Lisa Chabot writes:

> Larry Doering wrote:

> A woman next to me asked everyone in the vicinity, "Excuse me. Does 'non-fiction' mean that something's true?"

> Well, I can't claim to be Lloyd, but right about at the same time this was being posted, on the opposite coast I was explaining to hapless dinner companions that the difference between fiction and non-fiction was that fiction was the stuff people could believe, while non-fiction was so unlikely that it had to rely on actual facts to be at all convincing.

After reading Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition, and remembering that the second most effective way to tell a lie is to tell the truth in such outrageous fashion as to be utterly unbelievable (attribution, dammit), I came to the conclusion that non-fiction is simply a collection of words that want to be true.

After reading Stone Butch Blues, I came to the conclusion that fiction is a collection of words that often wish they weren't true.

Hence my conclusion that the major difference between fiction and non-fiction is that they are stored in well-separated locations in most libraries. There is probably a good reason for this, but it's not worth getting a masters in library science to understand what might happen if fiction and non-fiction were to be carelessly intermingled.

I do recommend both books, by the way, even though they use many of the same words.