Straman

The reasons why "Straman", a tale of the sky was written is by itself a story we have told countless times to our friends and people we know, since no one could understand the reasons that led us to its creation. Even our publishers, scientists and authors themselves, in spite of their deep friendly and human relation with us, when they read the manuscript, many years before the first edition of Straman, were sure that this was an attempt to compose a scientific fiction tale with strong mythical and irrational elements. Yet, this was far from the truth. Of course, we did not want to play the novelists that we are not; nor were we interested in making money - all our friends know that we write first and foremost for ourselves. The truth is that Straman was merely the expression and outflow of our effort to answer the countless "why’s" of our children, questions growing along with them, as they were learning more from the realm of the natural sciences. Besides, we could not describe, in our view, in a better way the wonderful, but sometimes complex and subtle, nature of the Universe around us: only through an endless and daily "fairy tale", always "to be continued", in which the primary role should be played by children like our own. In that great tale of knowledge, nothing should be fake. Thus, even the "irrational" for many people elements of the storyline were borrowed from the traditions and world view of different nations and civilizations. Our interest and attention were focused on one thing: All the knowledge about the secrets of the Universe expressed by either Straman or Grandpa Asterius should be absolutely factual, in the sense that they convey scientific views and theories. The fact that the scientific views and theories described often surpass even the borders of imagination and common sense, is something all humans should face, but at the same time a proof of the boldness and broadness of mentality employed by modern astrophysics in order to confront the challenges presented by the vast Universe. But beyond simply "narrating" the secrets of the Universe, what we wanted to transfer in the minds and souls of our children was the new quality of scientific and human ethics emerging nowadays; a mentality based on a new natural understanding of the cosmic creation around us. At the same time, it was our deep desire to persuade them that, in the struggle to know the Universe better, no dogmatisms, inhibitions, prejudices or external interests are welcome. Now that our children grew up and don’t listen to fairy tales any more, we collected all the ones we could remember in the pages of this book, as a kind of memoir of certain happy moments. And yet, Straman is also a magical tale for grown-up children of any age that have still alive in their souls the traveler and the explorer of cosmic chaos. Perhaps, through the storyline of this celestial tale, each of our adult readers will be able to recognize pieces of his or her secret thoughts and visions, while he or she may subconsciously choose to better perceive different things, those that the mind and soul of each of us needs to understand. And something for the end: The name of our hero is not an expression of adopting a common sci-fi nomenclature; it is just a synthesis of the first letters of our first names, Stra-tos and Man-os (Stra-Man). Friendly, Manos Danezis Stratos Theodossiou