A book and a set of beautifully crafted ideas that everyone should have tucked into their minds, bookshelves or even carrier bags if you prefer, this essential and influential essay challenges prevalent ideas that time is linear and that stories need heroes.

In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, visionary author Ursula K. Le Guin tells the story of human origin by redefining technology as a cultural carrier bag rather than a weapon of domination.

Hacking the linear, progressive mode of the Techno-Heroic, the Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution proposes: ‘before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home.’