Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Stories of Reality

“I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia”

What to make of this short story?! Casual mention of an obscure saying: “that mirrors and copulation are abominable, because they increase the number of men” attributed to some heresiarch in Uqbar. The narrator, unfamiliar with Uqbar, turns to his encyclopedia for information. There is no entry for Uqbar. His friend, returning home, looks it up in his copy of the same encyclopedia and finds a four page entry detailing the geography, history, and literature of the region. Uqbar’s literature is always about fantasy and takes place in two fictional places: Mlejnas and Tlön. Despite their efforts, they cannot find any other copies of the encyclopedias with a reference to Uqbar. The additional four pages about Uqbar is the only difference between his friend’s copy and all the other printings.

A couple of years later, the narrator stumbles upon a volume titled: A First Encyclopedia of Tlön. When he recognizes the name from Uqbar, he makes an intriguing discovery - the volume is just one part of a vast collection (the Orbis Tertius), spanning centuries and covering a wide range of topics, all made up about life on planet Tlön. One of the many unique characteristics of Tlön is that they have built their language around ideology, embracing the perspective that only ideas exist. Since objects don’t have a continuous existence, there are no nouns. Just compound adjectives and verbs. Perceptual state is the focus. Instead of “moon” they have “round airy-light on dark.” Materialism is considered heretical.

Over time, the Tlön composition, which started as a secret intellectual experiment spanning generations of ideological thinkers, starts infiltrating the real world. An impossible artifact in the book even manifests physically somehow. Fact starts melding with fiction and the descriptions of Tlön etch into the world’s fabric. It’s predicted in 100 years, the world would become Tlön.

The author/narrator published this back in 1941. Long before a general perception of fake news, internet memes, Wikipedia. But it still raises some relevant questions. What imaginary stories are currently writing themselves into our reality? Was this story itself written in the new Tlön? What type of thinkers have constructed our “common” worldview? When do fictional facts become factual fictions? How do we fact check that which has no other collaboration? How, in fact, do stories about the world matter? (And where do we find them?)

in Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges