Grog was out. Grog saw fire; Grog saw sneaky man-eating animal. Grog grabbed fire; Grob brandished fire. Sneaky man-eating animal froze; sneaky man-eating animal ran off. Grog felt fire burn fingers; Grog dropped fire. Grog went home; Grog saw Ewwl, Ewwl saw Grog. Ewwl ululated---nearby people came. Grog gesticulated; hands-waving in air for fire with crackle sound made; hunched back fingers down with snarls for sneaky man-eating animal; chest-out arms akimbo then right hand waving left then right for fire grabbing and brandishing with man-shouts; hunched back freeze, pirouette and small steps away with feared cowling and mewling; a shout, a shaking of right hand from pain of fire; a grabbing of Ewwl and hugging.
The people jumped in ecstasy. A story was made, and a story was told.
Grog and Ewwl grew old. They had children, who had children old enough to crawl around defenceless. Other's had gone out like Grog, and many had returned. They told stories too, a mixture of pantomime and sounds. They had moved several times since, but there were places where they knew there were others who stayed for longer. The berry shrubs were taken care of better, water was easily available, and sometimes someone passing by would swap some hunted meat for some of the berries. Grog, Ewwl, and their band passed through a few such places, and at one of them, Grog felt the need to stay, and Ewwl joined him.
The stories were told like the old ways. But there were some who were thinking far ahead of their time. They felt that the stories were important, too important to forget, and yet there was no easy way to remember them except to have someone tell it to them. The people discovered that some stones left stains when rubbed against another harder rock. Those who thought far ahead thought that maybe they could leave the stories as marks. As the people expanded and explored, some returned talking about large smooth surfaces of rocks were available in the form of caves. Those who thought ahead followed the explorers there, and some scratched out the stories with the marking stones.
Then they left; they all do.
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The newly declared Emperor stood in front of his entourage, his eyes beaming with defiance at finally conquering all the other six states. The world-under-the-skies was finally his, and he knew that he no longer had to spend days on the march, and nights in tents as he strove to win the battle of hegemony from the previous failed state, as well as their greedy rivals.
He knew of the writings that came before, their stories, and the power of the words that were held within. He knew that his position of Emperor was unsecured as long as there were inklings of the past held in forbidden writings that were waiting for the right person to seize and exploit at the right time. He also knew of his immediate problem of managing the much enlarged territory---getting his officials to verbally convey information was both wasteful in time and susceptible to reinterpretations.
And so like the hegemon he was, he declared that only his state's language was to be allowed to exist, and all others were to be extinguished with extreme prejudice.
It began with the books---scrolls of bamboo that were the collective wisdom of the ages that had been penned down. All were confiscated and burnt in huge bonfires. Then came the people who owned the books---they were seen as the most likely to harbour rebellious thoughts in the future. Finally the scholars whose expertise in the languages that were not of the Emperor's---and thus the story tellers and keepers of an entire history were gone just like that, leaving only the Emperor's language and writings behind.
Sadly, despite his attempts at completing his hegemonical rule, it lasted for less than two decades before strife struck once more. The sordid attempt at extinguishing the old stories were left as an interesting footnote to history that left a great impact downstream, but did not fully achieve the effect that the Emperor was going for.
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It was already well-known that reading was a privileged skill. The holy books were written down, of course, as well as anything relating to the law of the land that was agreed upon by the King in strong consultation with the Dukes who own the land and the people who lived on them. But those were just the important works that were needed to keep the gentry from killing each other---they were not the majority of the stories.
The people of the land, most of them could not read, nor write. But they could hold a conversation of sorts still, though it was more related to the vagaries of daily living. The stories though... the stories were still flowing through the land. Some might have been written down, but no one really cared except for the egg-headed scholars. For the stories were told like the old days in oral tradition, from the elder to the younger. The tales were dark and grim, many involved supernatural beings that needed to be feared and respected, but not worshipped. They told of what happened when children did not follow their parents' instructions, and what happened to those who fell afoul to what was considered the Right Thing To Do in society. The stories were as real to the people as getting hit in the head with a rock---and eventually there were those whose sole contribution to society at large was to tell these stories. They gesticulated, they made sound effects, they modulated their voices, and they moved the imaginations of those who were listening from point to point, enthralled. They seemed like ne'er-do-wells compared to those who worked the fields and husbanded the animals, but within their collective story-telling voices, they held the soul of the people that have lost theirs as they worked hard to fulfill the needs and wants of their feudal lords.
The gentry had their own stories too, naturally. But it was of valour, and gentleness, and chivalry, and all the other high-values that only the gentry knew, practised, and appreciated, nothing like the baseness of avoiding the witch of the woods that the low-born thought most of. The stories were about knights, and lords, of kings and queens, of court intrigue and human foibles that stem from the great conflict of one's baseness against the higher virtues of God. They were about loyalty to a cause, loyalty to the Crown, loyalty to God, and being exemplary of nature to befit their position of high-born.
As time went on, a new class emerged between the low-born and the high---the merchants. Many were low-born, but they had amassed the riches that used to be commonly associated with the high-born, and as such, were the first true middle class to be formed.
And they too, had their stories. But their numbers were larger, and they were from more varied backgrounds. And they had the money to boot too. And so the professional storyteller became more than just a single person---he became the weaver of tales that were then told by a troupe of players. He became a playwright, and the stories he wrote were now plays. It began with just a couple more people to portray the characters more vividly to accommodate the lack of a common background from the new middle-class. Then the set was made more colourful and vivid to bring to life the setting without having to rely on anyone's imperfect imagination. Soon the lower-class were enticed by what the middle-class has borne, thinking that it was a more fanciful way of hearing of new stories. And the higher-class were intrigued by the seemingly colourful lives of the commoners.
