Fuzzy Signals

Reality is Stranger than Fiction

Some stories are just too strange, too incredible to be made up, which is indeed a major limitation to the business of imagining the future. We are often constrained by what's believable, by what's plausible. So more and more I'm thinking about using real life historical tales to stretch people's imagination.

A great place to start would be the amazing life story of Josiah Harlan recently told in a new book by Ben Macintyre called The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). From NPR's Morning Edition

"[this book] tells the true story of Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania Quaker who some 150 years ago began a 20-year trip through Central Asia. After riding into Afghanistan on an elephant, Harlan declared himself to be royalty -- and the heir to Alexander the Great. His adventures are widely believed to have inspired Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King."

And Afghanistan was just part of his long, convoluted story of pushing the edges of his luck and fortune. Listen to the NPR audio programme for more.