You are in a hexagonal gallery with an enormous [[ventilation shaft]] running through the middle, encircled by a very low railing. [[Twenty shelves]] -- five long shelves per side -- cover all the sides except two. One of the free sides gives upon a narrow entrance way, which leads to [[another gallery]]. To the left and right of the entrance are [[two miniature rooms]]. Light comes from two spherical fruits called by the name of lamps.
One of the shelves has been dismantled and repurposed as a [[makeshift table]].
(align: "=><=")[<img src="https://libraryofbabel.info/img/browsehex.gif" width="500" height="500" alt="Library of Babel">]
[[Back to Title|Title Page]]The shelves are lined with books. From experience you know that each shelf contains thirty-two books, each 410 pages long. Common wisdom holds that "the Library is total and that its shelfs contain all the possible combinations of the twenty-odd orthographic symbols....that is, everything which can be expressed, in all languages."
Accurate description of every world in the multiverse, including representations so magically and vividly described that they transport the reader out of the library and into another reality. A near-infinite number of books, of course, do not do this and instead fail to even form meaningful patterns.
(link-repeat: "Examine a book at random")[(open-url: "https://www.libraryofbabel.info/random.cgi")]
[[Take a step back|Hexagonal Room]]
(align: "=><=")[<img src="https://libraryofbabel.info/img/bookshelf3.gif">](align: "=><=")[<img src="https://sullydish.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/6a00d83451c45669e2015434eb3383970c-550wi.jpg?w=660">]
The shaft appears to extend to an infinite abyss in either direction. You feel a dizzying sensation and grip the glossy wooden railing tightly until it subsides.
[[Take a step back|Hexagonal Room]]This table will have the objects on it.
One of the objects on the table is a boring-but-informative looking pamphlet. The cover reads [[ABOUT THIS SHOWCASE]] in large block letters.
[[Take a step back|Hexagonal Room]]You wander for untold ages, and each gallery you enter is like the previous, except for the contents of the books. "The library is a sphere whose consummate centre is any haxagon, and whose circumference is inaccessible."
Weary, you eventually return to the room with the table, or some variant of that room so similar to the original that you cannot tell a difference.
[[Continue|Hexagonal Room]] One of these small room allows standing room for sleeping. The other, the satisfaction of fecal necessities. Through this section passes the [[spiral staircase|another gallery]], which plunges down into the abyss and rises up to the heights. In the entrance way hangs a mirror, which faithfully duplicates appearances.
(align: "=><=")[<img src= "https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/230000/velka/stears-up-view.jpg" width = "600" height = "500">]
[[Return to the gallery|Hexagonal Room]](align: "=><=" )[**Introduction to Worldbuilding**]
(align: "=><=" )[Summer 2020 Multiversal Showcase]
(align: "=><===" )[<img src ="https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--CzJfPQy3--/c_fill,fl_progressive,g_center,h_900,q_80,w_1600/oa9pyqsqrvxyvnuuqeo0.png" width = "800" height = "450">]
(align:"=><=")[[Enter the Library|Hexagonal Room]]
This showcase is the final project of "Introduction to Worldbuilding," a course held through Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Summer 2020. The five teams of the class each developed their own imagined worlds over the twelve weeks of the semester.
We are inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin's prophetic words of 2014:
"I think hard times will be coming when we need writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom."
Each of these works presents an introduction to a world. These worlds extend beyond the view presented here, and there is still much to be explored. Our understandings of any world, imagined or otherwise, are never complete.
The course was developed by Nicholas Mizer. For more information, you can contact him at mizern@rpi.edu.
[[Put down the pamphlet |makeshift table]]