"For more than two thousand years people have insisted that reading fiction is good for bookyou. Aristotle claimed that poetry—he meant the epics of Homer and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, which we would now call fiction—is a more serious business than history. History, he argued, tells us only what has happened, whereas fiction tells us what can happen, which can stretch our moral imaginations and give us insights into ourselves and other people. This is a strong argument for schools to continue to focus on the literary arts, not just history, science, and social studies.

But is the idea of fiction being good for you merely wishful thinking?'

Much depends on the internal form of fiction. Fiction or any text is not a transparent medium that 'injects' the 'mind' with beneficial effects (though culture is awash with shoddy promises of such 'injections'); it is part of an active, interpretative perceptual process for the reader which involves memory, desire and, not least, skills. Also, fiction is not a monolith, and while the previous garbled sentence perhaps evokes 'the literary', there are other fictional forms which include, quite legitimately the entertaining, distracting, and 'lighter' pleasures: at its best, referring to this crude division, fiction includes both.

Great fiction generally uses a lot of research. Sometimes it's difficult to tell where the real leaves off and the fiction begins. People like Arthur C. Clarke, David Brin, Samuel R. Delaney have all used their knowledge and education to supply technical realism to their stories. Others, like Ursula K. LeGuin, Ray Bradbury, C. J. Cherryh use their understanding of human society, philosophy and, especially in Mr. Bradbury's case, poetry to develop characters that are incredibly true-to-life as well as building believable and logical cultures and worlds. Can you tell that I'm a Science-Fiction fan?