Also — keep in mind that these
books were
written before space travel, the Hubble telescope, and flight, when nobody could see above the
clouds and all sorts of myths could be created
about what's on top of them.
Given his tendency to experiment with form (in novels such as
Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten), it's probably no surprise that when we spoke with David Mitchell
about his enthralling new
book, The Bone Clocks, he had just
written a short story to be published 140 characters at a time on Twitter.