Tag Archives: space stories

Space and time travel stories

PROF MONT RUMPLESEED DRAKEHere is a set list for a space and time travel session I am preparing.  Each of these stories has a some kind of link to space and time travel (albeit sometimes that link is tenuous!)

How the earth was made (Native American – a similar story exists in several tribes folklore)

The three wise astronomers (English – based upon the tradition of English devil tales in which the devil is outwitted)

Urashima Taro (Japanese folk tale about a time travelling fisherman)

The archer and the ten suns (Chinese legend explaining how the sun and stars took their place in the heavens)

The proud turtle (Filipino story about a Turtle who wants to fly)

The boy and the moon (Turkish story about a boy who finds the moon in a well!)

I’ve never found space and time travel to be that easy a theme to get into but I have really enjoyed this opportunity to research and interpret these stories.  Having said that, the image above is taken from a piece I was presenting in 2009 about the irrepressible Professor Montague Rumpleseed Drake who lead audiences through British history on a time travelling adventure.  Then I presented a piece about Dewey Fiction exploring literacy in space (see image below).  Looking back on these stories now it seems like a lifetime ago!

Dewey Fiction @ The Space Hop!I digress.  As I was researching these space and time travel stories I found that some of these tales have many variations and that choosing the best version could be tricky.  In some instances I have mixed up different versions of the same story (ie where I liked the beginning of one and the ending of another).  This might be considered by a purist or an anthropologist to be an affront to culture and of course I’m sensitive to that but on this occasion my choices have been thematic.

Whenever I prepare a story session there are lots of perfectly good stories which bear inclusion(there are no end to the European folk tales I could tell) but I think its important that a storyteller enjoys the story they are telling and that this is part of the reason I get good feedback.  Hopefully I do this set of stories justice and that my audience is inspired to discover the different variations for themselves.