sci-fi novellas
Discover the best sci-fi novellas in this curated reading list, featuring Ted Chiang’s The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate—a masterful blend of time travel and fantasy. Explore award-winning short fiction and essential books for fans of speculative storytelling.
Book
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
by Ted Chiang
This curious time-travel novella is a gracefully told lesson about accepting fate-or, as better suits this medieval Arabian setting, the will of Allah. A Baghdad merchant discovers an alchemical device that can send a traveler back in time 20 years. Despite the alchemist's warning that "what is made cannot be unmade," and three illustrative tales about others' attempts to alter the past, the merchant is determined to return to an earlier time to save his long-dead wife