The plays grew in scope. They included music, singing, dancing, fanfares of every sort, in celebration of conquests, birthdays of the nobles, feasts of the Saints, propaganda of the ruling. They took up nearly the whole day, sometimes multiple days as part of a general set of festivals as the merchants remade society in their own image.
Then one war came. And another. The merchants lost their extravagance as the very survival of society was at risk. Storytelling that did nothing to advance the purpose of war was deemed as a frivolous waste of resources and time, and the mass-appeal started receding back. Stories became held in private once more, this time to more isolated pockets of social groups as the rise of urbanisation tore apart the old kinship structures that undergirthed how people once organised themselves. Mothers told stories to their children; men regaled each other with stories of bravado from the war. The nobles retreated into the background, avoiding attention to themselves even as the world order was turned first one way and then the next from the more power-hungry of their ilk.
Quietly, the authors continued to write their stories down like the old days, relying on Gutenberg's invention to help move their stories on to the other parts of society, in a most sublime form of subterfuge.
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Electricity was discovered.
The motion picture camera was invented, and soundless films were soon made available. They began as stories meant for a single person to watch, like a person reading a book quietly were they literate, and eventually with electricity and advancement in recording technology, the films had sound, and could be seen by many in a purpose-built room for projection of the film. The stories could be told like the plays of old, but all the acting needed to be done only once, while the story can be played back indefinitely without change, forever. Some authors were consulted on such matters to bring their stories to life, while most were left well alone.
Wireless communications were founded, and the radio was born. Broadcast stations were invented, and with it came all forms of programming for the new medium. Naturally the government and the military had priority to guide the populace towards the correct interpretations of happenings around the world. In between the current affairs, news, and interviews, the storytellers slowly emerged from their cocoon once more. They started with readings of stories that had already been published in book form, then they brought back the idea of a play, but more suited for the radio. The players increased from just one storyteller to several people, and included at least one person whose role was to provide the additional sound effects that broadened the soundscape that was filled in by the words of the players. There was less space and time to dedicate to the previously decadent forms of storytelling at the theatre, but the radio plays that replaced them scratched that itch for needing to listen to a story.
Actors, both on film and radio, were celebrated in ways no different from the aristocracy of old by their serfs, even though they each told a small part of a story that was prepared by someone else.
And yet, the authors quietly wrote their books.
Television was invented. Yes, it was black and white, and very small. Yes, the recording environment was primitive, and the transmission only occurred during a few short hours a day. And yes, it was most definitely expensive, and only the richer ones among the people could even own one, and like the radio when it first came out, it was primarily a community affair. The radio plays were still extent, but they were slowly giving way to the slow path of bringing the motion picture from its hallowed form of the movie theatre back into the community.
A new brand of celebrities are born.
But still, the authors continued to quietly write their books.
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The computer was invented. The computer network was formed. The integrated circuit miniaturisation revolution began, and Moore's Law kicked in.
The story has evolved. Written works within the past two hundred years are more easily accessible than ever, thanks to the existence of public libraries, and the overall exponential increase in literacy rates due to education. Stories were no longer held in thrall by its original gatekeepers of loremasters, playwrights, or storytellers. The old traditions were kept as a part of culture, but the printed word was the way to get ahold of stories for one's own consumption.
Literature of all sorts flourished, be it historical, anachronistic, righteous, smut, instructional, speculative. The rise of telling stories with primarily images instead of words came and fell as fast as they could, as each new medium story telling underwent the lifecycle of welcome, villification, reconciliation, and tradition.
The computer became more accessible to the common folk. The old upper, middle, and lower class demographics have since evolved with the times, and the new middle class that descended from the former merchant classes have come on their own in the form of the professional/managerial/engineering/technican (PMET) group. With the rise of the accessibility of the computer came a miniature explosion of self-expression of stories in the form of programmed responses from the computer to actions made by the user. It often began as just text, then it slowly involved moving computer imagery with sound, and then as the complexity of the available computers grew even as the prices dropped, the computer images and sound dominated the space, with the story acting as a weak framework that supported the primacy of the mechanics of the gameplay.
The computer network grew ubiquitous. Suddenly there was an explosion of the democratisation of storytelling, where no one would ever have zero audience available for whatever story it is they were intending to tell. Each tale as told by each person could be read by anyone on the computer network, and they could spin on whatever yarns they had in mind, in perpetuity. The authors were slowly sidelined, and the publishers' chokehold on the availability of stories was challenged. The motion pictures, television, and radio were still present, but were considered a tradition at this point, existing largely due to inertia than any specific technical reason.
As the computer network grew, there were those who demanded structure due to their inability to comprehend such an egalitarian construct. And there were those who were willing to provide said structure; they were rewarded with increased amounts of capital that made them the modern equivalent of the feudal lords of old. The thriving scene shrivelled up, leaving only the superficial walled gardens being seen as the only acceptible form of expression.
And the governments saw that it was now once again possible to influence their people in a more cost effective way, and jostled with the techno-feudal lords for power. Stories that did not meet the permissibility standard of the walled gardens were sent to the memory hole, and that some times included the story teller themselves.
The authors tried to continue writing their books, but the recent rise of the techno-feudal lords violating the social contract of copyright to further enhance their grip on the story of humanity under the guise of training artificial intelligences has slowed many an author down.
The stories are still there, but they are fast becoming the kind that one tells, in-person, to one's little group.
A little like Grog from back in the day.
