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doesn't it sound familiar? apart from the gooey ending and the google twist, i could swear i had read that - a story, with a bookstore, with that meaning and process - before.

[maybe this sounds catty, but if you had to write a pastiche of borges you'd probably come up with this, so perhaps two people simply hit the same idea....]

It felt like Borges wrote the first half and Neal Stephenson wrote the second.

I liked the first half better -- the mystery of the situation was so fabulous that any possible resolution would be a letdown.

There's an audio version on Escape Pod, if you're unwilling to read this very cool story: http://escapepod.org/2009/09/10/ep215-mr-penumbras-twenty-fo...

(Rated G. May contain creepy imagery and disturbing data visualizations. Free, CC-licensed. Escape Pod is awesome.)

I did the same, but I am confused. There appears to be a novel coming out with the same name as that short story..

I guess they must be related--I'm certainly interested in reading the longer version when it is released.