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I have to admit, I read this book from a very biased point of view. Without a doubt, The Neverending Story is the best children’s book ever written, and quite possibly the best book I’ve ever read. It’s been my favorite since 4th grade, and reading it again now didn’t change that. Few books have made me cry as much or think as deeply as this one.

It tells the story of a fat, mediocre boy named Bastian Balthazar Bux. He gets beat up and made fun of at school, he doesn’t do well in his classes, and he doesn’t feel good about himself at all. Ever since his mother died, his father has been depressed and focused all his attentions on his work as a dentist, and hasn’t really spent much time with Bastian. But of all the depressing things in Bastian’s life, he has one thing going for him: he loves to read and to tell stories. He spends most of his time by himself making up stories and imagining different worlds.

One day, as he is running away from the school bullies, he stumbles into a used bookstore and finds a book called THE NEVERENDING STORY. As soon as he sees it, he feels this overwhelming desire to read it–after all, the worst part of reading a story is the ending, when you have to say goodbye to all the characters and places in the story that you’ve come to love. But since Bastian is afraid of the grumpy bookstore owner, he decides to run off with it. Feeling like a fugitive, he locks himself in the attic of his school and sits down to read the book.

The book is about a wonderful place called Fantastica, full of all sorts of magical creatures and fantastic places. But there is a problem–Fantastica is in danger. These patches of nothingness are popping up all over the country and are slowly growing larger. Everything that falls into them ceases to exist, and everything that gets close to them has the color sucked out of it. At the same time, the Childlike Empress–the benevolent ruler of Fantastica who is the source of everyone’s life and power–is dying. Something needs to be done to save the Empress, and she chooses a young man named Atreyu from a distant tribe of hunters to go on the quest to find the cure for her.

As Bastian reads of Atreyu’s quest, he realizes the the book he is reading is not an ordinary book, and that Fantastica is not just an imaginary world. The human world and Fantastica are intimately connected and mutually dependent on each other for their welfare, and as Fantastica suffers and dies, the human world suffers and dies as well. What’s more, Bastian comes to the frightening realization that from the moment he picked up the book, his fate became tied with the fate of the people in Fantastica, and he himself became a character within it. They need him to save the Empress by giving her a new name, and he cannot run away from that, because his story has become part of the story of the book.

After he enters Fantastica and saves the Empress by giving her a new name, the story becomes especially interesting. The Childlike Empress gives Bastian AURYN, the magical amulet containing the image of a white snake and a black snake biting each others’ tails and forming a holy circle, she tells him that Fantastica will be rebuilt by his wishes, all of which will come true when he wears the amulet. However, he doesn’t know it, but for every wish he makes, he loses one of his memories of his previous life. If he loses all his memories before finding a way back home, he will be stranded in Fantastica with no knowledge of who he is or what is his purpose, with no way of ever going back. However, wishes cannot be easily controlled, and many wishes are completely subconscious. The only thing that can save him is finding out what is truly important to him in the real world–but as he explores deeper and deeper in the wonderful world of Fantastica, it becomes harder for him to even remember that he had a life outside of Fantastica. Ultimately, it is his friends and loved ones in both worlds who save him–and who he himself saves by returning.

The Neverending Story is, in many ways, a beautiful metaphor for stories and fiction itself. The text itself is short and very easy to read, but the meaning behind the text is incredibly deep and far reaching. Bastian’s journey is, in some ways, like the journey that writers of fiction take. The things that tie the two worlds are the things that make fiction important to us as human beings, and Bastian’s ultimate discovery at the end of the book is the most important thing that fiction can give us. It is truly a neverending story in that it shows us, through metaphors, what every good story gives us.

This was why I loved the story so much as a kid–that it was a metaphor for my own experiences reading books. And the metaphor rings true, then as well as now. Even though I’m no longer a child, I cried as I read this book. I don’t even know exactly why. Perhaps I wouldn’t have gotten so emotional if I hadn’t read this book as a child, but the meaning was still clearly there. And, in a surreal and beautiful way, it was powerful. There are definitely images from this story that will stay with me throughout my life.

The Neverending Story has definitely been one of the most influential books in my life. At a very young age, it fed the desire within me to become a writer by showing me the importance of stories and creative writing. And it also encouraged me by showing me what a good story looks and feels like. A good story is a powerful vehicle for truth, both consciously and subconsciously, through metaphor. And by that standard, The Neverending Story is one of the truest books that I know. I would recommend it to any child, young or old, growing or grown.

