Memories are funny things, especially when I've read so many books. Sometimes the stories seem to blend together. I was clicking through Fantastic Fiction, a great web site for SciFi, Fantasy and other genre, when I clicked to the Jack Chalker page and found he had died in two thousand and five.
A deep sadness came over me, I have read a few of his books. My favorites being the well world saga. I scrolled down and found listings for the Well World books and what did I find but two more books I've not read. I also noticed that I hadn't yet read the first book. How I missed that, don't know.
I headed over to paperbackswap.com and used up the rest of my credits ordering the three missing books. Soon I was reading the saga all over again.
The three books new to me were, of course, quite good. The others, the ones I have read, well they were different. The story line was basically the same but there were huge details I had completely forgotten or we're extremely different. Whole story lines were new to me, some of the characters were even new as well as their story lines. What the hell is going on around here?
Needless to say it seemed quite strange to me, here was one of my favorite
series of books and I had remembered it ...wrong. Yet it was fun rereading these books. It see med as if I had only read a synopsis of the works and I was reading them for the first time. I got to rediscover some old friends and relearn an old story.
What was going on here? I had quite the feeling of disconnect. Was some one getting ready to offer me a red or blue pill? Am I suffering from a botched alien memory wipe? Early onset of Alzheimer? Is it poor memory implants and I'm a replicant? Cognitive dissonance?
No, turns out I'm quite normal in fact I'm more average than I'd like to believe. Memories are funny a thing. Turns out most of our memories are poor and worse yet they don't even record the way we think they do. Also the m
ore you use those memories, recall them, retell them, the more likely you are to keep them whole as well as accurate. Be prepared though some will still drift any way.
An experiment was done, where a group of students were asked to write down what they were doing when a major event occurred.
A few years later they were then asked to do this again for the same event. The two stories were compared and the differences were amazing. Some even argued that their earlier writings were wrong.
Have you ever gone back and watched a favorite show from long ago or perhaps your youth? Say a favorite shoe you and your wife watched like, maybe Doctor Who? Even the favorite story line like, say the Daleks' story. Then found it to be, um, lacking? Let's just say I won't be watching any more of the old Doctor Who. I wish to keep my altered memories...altered.
I've begun reading ILIUM by Dan Simmons;
