They think, that I think, that they think, that I think...

To continue on with the post about people asking if Led to the Slaughter: The Donner Party Werewolves is non-fiction, I wonder if that doesn't explain some of the deep dislike of genre fiction that I occasionally run into.

To me, a good story is a good story.  Everything is narrative, most things are metaphorical.

But I do wonder if some people are so literal minded that they believe that anyone who reads about spaceships and aliens or hobbits or werewolves actually believes in them.

I bet you couldn't find a more skeptical crowd than science fiction authors, for instance.  I bet a whole bunch of them, probably most of them, don't believe that aliens have visited us.

But that in no way shape or form keeps us genre writers and readers from entertaining the possibilities.

For me, it was always about the adventure.  It was always metaphorical.

Horror is about our fears.  Zombies might be about people who are thoughtlessly destroying everything around us; werewolves about the predator in the dark; vampires about things that drain us of energy and life.

It isn't literal.

On the other side of that coin, I wonder if people who only read non-fiction understand that any book, even so called 'non-fiction,' has been put into a narrative form for them.  Which by necessity entails a certain amount of imagination and filling in the blanks.

Otherwise, the only non-fiction would be a recitation of facts. 

I guess there are those who value imagination and those who don't.

Never the twain shall meet.