I was walking around outside in the snow today, and I had this great idea for a really short story! So, when I got a chance, I sat down and wrote it. It’s really short–983 words–but I kind of like it. It’s the story of a life of a snowflake. I shared the idea with a couple of my friends, and one of them also decided to pick it up and do something with it. I’ll link to her blog once hers is up.

So, without further ado, enjoy!

UPDATE: Here is the link to my friend’s take on this same theme.  She took it in a completely different direction, and it’s pretty interesting!

I’ve been working these past couple of days on a short story idea that’s kind of popped into my head. Not that I’ve given up on The Lost Colony–not at all! I just thought I’d break out and do something different. That, and write something that might be easier to finish and send out. And so far it’s been fun!

One thing about this book that really stood out to me was how character driven it was. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Science Fiction thirty years ago was much less character driven than it is today. The lens of the main character was very thick in this story, and a lot of the time it reflected back on Mandella himself and his own thoughts and impressions of the things that happened to him. It was much less a story about space battles and society than on the immediate human impact of war. And unlike a lot of space adventure, it didn’t glorify it AT ALL. Neither did it censor or tone down the horror of it. You got to see the horror of it all–and sometimes the most horrifying thing was that Mandella could be so desensitized to the carnage and immorality.

I was browsing around in Pioneer Book about a week ago (and Pioneer Book is an awesome place to hang out if you like books–they’re used, but cheap, and it’s really fun just to go and get lost in there!) and I saw a few used Heinlein books for sale. I don’t know too much about anything in particular that he wrote, just that he’s known as one of the best Science Fiction writers of the last century and had a very strong influence on the genre, and so I decided to pick up one of his books to get a taste for his writing. I settled on Citizen of the Galaxy, for no particularly compelling reason except that it seemed a little bit more interesting from the back cover blurb.

It was definitely a good book! I read it very quickly and really loved it! This was one of those books that I would read between classes (and maybe for the first five minutes of class as well), while eating, while walking back to my apartment from on campus, etc.  Basically, any time I had free time.

The story takes place in the far future, when humanity has expanded to many worlds and has diplomatic contact with many alien races.  But because space is so large, all the worlds are only held together in a loose confederation.  Far away from Earth is the Sargony of Nine Worlds, where human trafficking is alive and well.  The main character, Thorby, is a boy who starts out as a slave–but he is bought and befriended by a beggar named Baslim.  However, Baslim is much more than a mere beggar, and there are many people from outside of the Sargony who would like to see slavery abolished.  Soon, Baslim is killed by the Sargony, and Thorby is forced onto the run.  He moves from place to place, among many different people, as he grows from a boy to man.  When he finally finds the true identity of Baslim–and his own true identity–he finds that it provides him an unlikely opportunity to fight the evil slave trade.  But it will require him to once again give up everything that he wants.

It was easy to read and very fast. In fact, it was surprisingly fast.  There were many scenes where I thought to myself “wow, this scene could really be fleshed out more!” The descriptions were minimal, and at times, days, months, and even years passed by in only a couple of pages.  Heinlein definitely wasn’t too wordy, but the things that he did describe and did explain were the important and interesting things.

I think a lot of this was due to the point of view.  It was 3rd person omniscient, like Frank Herbert’s Dune, except that it was even more detached than Herbert.  Herbert would get into the scene enough to give a detailed picture of everything, but for Heinlein, the important thing was the plot of the story–as well as some of the more interesting ideas he had.

One really interesting idea that he had was of a society of space traders that travel the frontiers of known space on long voyages, completely isolated from the rest of humanity, who over time form their own distinct culture and government.  Each ship is like its own country, with a very rigid social structure to keep the friction of long voyages from causing mutiny and disorder.  The onboard community is almost like a tribe of nomads where everyone plays a role.  Every few years, they come together in a giant gathering to intermarry and buy new ships to start new clans.

The way that Heinlein envisioned this society is truly fascinating–he took the conditions that existed on the frontier of the world that he created, combined it with the technology of space travel, and drew it to what he saw as the logical conclusions.  He then humanized it somewhat by telling a story within it.

He did this for more than just the Free Traders: he did it to one degree or another throughout the whole book.  And these ideas and concepts, combined with the story of Thorby’s rise from anonymity and the underworld, made the story really good.  It really got my imagination going, which in my opinion is a sign of greatness in any story.

Oh, and one more thing: one reason why I love reading these old sci fi stories is because it is ALWAYS funny when one of the characters pulls out a slide rule to do some math!  ALWAYS!!!  It happened only once in this story, but it made me LAUGH so hard!  You’ve gotta love old 60s sci fi!

