Category: About Stories

Sapiens & Stories

This piece is about a highly recommended book that will make you rethink everything you have believed so far about us as a species.

You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.

– Yuval Noah Harari

What is it that’s special about Homo Sapiens? What allowed us to climb to the top of the ecological ladder and dominate the planet so ruthlessly until the very future of our planet is in doubt at the beginning of the 21st Century? Many reasons are given, such as our intelligence due to possessing brains larger and more powerful than those of any other species in history, learning to control and use fire, our ability to use our hands to hold and manipulate objects, the ability to devise tools and, of course, the power of having languages.

But is there one thing that we can say propelled us from mid-level creatures on the food chain to its supreme rulers, fending off and controlling animals bigger and more powerful than us, while successfully moving into every possible niche on this planet? Continue reading “Sapiens & Stories”

Deserving a Place in the Known Universe

It turns out, like silent supernovas, lonely planets and sizzling comets, that each book is unique in its execution and purpose, as different as they come.

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms – Muriel Rukeyser

 

It has never been easier in the history of humankind, to write and send out one’s writings to a larger potential audience in the world, than it is today.

The internet has not only opened up the possibility of creating stories to anyone who cares to do so but the technology now exists that has so simplified publishing to enable those stories to be placed in the hands of readers everywhere in as many forms as one can dream of, even going beyond the traditional form of books and their more recent electronic cousins. It’s mightily easier than finding and learning to use a Gutenberg press and sending finished manuscripts out on the backs of mules, taken by monks, to far away lands.

But what type of story works? Is there a type that’s sure to succeed at the expense of others? How different can successful works of fiction be? Continue reading “Deserving a Place in the Known Universe”