painful than going to a cocktail party. Cocktails are a boring organization.

How is it that God who became man, who is in favor of the poor in spirit, the humble, the disinherited of the earth, will be self-conscious as a beautiful being? It would be an unjust act of God. It would be a racist act of God, impossible. Therefore, Christ must have been downright ugly, and all the paintings that show him handsome are pure laziness.

In memory, everything is grateful, even misery.

War is horrible, but life is terrible. Maybe it's better to die on a battlefield.

Now there is a human science called computer science. What an ugly name for a science. It is a disgrace that information replaces culture.

Life is nothing but death that is shining.

To write poems one has to be naive and not very intelligent.

I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of a winding labyrinth that encompassed the past and the future and that somehow involved the stars.

In the dream of the man who dreamed, the dreamer awoke.

The true story is not what happened; is what we think happened.

I do not like what I write; however, regrettably I can not write anything else. As a young man, I wanted to be Chesterton, Lugones, Quevedo, I wanted to be Hugo, but evidently I was not, or I was in a defective way. So I resigned myself to being Borges, and the people were very lenient towards me.

I wrote too much. I would be satisfied if, after my death, I was left with a couple of short stories, a short story, a book of poems, a poem.

I'm not modest, I'm just amazed to be known. I ceased to be a man invisible at fifty, and one can at any moment discover that I am an impostor.

I'm skeptical, but I do not congratulate myself on that. I want young people to have the right to hope.

Greed is another folly, for I know rich people and poor people, and I have not noticed that a rich man is happier than the poor. Meanwhile kidnappings, robberies are done by naive people who believe that if they get rich, they will be happier, which is a serious mistake. Although indigence is not a virtue or an extraordinarily advantageous thing.

A monetary crisis is not the cause, but the consequence of a poor political-economic administration of a country. Saying well ... our economic crisis - which is also ethical - originates, fundamentally, from the money that was stolen.

The writer must be submissive and should not try to understand too much what he is doing, because any conscious act can lead to losing the work.

We are a dreamless dream. This dream is called universal history, and each of us is a symbol of that dream.

Hate is more terrible than violence.

Organizing a library is a silent way of exercising the art of criticism.

In a newspaper, news is often written. Of course, silly. The news that the newspapers give refer to topics that do not interest me.

On several occasions, I tried to smoke marijuana, but I always failed; I finally opted for mints.

Ulysses: it was not written to be read, it was written for something far superior, it was written for the author to become famous, to be analyzed, to figure in the history of literature.

If I do not repeat the others, I repeat myself and maybe I will not go beyond a repetition.

A person's face is moving and difficult to be fixed in a memory.

Everyone talks about the supposed benefits that health brings to the individual, but I think health is a precarious state that does not presage anything good.

Life is a conjecture.

The grossest temptation of an artist is to be a genius.

Irony: something that I appreciate and recognize, and that I am totally incapable of.

Simplicity - Poem by Jorge Luis Borges :

It opens, the gate to the garden with the docility of a page that frequent devotion questions and inside, my gaze has no need to fix on objects that already exist, exact, in memory. I know the customs and souls and that dialect of allusions that every human gathering goes weaving. I've no need to speak nor claim false privilege; they know me well who surround me here, know well my afflictions and weakness. This is to reach the highest thing, that Heaven perhaps will grant us: not admiration or victory but simply to be accepted as part of an undeniable Reality, like stones and trees.

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (Buenos Aires, August 24, 1899 - Geneva, June 14, 1986) was a writer, poet, translator, literary critic and Argentine essayist.

In 1914, his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied and from where he traveled to Spain. When he returned to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary magazines. He also worked as a librarian and public university professor. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Library of the Argentine Republic and professor of literature at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1961, he was distinguished in the international scene when he received the first international award of editors, the International Formentor Prize, shared with the playwright Samuel Beckett. In the same year, he received from the then president of Italy, Giovanni Gronchi, the decoration of the Order of the Commander.

His works cover the "chaos that rules the world and the character of unreality in all literature." His most famous books, Ficciones (1944) and O Aleph (1949), are collections of short stories intertwined by common themes: dreams, labyrinths, libraries, fictional writers and fictional books, religion, God. His works have contributed significantly to the genre of fantastic literature. Scholars have noted that Borges' progressive blindness has helped him to create new literary symbols through imagination, since "poets, like the blind, can see in the dark." The poems of his last period talk with cultural figures such as Spinoza, Luís de Camões and Virgílio.

His work has been widely translated and published in the United States and Europe. His international fame was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the "Latin American Boom" and the success of Cem Anos de Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez. To honor Borges, in his novel The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco created the character "Jorge de Burgos", which in addition to the similarity in the name, is blind - just as Borges was staying throughout life. Besides the character, the library that serves as the background of the book is inspired by Borges's short story "The Library of Babel" (a universal and infinite library that covers all the books in the world). The writer and essayist J.M. Coetzee said that "Borges, more than anyone else, renewed the language of fiction and thus paved the way for a remarkable generation of Spanish-American novelists"

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There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal; with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal.

Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph