Virtuality and Ludicity: Narrative Experimentation in The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate

Abstract

The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate is a narrative experiment. Time travel, as a traditional science fiction theme, is often mediated by a time machine to traverse between the real world and the past or future, with the real world serving as both the starting point and destination, highlighting the subjectivity and reversibility between different times and spaces. But in The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, the time travel breaks out of the conventional form of science fiction, turning time travel into irreversible one-dimensional behavior and becoming a virtual reality game-like narrative experiment. This paper puts traditional time travel into the background of digital age, reveals the fuzzy treatment of fictional world and real world in ontology dimension through the operation logic of virtual game, discusses the virtual and game nature of real world in the novel at ontology level, and examines how alchemist’s gate becomes a metaphorical expression in digital age.