Human beings across the globe expend staggering amounts of time and resources on creating and experiencing fantasies and fictions. The human fascination with fiction is so intense that it can amount to a virtual addiction. A government study in Britain showed not long ago that, counting time spent going to plays and movies and watching television drama, the average Briton spends roughly 6 percent of all waking life attending to fictional dramatic performances. And that figure does not even include books and magazines: further vast numbers of hours are spent reading short stories, mysteries, and thrillers, as well as so-called serious fiction, old and new. Stories told, read, and dramatically or poetically performed are independently invented in all known cultures, literate or not, having advanced technologies or not. Where writing arrives, it is used to record fictions. When printing shows up, it is used to reproduce fictions more efficiently. Wherever television appears in the world, soap operas soon show up on the daily schedules. The love of fiction—a fiction instinct—is as universal as hierarchies, marriage, jokes, religion, sweet, fat, and the incest taboo.
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