As I’ve become more and more involved in writing Science Fiction, I’ve felt a strong desire to educate myself on the genre and read the major Sci Fi books that have come before me. I want to do this so that I can make my own works stronger, and also because I really enjoy them. When I picked up this book, I did so more because it was one of the more well known books and I felt that I ought to read it than that I really wanted to read it. After all, 2001: A Space Odyssey is known to be really hard sci fi, and most of what I’ve experienced and come to love is more “soft” sci fi.

However, even though this book really is “hard” science fiction, I became totally engrossed and really came to love it. The last 50 pages in particular had a huge impact on me–I literally couldn’t put the book down!

2001: A Space Odyssey kind of reminds me of Asimov’s Foundation series, in that the thing driving the story the most isn’t the characters, the plot, or the conflict, but the idea. In Foundation, it was psychohistory and questions about free will and the ability to predict the future. In 2001, it has to do with the growth and development of humanity and wonder at the universe.

Like Foundation, it really isn’t character based at all–the story starts three million years in the past, when aliens encounter our primate ancestors, and goes forward to 2001, when astronaut David Bowman again contacts these aliens on a mission to Saturn that goes disastrously wrong. But really, it isn’t about David at all–he’s more of a vehicle through which Arthur C. Clarke describes the planets and the aliens.

The thing that really makes this book stand out for me is the writing. When the Discovery was flying by Jupiter, I really felt like I was there. It was almost as if I could feel the same anxiety and wonder that the astronauts felt–and when the probe broke through the first few layers of Jovian clouds to send out a video picture of what lay underneath, my eyes grew wide as if I were there. The writing throughout the book was superb like that.

One thing that surprised me a bit was that I didn’t mind how Arthur C. Clarke treated the man-apes at the beginning of the book. I’m a fairly religious person, and even though I accept most of evolution, there are some things about the Darwinist worldview that clash with my theology and can sometimes irk me. It’s not that I think I’ve got it figured out–because really, like every reasonable person I have to admit that I haven’t–it’s that there are certain things about the Darwinist worldview that I feel leave no space for the kind of stuff that I believe in. However, even though 2001: A Space Odyssey adhered very close to the Darwinist view of human pre-history, I didn’t feel all that upset or thrown off by it. I think this was because Clarke wasn’t preachy about it, or tried to use it as a way to downplay religion. Indeed, Clarke didn’t seem to have much to say either for or against religion–just that this was one aspect of where we came from.

And I think this gets onto something much bigger that I really liked about this book–Clarke didn’t try to explain everything. Indeed, there was a lot more left unexplained than explained, and that helped to preserve the supreme sense of wonder that the book conveyed. This wasn’t like the Star Wars prequels when they tried to do something as lame as explain the force–this book really showed that there are a lot of unanswered questions and fascinating possibilities in the universe. And I really think that that helped to strengthen the book as Science Fiction.

By far the strangest and most fascinating part of the book was the last fifty pages, when David Bowman gets to Saturn aboard the now partly derelict Discovery and finds the stargate. Once he goes through it, ALL KINDS of crazy stuff happen! And it was really thrilling to read! I won’t give away any spoilers, but it was really crazy–and really good as well! The thing that made it good was that even though it was really psychedelic and mysterious, I didn’t feel lost as I was reading it. I felt that I could visualize it very well, even if I didn’t know what “it” was, and every once and a while, Clarke dropped in a short explanation or two without breaking the action. Indeed, since the point of view was not really limited to David, there was room for the narrator to talk with the reader and explain some of the stuff that was going on. But Clarke really did a good job balancing the information he gave so that he preserved a sense of mystery without losing the reader. That, I feel, takes skill and practice, and can really strengthen a good story.

2001: A Space Odyssey is definitely hard sci fi, so if you like reading about characters or stories, you won’t get much from this–but if you have a sense of wonder about the universe and you like pondering scientific ideas, this is a really excellent book to read!

Alright, here are the two ideas I have right now.  I’m not really at a good stopping point for The Lost Colony yet, but I think I can slow down enough to divide my attention.

