Talk:The Garden of Forking Paths

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The only problem with this summary is that Dr Albert was NOT a close friend of Yu Tsun's. Yu Tsun had chosen Alberts name from the phone book because his last name was the same as the location of city the Germans should attack. Yu Tsun had never met him before.

I have a problem with the section called "alternative meaning and the hypertext creation." The final line of the second paragraph states that "this [being the hypertext novel] is the ultimate non-linear story in which there is no final, intended product." I have to disagree with this statement, seeing as just because a story has a nonlinear narrative, that doesn't mean it doesn't have a purpose or reason. Maybe if the story was random, I'd agree. But nonlinear stories still have messages, a story and the like, so it's unfair to generalize and say hypertext causes this to be without a final product. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kendalfong (talk • contribs) 09:29, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Hypertext

I think all of this information about this short story and hypertext is unnecessary, or needs to be rewritten. The entire section about hypertext is problematic for me. I think we should just stick to the facts. This is an encyclopedia, after all.

The quote by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort at the introduction should be moved elsewhere and should be recontextualized as "Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort believe that..." rather than put all the way on top and given an entire paragraph. It comes off as highly speculative, unless this story is in fact a hypertext story (which it is not) or describes the story in the story as using new media or very clearly doing what hypertext does (which it doesn't exactly and can be interpreted many ways).

What we should preserve are the statements which say the story inspired hypertext. But beyond that, there's nothing more we can say, other than talking about the ideas of Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. This statement:

"The Garden of Forking Paths" has similarities to today's digital media and hypertext projects.

Is very iffy as the story itself is linear, but perhaps the story in the story has similarities. The later statements of Borges being almost prophetic feel unnecessary. Borges didn't invent hypertext, unless he made digital literature at his time. It's more accurate to say that perhaps he inspired it.

-- Also on the section of "Modern hypertext": unless these authors have explicitly stated that The Garden of Forking Paths have influenced their pieces, and citations can be provided for those statements, we don't need to put them here. The works listed in the section are just hypertext works with unclear connections to The Garden of Forking Paths. We might as well list every hypertext work on this page if that's the case. Ppk80 (talk) 05:35, 22 August 2013 (UTC)ppk80

Go edit, I say, it would be easy enough to improve what is there on the lines you say. Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 01:02, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Impossible World

According to this article, Deleuze used the story to illustrate Leibniz's concept of co-existing 'impossible worlds'. However, the link in that sentence takes you to the "Possible Worlds" article. Wikipedia also has an "Impossible Worlds" article. Which of these actually goes with both the story and Deleuze's interpretation? 70.138.217.107 (talk) 04:58, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Possible reference to a short story of Conan Doyle

The Lost Special of Conan Doyle in 1898 raises some strange similarities with the Garden of Forking Paths.

• The first paragraph is built in a very similar fashion to begin with:
  • There's a letter of a criminal ( who considers himself a spy ) before his execution.
  • The implied author claims the letter can throw light upon a mystery.
  • Both stories uses the characteristic of giving many precise details
• The mystery is solved by a forking railway
• The deduction process of he detective is described as a scheme of binary possible paths some of which are eliminated
• The solution is giving by the criminal - Hilbert, while the solution of the forking paths is given by the victim Dr Albert.

This is the beginning of the story: "The confession of Herbert de Lernac, now lying under sentence of death at Marseilles, has thrown a light upon one of the most inexplicable crimes of the century - an incident which is, I believe, absolutely unprecedented in the criminal annals of any country." Hexagone59 (talk) 17:05, 31 March 2016 (UTC)