On its surface, this speculative fiction short story (7,800 words) deals with one man's obsessive quest for knowledge and the devastating price he must pay for the knowledge he ultimately acquires. Beneath the surface, this story is about deep friendships complicated by unrequited love, split loyalties, the interplay of id, ego and superego, (or Plato's appetites, reason and the spirited element that Freud "borrowed" and "re-labeled") and existentialist lessons learned much too late in life.
It is about looking for truth and meaning in all the wrong places and about the deep tragedy of misdirected efforts in the single-minded pursuit of all the wrong things. It is also about love, and the noble and often tragic self-sacrifice that true friendship requires, about the pain of unrequited love and split loyalties, and ultimately the very real tragedy of too many lives spent in the single-minded pursuit of lesser important things. Nothing else I have ever written since those happy, productive days as a college sophomore means more to me, and it remains little changed from the original.
Please enter for a chance to win a free copy and/or share the following link with anyone whom you believe may enjoy a short story that sums up what I believe to be the meaning of life in both fiction and fact. You can enter here: https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/f3da20911647f3f8 . Thank you!
No comments:
Post a Comment