The first one I got when I finished 2001: A Space Odyssey just last week.  I was thinking about dating and relationships, and also thinking about the last 50 pages of 2001 (which, let me tell you, are psychedelically crazy!), and the thought came into my mind that a guy and a girl getting to the point where they start up a relationship is kind of like a first contact situation with an alien species. In both situations, both sides are trying to put their best selves forward; in both situations, communication is awkward and neither side quite knows what to expect; in both situations, each side is driven to figure out what the other side is thinking, and to predict what they will do; in both situations, the stakes are very high.  So, I thought I’d write a story which is actually two stories–a first contact story that parallels an awkward dtr, where it’s unclear whether the first contact story is real or is just happening inside the guy’s head.  Yes, I know it’s a really nerdy story.  Yes, I embraced my geekdom long ago.  And…to make it more geeky, I’m probably going to need a little bit of help with this one.  So I talked with my good friend Steve, and we’re going to collaborate on this one.  I think it could be really funny–just like Decision LZ150207! (speaking of which, I need to send out that story to some publishers)

The other idea I have is a bit darker.  I got the idea of it from Joe Haldeman’s Forever War.  I thought that the space combat in that book was very intriguing, about space battles fought across solar systems at relativistic speeds, and how the soldiers return after every combat to a very different world.  For a few months, I toyed around in my head what a spaceship would look like that fought at such speeds, and I came up with this idea of a one man spaceship that was equipped to defend a planetary system from attack.  And then, I thought “what would it be like if one of the pilots blacked out, was thrown out of the solar system at relativistic speeds, and by the time he came back, it was nearly a hundred years later and a peace treaty had been signed?” So now, I just need to come up with an idea for this pilot’s character, and to figure out a few more of the military details.  And…I need to figure out what this guy is going to do after his life loses its meaning.  He basically forsakes everything to go and become one of these pilots (since he knows that he will be flung far into the future), and the thing that compels him to do that is the urgency of this terrible war, but when something goes wrong in this battle (which he thinks is the final battle for his world) he comes back to find that the enemy that he has dedicated his life to destroy has made peace with his people, and they are now in an age of prosperity.  He becomes a relic.  What does he do about it?  That’s the key issue–and I don’t know exactly how to solve it.  I’m not exactly the person to do so, either, since I’m not a soldier and not a veteran of any war.  But…maybe I can come up with something.  I hope that something in my personal experience can help to suggest an answer to this soldier’s problem.  Because I don’t want this to be a lame story where the whole point is to destroy the hero.  I want it to be realistic, but worth reading as well.

So, those are some of the ideas I have in my head now.  I hope that more will soon come!  And really, the thing I need to focus on now is submitting the two stories that I’ve already finished.  I’ve been lazy on that end–too lazy.

So, I got back yesterday from my spontaneous trip with my old roommates!  It was a lot of fun!  Definitely worth skipping the last couple of days of classes! However, I can’t figure out how to upload pictures to this particular blog–I’m sure there’s a way to do it, I’m just not all that proficient at wordpress.  Shoot.  Well, you can check out my photoblog for pictures, since I’ll probably be posting most of them up there in the next few days.  And if you bug me enough, I might just put them all in a pdf or a word file and upload it to this post.  So there you go.  But here’s basically what we did:

My old roommates are really awesome.  I’m really glad that I got the chance to get to know them.  They are just a lot of fun to hang out and do stuff with.  I drop by every once and a while (you can do stuff like that when you have a car 🙂 ) and Sunday night, I dropped by to find them getting ready to leave for Zion National Monument!  And they wanted me to come with them!  Well, I’m the kind of guy who takes a long time and a lot of working up to finally decide to do something, so it took me a couple of really strenuous hours of convincing myself, but I finally went!  And it was a ton of fun!

We drove until about four in the morning, listening to music and having a general good time, and sticking our heads out to look at all the stars, because HOLY COW you can see a TON of stars in Southern Utah, especially when you’re out in the road in the middle of nowhere!  We passed through Hurricane and started looking for a park.  Yeah, we’re all pretty cheap–we didn’t want to pay money to go camping at an official campground!  Besides, it was 4:30 am.  We ended up crashing on the lawn of a local church there–it was kind of funny!  I was expecting that we’d stop at a campground, but instead I ended up feeling like I was homeless!  But the weather was warm, and it was good.  My friends told me that the bishopric stopped by and just kind of watched us for a while, but I was asleep and they were pretending to be asleep, so they didn’t bother us.

Then, after grabbing some breakfast from the grocery store, we went up to Zion’s!  And it was awesome!  The mountains there are vertical, red, and beautiful.  We climbed up Angel’s Landing, which was rather short but fairly strenuous.  There were all kinds of switchbacks and stuff, and I think we climbed up over a thousand feet above our starting location.  It was kind of funny, because I noticed these signs that said “warning, falls have resulted in death,” but I didn’t realize what that actually meant until we got to the trailhead and on to the part where the trail runs parallel to a sheer cliff.  They had these chains attached into the rock, and without those chains, holy cow! every other person to go up that trail would be dying!

