tlán

Tlön is a fictional world created by Jorge Luis Borges as part of his short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. The tale presents Tlön as a largely unknown planet whose existence is uncovered through a secret project of the fictional secret society Orbis Tertius and its editing of an enormous encyclopedia that gradually disseminates Tlönian ideas.

In the Tlön universe, language and reality are intimately connected. The Tlönian languages are described as having unusual grammatical features designed to shape perception and thought; in Tlön, objects are not understood as independent things but as constructs of language and memory; time and space are subjective and relative; the physical world is thus a product of human cognition rather than an external reality.

The story traces how Tlön's ideas gradually infiltrate our world through translations and descriptions, leading to real-world consequences: people begin to renounce matter in favor of perception, adopt Tlönian terms, and even modify their laws of physics and institutions to align with Tlön's idealist worldview.

Tlön has been widely discussed as a landmark example of metafiction, linguistic relativity, and philosophical speculation in fiction. It raises questions about how language shapes reality and the status of knowledge produced through documentation.

See also: Jorge Luis Borges; Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius; Orbis Tertius; Uqbar.