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Small World
In his “Small World” experiment, Stanley Milgram concluded that any two people, chosen at random, are connected by a chain of acquaintances with no more than five or six links. This is a story about one such chain. A journalist and a reclusive professor have ten days to find someone named Basil or the world will be destroyed. They know nothing about him except his first name. With the aid of a strange communication device, they discover the chain of acquaintances that will lead them to him, one person at a time. But each link presents a greater challenge than the one before it... and greater danger. Written with humor and filled with plot twists, this book gives new meaning to the phrase, “We are not alone.”
143 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 1, 2017
1 person is currently reading
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About the author
Ronald R. Johnson
5 books9 followersRonald R. Johnson has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Saint Louis University and taught for a number of years at Spring Arbor University in Michigan (USA). He has published articles in The Congregationalist, The History of Philosophy Quarterly, The Way of St. Francis, and other periodicals. He is currently writing a biography of the bestselling 20th century novelist, Lloyd C Douglas.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 2, 2019
Under the threat of global annihilation by aliens, a journalist, together with an ever-growing band of mismatched people, hunts for a mysterious individual known only as Basil.
Johnson (What Does God Do from 9 to 5 2016, etc.) has somehow taken the philosophy of Hegel and the experiments of Milgram that demonstrate there are only five or six degrees of separation between any two people; mixed in equal parts Marx Brothers, Watergate, Douglas Adams, and Cinderella; tagged his characters with monikers straight out of Dickens, film noir, and Snow White; and wound up with a snide, witty, completely entertaining romp through human nature and all its foibles. The adventure begins on the moon where television reporter Dak Blayzak is supposed to interview a genetically engineered brainiac whose family consists of multiple self-cloned children. Instead, Blayzak winds up imprisoned for knocking down a robot, propositioned by a number of clones who want to escape with him, and ultimately dead (though rumors of his demise are greatly exaggerated). While dead, he boards a shuttle to the dark side of the moon where he awakes to a gun-toting expert on a language no one else speaks, and who incidentally has reasons to despise Blayzak. The Professor, as he is known, says they must find an alien named Basil in 10 days or the earth with be destroyed. The aliens communicate through a hand-held device in pictographs only the Professor can decipher. Half-convinced, Blayzak goes along with the Professor tracking down each subsequent link to Basil; every one with some difficult relationship with the preceding and succeeding connection. Eventually, the links lead to a super secret cabal that runs the world, an action and humor packed showdown, a return of the clones, pillories, big band music, a tremendous explosion, Basil, and a giant worldwide Kumbaya. But Johnson, a philosophy professor, has more up his sleeve than great writing and a funny, extremely readable story; readers will also have fun searching between the lines for deeper implications and references.
This multi-level book can be read for fun as an enjoyable farce, or mined for deeper insights.
Johnson (What Does God Do from 9 to 5 2016, etc.) has somehow taken the philosophy of Hegel and the experiments of Milgram that demonstrate there are only five or six degrees of separation between any two people; mixed in equal parts Marx Brothers, Watergate, Douglas Adams, and Cinderella; tagged his characters with monikers straight out of Dickens, film noir, and Snow White; and wound up with a snide, witty, completely entertaining romp through human nature and all its foibles. The adventure begins on the moon where television reporter Dak Blayzak is supposed to interview a genetically engineered brainiac whose family consists of multiple self-cloned children. Instead, Blayzak winds up imprisoned for knocking down a robot, propositioned by a number of clones who want to escape with him, and ultimately dead (though rumors of his demise are greatly exaggerated). While dead, he boards a shuttle to the dark side of the moon where he awakes to a gun-toting expert on a language no one else speaks, and who incidentally has reasons to despise Blayzak. The Professor, as he is known, says they must find an alien named Basil in 10 days or the earth with be destroyed. The aliens communicate through a hand-held device in pictographs only the Professor can decipher. Half-convinced, Blayzak goes along with the Professor tracking down each subsequent link to Basil; every one with some difficult relationship with the preceding and succeeding connection. Eventually, the links lead to a super secret cabal that runs the world, an action and humor packed showdown, a return of the clones, pillories, big band music, a tremendous explosion, Basil, and a giant worldwide Kumbaya. But Johnson, a philosophy professor, has more up his sleeve than great writing and a funny, extremely readable story; readers will also have fun searching between the lines for deeper implications and references.
This multi-level book can be read for fun as an enjoyable farce, or mined for deeper insights.
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February 17, 2020Ron Johnson's clever sci fi story enlightens the reader on some philosophical precepts while highlighting Stanley Milgrim's theory that any two random people are connected by no more than 5 or 6 degrees of separation. Will those six seeemingly random connections be enough to connect journalist Dak Blayzak with the elusive Basil in order to save the world from annihilation? The reader will have to go to the moon and back to find out.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews