"The Storytelling Animal: How Stores Make Us Human" by Jonathan Gottschall

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Copyright: 2012
ISBN: 9780547391403

The Storytelling Animal provides readers with a good overview of how stories and important to humans. It examines how stories are such a major part of our lives that we routinely ignore them as such, and simply assume that's the way life is. It also examines the way television, video games, and other activities are both part of our life's story, and in fact the story itself.

The author goes on to examine the realms of stories that are not exactly fiction, but that aren't true either such as reality television, commercials, etc. He also looks at the play both for children and adults can shape our worlds. Play in the children's sense is make-believe, pretend worlds, and how when you put a group of small children into a room they will pretty much spontaneously create a world in which they are both the writer, actors, protagonists, antagonists, directors, and virtually all other roles you can imagine.

Play in the adult sense is examined by looking a movies, theatre, live action role playing, Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), and such. The latter two of these could easily be translated into books on their own as there is so much to consider.

I found this book to be quite informative, and I think it would be a good suggested read especially for anybody who is interested in creative writing, or who is studying psychology.

"The Green Hills of Earth" by Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)

Publisher: Signet
Copyright: 1950

The Green Hills of Earth Is Robett Heinlein's third collection of short stories that form the backbone of his Future History. This volume includes the classics "Delilah and the Space-Rigger", "Space Jockey", "The Long Watch", "Gentlemen, Bd Seated", "The Black Pits of Luna", "It's Great to be Back", "-We Also Walk Dogs", "Ordeal in Space", "The Green Hills of Earth", and "Logic of Empire".

As in the other two volumes readers will meet relatively important characters that appear in Heinlein's later works primarily his novels. It is my opinion though, that at least one of the stories in this book should have been included in the first volume, and that is "Logic of Empire" which mentions the character Nehemiah Scudder, who later becomes the First Prophet. The actual story of Scudder was never written by Mr. Heinlein, because (as he explained in the second book) he began to hate the character so much that he decided to never write it. In any case the story of Scudder is what leads to stories such as "Revolt in 2100", "Coventry" and a few others.

Being a dedicated fan of Mr. Heinlein I highly recommend these books, as they do form the basis of his universe and you will understand where he's coming from (and where you are headed) a lot better if you have read them.

"The Man Who Sold the Moon" by Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)

Publisher: Signet
Copyright: 1950

The man who sold the moon is the first of the three volume collection of short stories by Robert Heinlein that begins his future history series (I reviewed the second "Revolt in 2100" a couple of weeks ago). This volume includes the stories "Let There Be Light", "The Roads Must Roll", "The Man Who Sold the Moon", "Requiem ", "Life-line ", and "Blowups Happen".

All of these stories are set in what is now our recent past, but as they were written in the early 1950s a possible future as far as the author was concerned.

The stories themselves deal with topics such as power generation / renewable energy, the first spaceship to the moon, the dangers of nuclear energy, and mortality - quite a mix.

It is interesting to note that "Life-line" was the first story Robert A. Heinlein sold, and which was published in the August1939 edition of Astounding, which was then edited by John W. Campbell Jr. who is responsible for discovering many of what are now considered to be the classic science fiction authors.

"Double Star" by Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)

Publisher: Doubleday, Garden City, New York

Date: 1956

The novel Double Star is a classic Heinlein science-fiction story, that tells the tale of an out of a work actor who is hired rather clandestinely to impersonate a very famous and important  person.

In actuality the story is primarily about political events that surround and are a result of the expansion of the human race to the other planets. It deals with other touchy topics such as race relations, and racism as well.

Being written in the 1950s, readers of current science fiction will note many discrepancies with regard to life on Venus and Mars etc. but this is really what gives the story both it's background and its flavour. Back then we didn't know, but it was postulated that Mars and Venus could possibly be inhabited, as well as some of the other planets. After all American astronomer Percival Lowell was sure that there were canals on Mars (and published three books on it between 1895 and 1908), and Venus was so shrouded in clouds (and still is), we didn't know.

A very good read, that used to be considered juvenile science fiction, but now-a-days is simply a classic.

In the next few weeks I am going to concentrate on reviewing a number of the classic science fiction stories, that for some unknown reason a lot of people have never heard about.