Reality was anchored due north, and slowly circled into fantasy. As you traced the stacks clockwise, history shifted into legend, legend became myth, and myth transitioned to outright fiction.
This was ridiculously enjoyable and it's absurd how little attention it got. You're like the modern day Borges! I'm super looking forwards to further installments in this universe!
Thank you so much! Maybe it's about to take off and you're on the ground floor as the first commenter! Tell your friends!
That comparison to Borges is very flattering, I loved his Library of Babel story. I have another short story in the same universe as this one here: https://markmywords.substack.com/p/short-fiction-the-confession-of-king I also have a drafted novel continuing the story more directly, which will either land at a publisher by a miracle, get self-published if I just bite the bullet, or I'd simply serialize at this substack.
A pretty late comment, but I liked this a lot, and am excited it's being serialized. Libraries as settings for fantasy fiction are always inherently interesting - whether that's in Doctor Who, Final Fantasy V, or Alexander Wales' Infinite Library from Worth the Candle. (Which this reminded me of. I wish he'd explored that setting more.) It's nice to see you've got other fiction besides that one about Detective Manse, which was also very excellent, and also recommended through FdB's monthly Subscriber Writing links.
The "ratfic" genre isn't as large as I'd like, and having two of the serials I was reading recently conclude was kind of a downer...there are others, but they either update slowly or I've caught up to them (Project Lawful, for example). Yeah, there are still some All-Time Greats I haven't cracked yet...but I think after one's become acclimated to the narrative conventions, the initial hype fades somewhat? And now the bar for "I'll spend hours/days/weeks reading this" is much higher. Not everything can be, like, HPMOR. You make the cut though, and I'll definitely be looking forward to future works.
(Related side note: Eristat sounds too similar to Erised in my mind. I'm glad it's a higher-quality pun though - a library catalogue organized by erisology status.)
I also love libraries in fiction, and am familiar with your first two examples on top of Borges, they have a lot of storytelling potential, they can represent and model a world, and seem inherently full of possibility.
You may be the first person to name this as ratfic, and I fully respect that classification, although there are definitely a few other genre influences on me as well. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on everything coming up as well, you may be the reader who enjoys this as much as I do myself.
Heh...WtC is an epic pomo/ratfic journey that I think you'd probably enjoy if our tastes/inspirations are at all similar. But it's also a, what, 250+ chapter doorstopper that I don't seriously expect anyone to pick up on a random recommendation, haha. (Comes out to *8* full-length published volumes!)
I think literary genres are fairly porous, and the exact definition of "ratfic" always seemed a little loosy-goosey to me - "rational" being a very particular autist-inflected judgement, which is definitely a failure of typical-minding. Most people read, write, and love "non-rational" fiction because most people aren't particularly rational, that's the perfectly acceptable norm! I guess the way I'm using it generally, and here for sure, is "fiction where I have to actually put some effort in to not be 5 steps ahead of the idiot protagonist". Which isn't an automatic fail of likeability, but boy there better be something else to compensate for such predictable plot/formulaic character writing/etc. It's like the opposite of "horror" genre - which consistently fails to actually scare me cause I'm terrible at suspending skeptical disbelief.
tldr I like it and it actually makes me think, this is good.
Would that manner of encoding the codex be related to or have been inspired by Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" by any chance?
Interesting, what was the connection you were seeing? I have read the book and greatly enjoyed it, checking the index just now for prime numbers I didn't see an obvious connection beyond the proof of the infinity of the prime numbers
I was thinking of the self-referential nature of the encoding system used in the codex. It serves both as medium and message in that it describing how to decode itself, even if it is doing so by a process of boot-strapping with a simpler system. This reminds me a bit of how the Godel system of proofs works.
This was ridiculously enjoyable and it's absurd how little attention it got. You're like the modern day Borges! I'm super looking forwards to further installments in this universe!
A further installment has arrived, additional ones to arrive weekly! https://markmywords.substack.com/p/fiction-eristat-the-seven-suitors-chapter-one
Thank you so much! Maybe it's about to take off and you're on the ground floor as the first commenter! Tell your friends!
That comparison to Borges is very flattering, I loved his Library of Babel story. I have another short story in the same universe as this one here: https://markmywords.substack.com/p/short-fiction-the-confession-of-king I also have a drafted novel continuing the story more directly, which will either land at a publisher by a miracle, get self-published if I just bite the bullet, or I'd simply serialize at this substack.
Oh, please do!
I enjoyed this bit so much; I’m dying to know the whole.
I've begun serializing the follow-up here! https://markmywords.substack.com/p/fiction-eristat-the-seven-suitors-chapter-one
A pretty late comment, but I liked this a lot, and am excited it's being serialized. Libraries as settings for fantasy fiction are always inherently interesting - whether that's in Doctor Who, Final Fantasy V, or Alexander Wales' Infinite Library from Worth the Candle. (Which this reminded me of. I wish he'd explored that setting more.) It's nice to see you've got other fiction besides that one about Detective Manse, which was also very excellent, and also recommended through FdB's monthly Subscriber Writing links.
The "ratfic" genre isn't as large as I'd like, and having two of the serials I was reading recently conclude was kind of a downer...there are others, but they either update slowly or I've caught up to them (Project Lawful, for example). Yeah, there are still some All-Time Greats I haven't cracked yet...but I think after one's become acclimated to the narrative conventions, the initial hype fades somewhat? And now the bar for "I'll spend hours/days/weeks reading this" is much higher. Not everything can be, like, HPMOR. You make the cut though, and I'll definitely be looking forward to future works.
(Related side note: Eristat sounds too similar to Erised in my mind. I'm glad it's a higher-quality pun though - a library catalogue organized by erisology status.)
I also love libraries in fiction, and am familiar with your first two examples on top of Borges, they have a lot of storytelling potential, they can represent and model a world, and seem inherently full of possibility.
You may be the first person to name this as ratfic, and I fully respect that classification, although there are definitely a few other genre influences on me as well. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on everything coming up as well, you may be the reader who enjoys this as much as I do myself.
Heh...WtC is an epic pomo/ratfic journey that I think you'd probably enjoy if our tastes/inspirations are at all similar. But it's also a, what, 250+ chapter doorstopper that I don't seriously expect anyone to pick up on a random recommendation, haha. (Comes out to *8* full-length published volumes!)
I think literary genres are fairly porous, and the exact definition of "ratfic" always seemed a little loosy-goosey to me - "rational" being a very particular autist-inflected judgement, which is definitely a failure of typical-minding. Most people read, write, and love "non-rational" fiction because most people aren't particularly rational, that's the perfectly acceptable norm! I guess the way I'm using it generally, and here for sure, is "fiction where I have to actually put some effort in to not be 5 steps ahead of the idiot protagonist". Which isn't an automatic fail of likeability, but boy there better be something else to compensate for such predictable plot/formulaic character writing/etc. It's like the opposite of "horror" genre - which consistently fails to actually scare me cause I'm terrible at suspending skeptical disbelief.
tldr I like it and it actually makes me think, this is good.
Would that manner of encoding the codex be related to or have been inspired by Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" by any chance?
Interesting, what was the connection you were seeing? I have read the book and greatly enjoyed it, checking the index just now for prime numbers I didn't see an obvious connection beyond the proof of the infinity of the prime numbers
I was thinking of the self-referential nature of the encoding system used in the codex. It serves both as medium and message in that it describing how to decode itself, even if it is doing so by a process of boot-strapping with a simpler system. This reminds me a bit of how the Godel system of proofs works.