I didn’t think much of the chains until I looked over my side and saw how sheer of a cliff it was, and then my legs started to get weak and I found myself gripping that chain very tightly!  I guess I’m afraid of heights or something.  And, as much as I would like to say that I conquered my fear and went ahead…I didn’t.  Yeah.  We got to the part with the bridge, and then I saw where the trail was REALLY headed, and holy cow!  I just kind of stopped there.  Man, it made me feel so…terrestial!  Like I was falling short or something!  But yeah, it was still something of an accomplishment.  And I really didn’t have the shoes for it (I was wearing Birkenstocks, with REALLY sandy socks).  And it was still very awesome.  So I came back and read for an hour or so on the top of the mountain, it was very peaceful and nice.  Read some more of that Madeleine L’Engle quotebook.

So then, on the way down, we spontaneously decided to go to Las Vegas and get a hotel there, instead of spending another night under the stars.  Also, it would be kind of cool to experience Las Vegas.  I thought that it would be interesting–I’ve heard a lot of things about that place and how evil it is, but never actually been there, so it would be a good experience.

We drove down there, had a good time (man, I love road trips!), and pulled in.  The hotels there are really cheap!  We got ours for maybe $40 or so.  And the parking is free as well!  But the way these places really make their money is in the Casinos and nightclubs.  We went out and spent the night walking around the strip, and holy cow!  I really got to see why they call it “sin city!” I won’t go into details (and don’t worry, I observed from a safe distance–and refrained from observing some of the more immoral stuff altogether!), but it was really crazy!  Man, when you legalize prostitution, you get all kinds of evil stuff going on!  We had so many people offer to take us to these sleazy places, or give us pornographic business cards for whores (little Mexican women were handing out those cards!  Holy cow!  How much more evil can you get than that?!), or try to talk with us, and man, it was pretty crazy!  My friends had this competition going, where they wanted to get as many girls’ phone numbers as they could (girls who were not hookers).  It was pretty funny when they tried to walk into a nightclub with their tattered jeans and ripped t-shirts!  The doorkeepers would look them up and down and tell them “sorry, you’re not dressed for this place!” They eventually teamed up and succeeded in getting a couple of legit girls’ numbers, and they were pretty dang happy about it!  But by then, it was ridiculously late, and we crashed pretty hard at our apartment.  It was hard to get up in the morning, but we did it, and had a groggy but quick drive back to Provo.

The highlight of the trip was definitely Zion’s.  It was a beautiful day, and a wonderful climb.  As we were driving away from there, I was trying to sleep, but all I could see in my mind was the car driving off of one of those cliffs!  It took a while to finally get the immediate impression of them out of my mind, but I must say that it was quite awesome, and I’d definitely recommend heading over there!  And as for Vegas, it was quite an interesting experience to see that place.  Now I know why the stuff that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.  And what was really interesting was that it wasn’t tempting and it wasn’t scary.  It was just there, and just wrong.  The casinos didn’t really entice me, and all those crazy pictures and skanky people were more jarring than arousing.  I’ve already figured out that I don’t want that in my life, so it’s really not an issue at all for me.

One thing really got me riled up, though.  My friend Steve told me that he knows of a professor at BYU who did a study on the sex workers in Las Vegas–the ones who work the brothels.  He said that 45% of them are Mormon, and that most of those come from dual income households where the wife lost her job–and they both decided together for her to go into the sex industry.  HOLY FREAKING COW.  Most of those people are probably inactive anyway, but that just boggled my mind.  I would amputate my right arm RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT if it was necessary to keep my future wife from working the sex industry–and I’m sure that once I’m finally married and in a deep relationship with my future wife, I would be willing to sacrifice my life to keep her from going into that line of work!  Yikes!  THAT got me riled up quite a bit!

So, yeah, sorry there aren’t any pictures here.  I have tons, I just don’t know how to post them!  If you would like to see them, either bug me or check out my photoblog over the next few days.

Drek says this blog is boring.  He says he doesn’t like reading post after post about how many words I did each day.  He says my life as a writer is boring.

I’m going to cry.

But I have a chance to redeem myself.  Because my old roommates are completely and totally insane.  They decided today to skip the last two days of classes and drive down to Zion’s National Park, just for the heck of it.  No plans, no nothing.  Just go and do something crazy.

Well, it was a tortuous process, but I finally decided to go with them!  So yeah, we leave in like half an hour, and we’re totally going to be trashed when we get back Tuesday afternoon, and my parents are going to think I’m crazy, and I’m going to feel guilty for skipping so many classes, and I won’t be able to write, and I have no idea what I’m doing or what’s going to happen…

But it’s going to be awesome!  YEAH!!!