Let's just skim quickly over this topic. It's both too complicated and too simple to examine at great length. Everyone knows what fiction is, right? It's stories. In this class, we're going to use that word, "stories," to refer to movies, tv shows, legends and tales, and novels, too.

Stories are part of everybody's life. They're one of our oldest and most powerful methods of education, entertainment, persuasion and manipulation. You've all read, watched, heard and told stories since you first aquired language. You probably even dream in stories. When you think of your life, or your semester, or your morning, you probably organize the events into a story.

But fiction, some people would say, is only stories that aren't "true." But how easy is that to decide? Think of these stories....

• The story of Cinderella and her Wicked Stepsisters
• The story of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader
• The story of Adam and Eve
• The story of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky
• The story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree
• The story of OJ and Nicole Simpson
• The story of Romeo and Juliet

You can see that the "truth" of some of these stories might depend on who's telling them. Even the contents of the stories--what actually happened--is not something everyone would automatically agree about.

Now go to the Discussion Board. Can you think of some stories that "everyone knows" are true, but that you're not so sure about? Or what about some stories that "everyone knows" are "fiction" but that you think just might be true? Post those stories.

Here are two important ideas for us keep in mind. They're ideas that we want to use as premises in this course

• All fiction contains truth. So the most fantastic and impossible stories are really about what is familiar and real. (The converse of this, "All truth contains fiction," may be a trickier one to accept...but we won't get into that)
• Fiction is made. It's an artifact. That means that for this class, we assume that every story has a meaning. We might not be able to always and easily determine and define what that meaning is. We certainly won't always agree. But a big part of the fun and the fascination in reading fiction (in the way we're going to read it in this class) is the process of trying to figure out what it means.

So when we read "Science Fiction" stories, as we remember that we're reading fiction, let's remember what we mean by "fiction."