BY CHRIS FOX
When I was ten years old my father forced me to sit down and watch a series of boring interviews. They were conducted by an old guy named Bill Moyers, who was interviewing an even older guy named Joseph Campbell.
Over the next week I learned about the power of myth. I came to understand how vital stories are to both human consciousness, and our identity as a species. Myth allows us to keep an oral record, binding us together across the vast gulf of time.
Mankind has always been fascinated with stories, particularly stories of the unknown. In the 18th and early 19th century these stories were about the wild west. Eventually, the west was tamed. The frontier disappeared. The mystery that had fueled the fantastic stories was gone.
We needed a new a frontier. A final frontier. That frontier became space, the truly endless expanse surrounding us in all directions. Here, we had a new place for story. A new place for the fantastic, for the mysterious, and the unique. A place for new adventures, and new surprises.
We met Wookies, Vulcans, and Delvians. We learned about the force, and about the spice, and about just how dangerous robots could be. The collective imagination of hundreds of great authors fueled this new frontier, greats like Herbert, and Heinlein, Brin, and Asimov.
Those classics have fueled a new generation, inspired them to take up the reins. They’ve built upon the legacy, adding to it in new and creative ways. Those stories, those myths, are far more important than ten year old Chris could have dreamed.
Mankind needs story. All of us need to hear it, but some of us aren’t content with that. Some of us have to write it, to give voice to the fantastic visions inspired by our forebears.
In your hands you hold some of those visions, a collection of stories with roots in the pre-dawn campfires of ancient, unknowable civilizations. A collection of stories that will carry you into the vast, final frontier.
—Chris Fox