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I'd say the Voynich Manuscript (which the article mentions) is still the strangest book in the world.

We can understand how the Codex Seraphinianus came about. Serafini presumably looked at the Voynich Manuscript and said "that looks like fun, I want to write a modern version of that". And he did so, and he made the text look convincingly like language without being decipherable as any known language, which would seem to require applying modern knowledge of linguistics and information theory.

But we don't know how the Voynich author did the same thing, many centuries earlier.



For those who don't know what the Voynich Manuscript is, this article was on HN a while back (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/07/the-unre...) and you can view the whole thing online (http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3519597).

Definitely more intriguing than this book, imho.


Relevant xkcd:

http://xkcd.com/593/


You can download the entire thing as a PDF! That is frigging awesome!


Also take a look at Antichthon Universalis (http://triptico.com/artwork/antichthon_universalis.html). The artwork is not as stunning (far from), but at least it's a real cypher with real meaning, still unbroken.


I ll fork voynich, merge them with codex s. if cc, scramble with hegels dialectic and add a mix of brainfuck + plan 9 kernel in obscured form, and sell. is this allowed?


not just allowed, but encouraged.




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