An Introduction & Stuff

I mike Gioia. I not speak or write too good. Then I start read books three years ago, and everything changed. I've only been serious about books since Senior year of high school, when I read Ernest Hemingway. In an otherwise sissy and soft world, his manliness appealed to me. I've lived in New York, Santa Rosa, and Washington D.C. Washington D.C. was the best of those. Now I am a sophomore living a rather dull and uninteresting life. I keep waiting for something to change, something exciting to happen, but nothing ever does. Unfortunately, not all our lives are stories, I suppose.

Now do I think there is any such thing as a new story? Well I am not the best guy to ask, but I'd say it depends on how generally you refer to a story. Quite broadly, you can say there are happy stories and sad stories, then you can get more specific and say there are stories of death, stories of defeat, stories of humor, stories of victory, yadda yadda, and keep branching out from there. So quite generally, NO, there are not new stories. But if you get more specific, then the answer is yes, there are new stories. No one has ever written a story about a kid monopolizing the neighborhood dogwalking industry through malicious means, eventually becoming a major menace to the entire community until he is corrupted by his own power, overextends his power, fails, and is mauled by his own dogs. Now that is a most likely a new story, but in a general sense it is the oldest of stories, a tragedy. And even within the genre of tragedy it is not new, it is the classic rise and fall tale, a story warning against hubris. 

That was all rather silly, so I am going to start a new paragraph and rephrase what I'm trying to get at here. There are not new stories. There are only new details. But details make a story, so in a sense it does not matter that there are not new stories. At the core all stories are old, but the skin we give them is different and exciting.

But wait, I'm not done! There's still about 127 words I want to say about this matter of new stories. Just as history repeats itself, I think literature repeats itself. I recently read a book by Kim Stanley Robinson about the colonization and terra-scaping of Mars. Now this seems quite new and exciting (and kudos to Mr. Robinson for accurately researching all it), but it is no different than stories about North American colonization and terra-scaping (although they called it farming). Science Fiction is an interesting case of literature though. I believe it is the only genre that has hopes of writing a new story. So far, all stories are about the human experience. As Science Fiction delves deeper and deeper into the universe it can begin to write cosmically and perhaps liberate itself from writing from and about the human perspective. As it explores the universe, it can find somewhere amidst the stars a new story, a cosmic story, that concerns much more than a human experience (tragedy, loss, love, happiness, etc.). And perhaps there alien authors out there writing great interesting stories we had never dreamed of? Or perhaps the story of the universe is in itself a story waiting to be written. Anyways, I am just rambling at this point. But that happens when you write on a computer screen inside of on paper with a pencil.

~Mike Gioia.