(Robert A. Heinlein claimed in an essay in the 1940s, published in Lloyd Arthur Eshbach’s collection of SF writer essays Of Worlds Beyond, that there are only three stories, which we tell over and over again. He said he had thought there were only two, ‘Boy Meets Girl’ and ‘The Little Tailor’, until L. Ron Hubbard pointed out to him that there was also ‘A Man Learns a Lesson’. And, Heinlein maintained, if you add in their opposites – someone fails to learn a lesson, two people don’t fall in love, and so on – you may have all the stories there are.
