The Saga of Life

The Saga of Life is such an extraordinary project that I can’t explain it in one sentence.

It’s a frame story. It consists of short independent stories. But when you read multiple, they combine to tell a bigger story of a world filled with life.

It tells universal tales. The style is a mixture of myths, legends, folktales, and the like. This makes the stories timeless and readable for all ages.

It’s about the history of life on earth. But it explains this in a creative, magical and exciting way. From the dawn of our rocky planet, until the dawn of mankind, even a bit into the future, in which we might roam the galaxy. Important concepts and events will appear in The Saga of Life, one way or the other.

It was built to always be able to grow. There’s a plan, a timeline, many stories into the future. I’ve also consciously left gaps, so there’s always more to be told about life. It might take my whole life until the last tale is written.

It’s a free website. To go with the times. To make the stories as pretty and accessible as possible, no matter your background, device or financial state. To automatically keep track of metadata, which gives me a sort of Wikipedia about the project.

With the exception of a frame story, I’ve never seen these elements in other projects. And certainly not all at once. It’s therefore quite experimental and only time will tell if this starts a new wave of storytelling … or ends up being a terrible idea.

For now it’s a beautiful website with hopefully just as beautiful tales. (At the time of writing it has 10 stories with a total of roughly 120,000 words.)

Update (late 2023): this project used to be Dutch only. I’ve since changed the website to be multilingual and translate the newest stories to English once in a while. This means the Saga of Life can now be fully and officially enjoyed in two languages (Dutch and English)!