Books published by Optimist Books by Optimist Creations

A meteor the size of LA is about to hit LA and in London a couple of friends spend their last seven days watching the news, reinventing chess and rewriting the rules of some of the other games in their universe: generally getting things into perspective, at once paralysed and inspired by the ''overallness of it all''. Getting ready, as best they can, to die together, the enormity of what''s about to happen completely overwhelms them, but it also brings out in them a whole burst of creative energy, and so as the story to top all stories unfolds, they inadvertently become its co-authors, while in a dimension far beyond their imagination, their soul-mates-in-spirit are having something of an unexpected ball...

What do you do if you find yourself miles from where you thought you were supposed to be going, and you realise that the person sitting opposite you at the is your younger self? Dimensions stakes out the multiple realities that create the settings through which we meander, along our path in pursuit of becoming ourselves.

A chance encounter with a younger self prompts an unruly reflection on not just what lies ahead of this person who should be so familiar, and yet isn't at all, but also on what, if anything, it might mean now to be human. Euphoria may not be inevitable, but nor is it unattainable, after all...

The curious Heart - sometimes adventurous, often yearning - latches on to those whom it recognises as good people. Sometimes to no end at all, sometimes to surprising effect, and often just to learn that it doesn't really understand this universe. Stories, impressions and memories, about friendship and love. - From EDEN by FREI.

In Insomnia, four short pieces take a curious look at the quirkinesses of our existence, from the tentative proposition of a Connexum, to a poetic portrait of The Fire Breather, to a succinct treatise of the problem of the giraffe taking a shower in QED right through to the paradoxical challenges of sleeplessness. - The EDEN miniatures series.

"...the snowflakes tumbling from the skies like clumsy, half-frozen bumble bees, out of a freezer, up in the cloud." - The Snowflake Collector lives at the end of the valley, where in the multiple dimensions of snowflakes he discovers a purpose to his life and finds a way to share this purpose with the world through the encompassing power of love.

"I thought no more of or about it, until it occurred to me that this, probably, is what most of life is mostly about: chance encounters, and where we take them." - Encounters, recalled at random, recollected. No system, no method: just a collation of living done amongst friends who have never really been strangers, who simply had not yet met...

"They're simple choices, really: whichever version of ourselves we nurture will grow strong." - Two stories and an unexpected link between them, about a beautiful place where wonderful and terrible things may happen side by side. From EDEN by FREI.

"I sound to me like any young man from the past. I recognise myself, but in the way that I would recognise a friend from that time, someone I knew, a little. Not someone I knew well, let alone someone I was." The discovery of a travel diary on a cassette tape prompts a trip into the heart, where friendship and loss, adventure and love commingle.

"'There has to come a point when it stops being about anything, when it just is, ' George tells me." An unlikely-though often imagined-encounter in Istanbul between a younger and an older self triggers memories, of course; but more than that it prompts a reflection on what it means to love, what it means to discover, and what it means to be.

"I'm not sure I like this about Sedartis. His clarity. His straightforwardness. His unreconstructed linearity. Aren't we supposed to have moved into the Age of Diffusion?" Sedartis is the interlocutor from another reality who looks at this world with a curious mixture of concern, outrage and wonder. EDEN miniatures - small books on Big Themes

"Deep inside the glacier lives The Ice King, supple and smooth. His skin is aglow with the cold, and unbelievably soft. He should be milky white, but there's an olive tint to his hue, and no sooner do I see him, than I want to touch him." - A poetic short story about a world of the senses. In the EDEN miniatures series from #EDENbyFREI.

The Oration on the Dignity of Man was written in 1486 by the then 23-year-old Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, as an introduction to a public debate he was planning to host in Rome the following year, to discuss with the scholars of his day and the leaders of the Catholic Church (who had near absolute power at the time) 900 theses of his own, on what he considered to be the most important questions concerning the universe, theology and human existence.Pico was never able to hold his Oration: the Church stepped in to prevent it from happening and persecuted him for heresy on several of his theses. But in spite (to a significant extent also because) of this, it is now considered a 'Manifesto for the Renaissance' and one of the most influential texts ever published, setting the tone for humanism, defending the right to practise philosophy and the liberal arts, and boldly, uniquely, celebrating human freedom at the centre of creation.This new edition gives the full text as it was read by Sebastian Michael to a live audience at TU (Technical University) Vienna on 7th December 2017, together with a short introduction.

"I walk from Neptune towards the sun through the snow - like shooting stars, falling ... There's no-one about: I'm alone. Alone on the edge of the universe." The Planet Walk is a poetic perambulation through our solar system, and through the constellations formed by mind, body and soul, in search of identity and meaning. From EDEN by FREI