Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again.
— Ray Bradbury

In 1944 a little-known Argentine writer named Jorge Luis Borges published a slender volume of cryptic short stories humbly titled Ficciones. Enigmatic and offbeat, it was riddled with mathematical equations, labyrinthine puzzles, arcane footnotes and references to imaginary encyclopedias. Mostly lacking in t...