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The BookViral Review:
With an interesting slant on human societal behaviour, James Sherwood Metts offers us ‘Planet Storyland and the Words of the Few’, an implicitly written account of human evolution, history and ultimately, folly, presented from a unique viewpoint.
Quentin, an alien boy from the planet Gliese, a world where the inhabitants treat one another with consideration and respect, finds a book about ‘Earthlings’ in his local library, which sparks his curiosity and his compassion for humans, a species who seem to stumble around, blindly following a few leaders, with little desire (or time) to think for themselves.
Using Quentin’s discovery and a subsequent conversation between him and his father, Sherwood Metts teaches about human limitations and the foolishness of our existence, which primarily relies on the ideas of the few in authority.
Within a historic platform, he outlines how governments operate and their challenges in maintaining peace and stability between people of different cultures and languages, despite exerting control using three tactics: pride; fear and reward, and how this is enforced by emotive teaching designated by leaders, who glut up the lives with work so there is no time for research and independent thinking.
Furthermore, in understandable form, ‘Planet Storyland and the Words of the Few’ explains how the mediums of exchange, money systems and capitalism have created an uneven materialistic society and set in place an arrangement whereby relying on others is necessary for existence.
However, he suggests that despite the limitations placed on the sharing of information through writing by ‘the Few’, an open and questioning written dialogue is a vehicle by which to effect change.
Through questioning, Sherwood Metts promotes thinking in the young about values, and about blindly accepting and ‘parroting’, or passing on hearsay from those who have set themselves up as leaders without thinking about whether the content is true, irrelevant or even damaging.
The last chapter of the book sees Quentin as an alien visitor to Earth, with a quest to enlighten humans towards an open-eyed appreciation of our world and to pursue a more independent and joyful way of living, and encourage a future where we ‘view the world through the bright eyes of an excited kid’.
Though written primarily for a young audience, Sherwood Metts’ message resonates with all those in the ‘rut of existence’. Indeed, the concepts dealt with are somewhat complex. An important message that despite needing some surrounding discussion for full understanding, presents a potted edition of human frailty, and a worthy message to all who may read it.
It is easy to analyze the mechanism of a good story but more often than not more difficult to explain why a select few are as moving as they are. Yet with The Breedlow Legacy, it’s not only the manner through which the characters are revealed to us but McNamara’s fascinating exploration of memory.
Greg Wyss opens the door into his weird and wonderful mind where nothing is taboo. If you are looking for the naked truth about love, lust, religion and politics, this anthology is for you. Although penned in the 70’s and reflective of its idiosyncrasies, these poems are timeless in their accuracy and perceptions of human nature, delving deep into the psyche of the brash and the desperate.
At their best, they stun you with their visions of ultimate endings both small and catastrophic with hauntingly bleak futures.
It takes patience to rank in images searches or for your images to find their way to the top of a Google page and to optimize images for search engines takes an investment of time but the potential payback is huge.
Heroes come and go. That’s certainly true of the fictional variety where very few linger in the mind beyond the last page of a novel. So what makes the perfect fictional hero?
I read with both fascination and disgust as I learned how he was attacked by a bear who scalped him and left part of his skull flapping open but was not prepared to lay down and die.
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