So I looked with fascination at those people in their mobes[ref]cars[\/ref], and tried to fathom what it would be like. Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who’d made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day’s end with interesting stories to tell, it meant something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/assembly.jpg\" "\\"assembly\\"")
The Powers That Be[ref]meaning those in power in the Saecular world, no supernatural connotation[\/ref] would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them. People who couldn’t live without story had been driven into the concents[ref]a bunch of maths concentrated in one place[\/ref] or into jobs like Yul’s[ref]Yul’s job is a wilderness guide, transporting and guiding travelers around in the northern reaches of the Saecular world[\/ref]. All others had to look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a story, which I guessed was why Saeculars were so concerned with sports, and with religion. How else could you see yourself as part of an adventure? Something with a beginning, middle, and end in which you played a significant part? We avout had it ready-made because we were a part of this project of learning new things. Even if it didn’t always move fast enough for people like Jesry, it did move. You could tell where you were and what you were doing in that story. Yul got all of this for free by living his stories from day to day, and the only drawback was that the world held his stories to be of small account. Perhaps that was why he felt such a compulsion to tell them, not just about his own exploits in the wilderness, but those of his mentors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I especially like the line “All the story had been bled out of their lives.” So evocative.<\/p>\n
Notes<\/h3>\n
[references class=”compact” \/]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One thing that nearly always grabs my interest in any book or film is an explicit focus on storytelling itself – that can be anything from Italo Calvino’s playing with different genres\/ways to tell a story in If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler to the suggestion in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[2029,2028],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/feat.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":34657,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/the-night-circus-on-stories-pt-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":12511,"position":0},"title":"The Night Circus on Stories, Pt 1","author":"Jandy","date":"October 4, 2014","format":"quote","excerpt":"\"Stories have changed, my dear boy,\" the man in the grey suit says, his voice almost imperceptibly sad. \"There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Commonplace"","block_context":{"text":"Commonplace","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/commonplace\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":34658,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/the-night-circus-on-stories-pt-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":12511,"position":1},"title":"The Night Circus on Stories, Pt 2","author":"Jandy","date":"October 4, 2014","format":"quote","excerpt":"\"It is important,\" the man in the grey suit interrupts. \"Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Commonplace"","block_context":{"text":"Commonplace","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/commonplace\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":588,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/dvd-of-the-week-heroes-season-one\/","url_meta":{"origin":12511,"position":2},"title":"DVD of the Week – Heroes Season One","author":"Jandy","date":"August 27, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"With less than a month before the fall TV season starts, most of the studios are releasing the DVD sets of last year's seasons--just in time for people to catch up. Of all the releases this week, I'd recommend Heroes Season 1. It was one of the best new shows\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3870,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/review-resident-evil-afterlife\/","url_meta":{"origin":12511,"position":3},"title":"Review: Resident Evil: Afterlife","author":"Jandy","date":"September 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"[Rating:2.5\/5] originally posted on Row Three It's a little bit pointless to review Resident Evil: Afterlife, which is why I didn't even bother seeking out the Rotten Tomatoes score or any other reviews before rushing off to see it opening night. I mean, this is the fourth Resident Evil movie,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/resident-evil.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":505,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/no-new-sytycd-so-the-matrix-instead\/","url_meta":{"origin":12511,"position":4},"title":"No new SYTYCD!! So, The Matrix instead…","author":"Jandy","date":"July 4, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"There's no So You Think You Can Dance this week! I'm totally bummed. I've been looking forward to it all week. Wah. I guess they figured they wouldn't get anyone watching on the fourth of July. Oh, yeah, Happy Independence Day, everybody! Still. I don't like when my TV is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36494,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/challenge-week-43-true-stories\/","url_meta":{"origin":12511,"position":5},"title":"Challenge Week 43: True Stories","author":"Jandy","date":"November 17, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"When Steve gave me this film to watch, he said I'd either love it or hate it. When a film is pitched to me like that, it's actually pretty common for me to be somewhere in the middle on it, which I guess is weird. Anyway, that particular maxim holds\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2016 Movie Challenge"","block_context":{"text":"2016 Movie Challenge","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/2016-movie-challenge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/tf-feat-true_stories.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12511"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/feat.jpg\" "\\"feat\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/anathem-sm.jpg\" "\\"anathem-sm\\"")
<\/a>Here’s such a passage from Neal Stephenson’s Anathem<\/em>, which I’m currently about halfway through reading – it’s been slow only because I don’t devote nearly enough time to reading, but I am quite enjoying the world he’s built and find it difficult to put the book down when I do pick it up again. The basic premise is an earth-like world that’s split into two groups – avout and Saeculars. Avout are basically monks, people who have separated themselves from the world into places called maths where they devote their time to studying mathematics, philosophy, science, etc. Saeculars are everyone else, the regular people in the world. Basically think of it like our Middle Ages, but with science instead of religion driving the avout. (It’s pretty interesting to read as a Christian who knows something about church history – there’s a lot to recognize, for better or worse, and the interplay with the religions of the Saeculars is fascinating.)<\/p>\n