Like taste, there’s no accounting for myth. What stirs one man’s heart and fills his mind with dreams of glory, makes another scratch his head and think it’s boring. But when a myth takes on the same meaning for two or three souls ~ or even better, a legion ~ they share a dream that is truer than truth, and may even be able to conjure a mythic reality fit to live in. This in fact is one theory of how all higher human social formations come into being.
Be that as it may, Once and Future Thule, written in 1996, has been very gratifying for me because every so often somebody pops out of the woodwork and tells me how the story inspired them and made an imprint when they read it however many years ago. Some of them even become new friends.
The text begins:
Some of us have remembered that we came from Thule. Thule is a world of light, and its star is the Great Central Sun which shines through all the other stars in the universe, as a lamp through windows. This star pulses with the signal that causes life to arise on fertile worlds, and then shapes that life in its image. Whenever a species of creature develops in a way that it begins to acquire that image, it triggers a responding signal which is heard in Thule. Then the King of Thule calls for volunteers to go forth and travel to the new planet. Though life in Thule is endless joy, there is never a lack of adventurers eager to explore the larger Cosmos and to raise up new worlds for the greater glory of Thule.
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