Excerpt
A long time ago on a faraway planet, there lived a race of curious and intelligent little creatures. They had no heads or arms and they didn’t have genders as many other beings do. They were quite small and had bodies that were almost spherical in shape. They had a pair of eyes and two small legs with feet that seemed rather large when compared to their size, and which were used to pick up small objects. They also had a way of splitting in two in order to multiply their numbers. It's interesting to try to tell a story about
these creatures, since many languages have different ways of referring to males and females, but no good way of
referring to sentient beings without gender. For this reason, I must refer to them as “it,” instead of “he” or “she.”
The creatures our story is about once occupied a vast area of land on their planet, and their terrain was full of obstacles. There were other creatures that would roam the same ground as them, and there was a multitude of plant
life, rocks, hills, holes, and other such things that made it a tedious job to travel any great distance. But our story’s creatures had developed a remarkable ability to hop very high and to roam over great distances. For this reason, others who would visit this planet from time to time called these creatures “hoppers.”