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The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate {novelette} (2007)

by Ted Chiang

Other authors: See the other authors section.

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3771767,195 (4.08)11
A Baghdad merchant, who discovers an alchemical device that can send him back in time twenty years, tries to return to an earlier time to save his dead wife.
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» See also 11 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 16 (next | show all)
What a lovely and meaningful tale. Many thanks to Cheri and Kevin for another delightful experience. I am trying to read more short-stories, because they give you such a lot of return for such a small investment!

To anyone who would like to read this one: https://web.archive.org/web/20080302003522/http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/tc0... ( )
  mattorsara | Aug 11, 2022 |
This is a story about time travel, or more accurately, about how the ability to time travel requires introspection and consideration about how we interact with the present.

The story is set in the historic city of Baghdad, and briefly in Cairo. The narrator is addressing the Caliph, a leadership or stewardship position that is both political and religious. These two pieces of information can perhaps tell us a bit about what the author wants us to consider in telling this story.

Perhaps the setting is a challenge to the general tendency of time travel stories to be set in the future. Perhaps it is and indication that time travel itself is not the main message of the story, and that true message of the story is applicable across time periods. Perhaps it is a means of giving the story a fable like feel. Additionally, the official moniker of Baghdad is 'the city of peace'. Perhaps then this setting is a reference to the narrator's own journey to find peace. The last sentence of the intro in fact ends with 'I am at peace.'

The Caliph never has a voice through out the story, and we might reasonable assume that we the readers are grouped with the Caliph in receiving this story. The story is delivered with periodic supplications by the narrator to the receiver of the story to take it as 'a warning to those that would be warned, and a lesson to those that would learn.'

The narrator starts his story in the district of the metal smiths, a reference to the origins of alchemy. Alchemy is an ancient branch of natural philosophy originating in Grecco-Roman Egypt with the goal of purifying certain materials and perfection of the body and soul. As alchemy is not necessarily an intuitive origin for time travel, though the author smoothly weaves it into the tale, this may be an attempt to both ground time travel to the times, and link it to the underlying motive of the story; introspective purification and personal transformation.

He enters a store filled with wondrous inventions and contraptions crafted in metal. The shop owner greets him and the invites him to view an alchemical invention of his. The narrator is initially skeptical. The shop owner demonstrates that this device of his creation can bridge between the present and several seconds in the future. This skepticism allows us as readers to be skeptical and convinced alongside the narrator.

The shop owner offers an explanation for how this happens that the narrator says he did not entirely follow, but involved 'tiny pores in the skin of reality, like the holes that worms bore into wood...able to expand and stretch it the way a glassblower turns a dollop of molten glass into a long-necked pipe, and how he then allowed time to flow like water at one mouth while causing it to thicken like syrup at the other.' This seems a clear reference to quantum physics, space-time, and worm holes. This description provides just enough to fill our need for explanation, while keeping the focus off the time travel itself.

The shop owner then shows the narrator another of his inventions that bridges twenty years into the future. He relates the experiences of three different people that used this technology and their very different experiences.

The first man of the three stories visits and chats with his elder and now wealthy counter part, who only wishes to reminisce about their shared childhood. The elder does however give the younger some small advice. Eventually, over the course of the younger's visits, the elder impresses upon him the joy of the experience in the present. Once the younger has accepted this, the elder relates how the younger will make his fortune. The younger ceases his visits and enjoys the present and happily anticipates the future, and the elder enjoys the past.

At the end of this story, the shop owner and narrator have an interlude, where they discuss the deterministic nature of the future, but the variable nature of our experience of it. This story subscribes to a deterministic time, avoiding the potential changes future knowledge can bring, and reorienting the focus again on one's experience and self-examination of past, present, and future.

The second story is about a man who yearns for wealth. He finds his elder counter part, however his future self is apparently not as wealthy like he had hoped. He goes into his elder's house and finds a chest full of gold, which he steals, though he reasons, it is not truly possible to steal from oneself. The process of reasoning seems to allow the reader to makes our own conclusions about how sound this argument may be.

