Some fiction is written to be the mirror of reality.  At once I think of Mikhail Sholokhov’s The Quiet Don, which is a fictionalized version of the great upheavals in the Ukraine in the time of World War I and the Russian Revolution.  The characters may have been invented, but the story is basically historical.  The novel is often called an epic, because of the grandeur of its scope, but the word ‘epic’ is misleading, because the book is nothing if it is not realistic.  One reads such a book to be informed, not to have his imagination stimulated.

Other kinds of fiction may have some semblance of truth or some convergence with reality here and there, but the exaggeration, for the sake of entertainment, is obvious. 

The rightly so-called epics of antiquity, like The Iliad, The Odyssey and The Aeneid, fall into this category.  There may have been a Trojan War.  There may even have been heroes like Achilles, Hector, Ulysses and Aeneas.  But the tales that were woven around them go way beyond the plausible.  For example, in The Iliad, the goddess Aphrodite comes down onto the battlefield and wafts the Trojan warrior Paris into the bedchamber of Helen of Troy, for whose honor the war was being waged.  I suppose you can enjoy The Iliad even if you are a twentieth-century skeptic, but your enjoyment is much keener if you believe that it is possible that gods and goddesses did exist in those days, and that, yes, maybe Aphrodite did what the poem says she did.  At least that was my case.  When I read those epics, back in the sixties, I was half-convinced that Greek gods and goddesses had really existed.  Yes, I believed in Aphrodite, and even had a statue of her in my house.

This sort of thing is true in science fiction too.  If you still believe in the possibility of interstellar travel, or even intergalactic travel, if you believe in teleportation, speed-of-light spaceships, extraterrestrial civilizations and all the usual trappings of science fiction, you can really have a good time with tales like Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey.  A part of your mind tells you this is real, and that maybe one day you’ll be a part of it all, exploring the crossroads of the universe and touring the gleaming cities scattered throughout the galaxies.  This was my case anyway.  When I was younger, I loved science fiction, but as, little by little, I realized that this was all illusory, I began to lose interest.  I realized I was not communicating with otherwordly beings; I was communicating with the mind of venal earthly authors who knew no more about the stars than I do.

I was also a fan of fantasy and horror novels at one time.  I loved Dracula and Frankenstein.  I loved Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. I was fascinated with werewolves, vampires, satanists.  But a part of my mind actually believed in them.  Perhaps, I thought, there really had been vampires and werewolves in the Middle Ages.  Maybe communication with the dead was possible.  Maybe ghosts and demons had actually existed.   Maybe telepathy, clairvoyance and telekinesis were possible.  But as I gradually disabused myself of these notions, the stories began to become less interesting.  I suppose it’s possible to enjoy such stories anyway, but there’s no better way to read them than to believe them.

In a way, I wish I could recapture those old feelings.  The truth is so much less exciting than fantasy and fiction!

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