“The Worlds of Stephan Ward” are both the products of, and the metaphors for, my various imaginings. I have worn many hats: academic, industrial scientist, engineer, inventor, reliability engineer, VP, chief scientist, and writer. On other occasions, I have been a scientific consultant and found myself helping organizations (Federal, State / Provincial, and corporate) through complex decisions or advising on scientific matters. As a storyteller, I’ve told many tales in public forums. You might notice that my modus scriptum — for want of a better appellation — reflects an oral tale-telling past.
My greatest delights come from dreaming, theorizing, inventing, and writing, duly salted by the world around us. Einstein once said the most important thing we have is our imagination. I think a true storyteller – at least the kind I am – is stimulated by the most mundane because under or within those apparently boring things are gems of tales. Rocks tell us the history of our world and walk us back yet further in time. Stardust and atoms can talk of the start of time itself, and DNA talks of our long biological history and fore-species. If you look carefully, a hike up a mountain or a walk through a forest means stepping into stories of the rocks, plants, and creatures which make those entities what they are. Whenever my imagination is dulled by circumstance, or an external pressure constrains my mind, I know I’m missing a lot more of the real world than I should. Reality, I think of as being at the conjunction of our imagination and the insistent presence of the physical world.