He takes the stolen gold back to the present and spends it frivolously. The frivolity attracts robbers who take off with his wife and demand a ransom of all the remaining gold he has, which he is ultimately glad to have paid, saying to his returned wife 'I could not take pleasure [in the wealth] without you'. Together they now save all their money to replenish that which was lost. Eventually they fall into miserliness with their frugality, desolately waiting for the younger to come and steal the accrued wealth. Both elder and younger resent their asynchronous selves, past, present, and future.

Again the narrator and shop owner interlude, contemplating that the man 'must live with the consequences of his actions'. A more accurate statement might be that a man has to live with himself.

The third story follow the wife of the man in the first story. She recognizes the younger man that comes to visit her husband as his youthful self, and asks her husband about this marvel. She is captivated by the younger version of her husband, and is reminded of the attraction she felt for him in their youth. She steps through the gate to the past and finds the youthful version of her husband, quietly saving him with the help of her older self from jewelers who believe he stole from them. This brings her into the acquaintance of the younger version of her husband, and they begin an affair. The wife realizes that she will be the one to instruct the younger version of her husband to be a good love maker to her own younger self, relating to him 'the pleasure you give is returned in the pleasure you receive', apparently in reference to not just love making, but her own gift to her youthful self. Her actions express great affection for her youthful self, and contentment with her present.

The narrator is more intrigued by this last story than the others, understanding that both the past and the future are the same 'we cannot change either, but we can know both more fully.' He is likely also attracted to how one might interact with their own partner's past, present, and future experiences. The narrator wishes to travel to the past, but in order to do so, must travel to the gate those in the stories used, back in Cairo. He relates to the Caliph but not the shop own that his desire to travel to the past stems from his wish to see his dead wife and apologize for their last argument, which was the last time he spoke to her before her death. He says that this argument has haunted him all this time. It seems from his wording that it is not the sentiment expressed to his wife the follows him, but his own guilt that he wishes to relieve.

He travels to Cairo and enters the gate, arriving to the past with sufficient time to travel back to Baghdad to find his still living wife. He travels with a caravan, but the journey is fraught with delays. He arrives a day too late. A physician assistant finds him and relates to him a message from his wife before her passing, that her last thoughts were of him. He is soothed by this message. 'My journey to the past had changed nothing, but what I had learned had changed everything.' He is then taken into the custody of the guard and brought before the Caliph to relate his tale, catching up to the present, however, still within the past. 'There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.'

Perhaps his guilt would have been assuaged if his past self had been able to receive this message rather than his future self, removing the need for this trip to the past. But the sequence of events is set, though his current perception of them is changed. The tale ends as a parable. It is unclear what will become of the narrator now, if the Caliph even believes him, but he is content. ( )
  mau3 | Jul 16, 2022 |
Best time travel story I’ve read in years. Original (Middle Eastern setting), engaging, internally consistent, raises deep questions I had never seen raised in the context of time travel. ( )
  marzagao | Jun 1, 2021 |
Great time travel story. Surprisingly similar to my previous read: Permafrost by Alistair Reynolds.
( )
  PhilOnTheHill | Sep 8, 2019 |
Another excellent story by Ted Chiang... actually, it's three stories, set in a framing device.
In the medieval Middle East, an alchemist has developed a kind of time machine. When a potential customer walks in, the inventor offers him the chance to go through his gateway and through time - but first he tells the stories of three other people who took such a journey, and what befell them.
Like a tale of the Arabian Nights, the story has a fairy-tale feel to it, told simply and briefly, but with a lot of food for thought wrapped into its pages. As the last line makes clear, the themes are repentance, atonement and forgiveness. ( )
  AltheaAnn | Feb 9, 2016 |
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Ted Chiangprimary authorall editionscalculated
Burton, LeVarNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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O Mighty Caliph and Commander of the Faithful, I am humbled to be in the splendor of your presence; a man can hope for no greater blessing as long as he lives.
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Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.
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A Baghdad merchant, who discovers an alchemical device that can send him back in time twenty years, tries to return to an earlier time to save his dead wife.

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