Jorge Louis Borges (1899-1986)

"The Library of Baebel"

• narrator describes how his universe consists of an endless expanse of interlocking hexagonal rooms, each of which contains the bare necessities for human survival, and four walls of bookshelves
• though the order and content of the books is random, the inhabitants believe that the books contaian every possible ordering of just a few basic characters (letters and punctuation marks)
• though the majority of the books in this universe is gibberish, the library also must contain every coherent book ever written or that might ever be written, and every possible permutation or slightly erroneous version of every one of those books
• the library must contain all useful information, including predictions of the future, biographies of any person, and translations of every book in all languages
• however, all books are totally useless to the reader and the librarians are in a state of suicidal despair
• nonetheless, Borges speculates on the existence of the "Crimson Hexagon" which contains a book that contains the truth of all other books; the librarian who reads it is akin to God
• "The Book of Sand", another story of Borges, has an infinite book instead of library