The Library of Babel - Influence On Later Writers

Influence On Later Writers

• Umberto Eco's postmodern novel The Name of the Rose (1980) features a labyrinthine library, presided over by a blind monk named Jorge of Burgos.
• Daniel Dennett's 1995 book Darwin's Dangerous Idea includes an elaboration of the Library of Babel concept to illustrate the mathematics of genetic variation. It is called the Library of Mendel.
• In "The Net of Babel", published in Interzone in 1995, David Langford imagines the Library becoming computerized for easy access. This aids the librarians in searching for specific text while also highlighting the futility of such searches as they can find anything, but nothing of meaning as such. The sequel continues many of Borges's themes, while also highlighting the difference between data and information, and satirizing the Internet.
• Russell Standish's Theory of Nothing uses the concept of the Library of Babel to illustrate how an ultimate ensemble containing all possible descriptions would in sum contain zero information and would thus be the simplest possible explanation for the existence of the universe. This theory therefore implies the reality of all universes.
• Michael Ende reused in The Neverending Story the idea of an universe of hexagonal rooms in the Temple of a Thousand Doors, which contained all the possible characteristics of doors in the fantastic realm. A later chapter features the infinite monkey theorem.
• Terry Pratchett uses the concept of the infinite library in his Discworld novels. The knowledgeable librarian is a human wizard transformed into an orangutan.
• William Goldbloom Bloch wrote the non-fiction work The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel (2008) exploring the short story from a mathematical perspective. He analyzes the hypothetical library presented by Borges using the ideas of topology, information theory, and geometry.
• In Greg Bear's novel City at the End of Time (2008) the sum-runners carried by the protagonists are intended by their creator to be combined to form a 'Babel', an infinite library containing every possible permutation of every possible character in every possible language. Bear has stated that this was inspired by Borges, who is also namechecked in the novel. Borges is described as an unknown Argentinian who commissioned an encyclopedia of impossible things, a reference to either "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" or the Book of Imaginary Beings.