In this episode, Sean and Madhurima speak with the biographer and science fiction writer Alec Nevala-Lee about a short story he says has a deeper significance than even he understood for his first thirty years as a fan of it. Jorge Luis-Borges’ “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” was first published in 1940, but Nevala-Lee argues it is even more important today. 

Sources / Show Notes

Alec mentions the piece he wrote for The Daily Beast back in 2012, considering the way that the story relates to the propaganda and other efforts of Karl Rove and the George W. Bush administration. The piece is behind a paywall on The Daily Beast site, but an archived version is available in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which the characters in the short story would have found to be a really convenient service for finding old books. 

If you want to take Alec up on his recommendation, you can read the entire short story here. Or you can check out his intellectual history of science fiction, which he mentions at the end - Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

Credits:

Hosts: Sean Johnson Andrews, breakingculture.substack.com

Madhurima Chakraborty

madhurimachakraborty.net

Episode Cover Art: "Plate 2 from the Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius Exhibition" by Mark Peatfield - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67124981

Show music: composed by Kris Stokes