Fiction

The reason we have included a narrative section in this portal is that fiction represents one of the best exercises in structured imagination our species uses to innovate and experiment-something so powerful that it has, in turn, become a cultural and organizational niche to which we have cheerfully adapted over time.

The worldbuilding of ancient and modern imaginative works like the Odyssey, Robin Hood, the Arthurian cycle, Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, the Foundation series, and Harry Potter has spread among readers and viewers, creating imaginative realities so vivid that they almost allow us to live inside them, much like our daily lives. We feel moved, we feel saddened, we find comfort, we draw inspiration-and we do so as a group, collectively.

L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, in their Harold Shea series, even imagined a (near-quantum) connection between the worlds of great epic cycles and parallel universes, where it was possible to travel into the world of Orlando Furioso or the Kalevala-a highly risky form of adventure tourism. Naturally, theirs was a work of metanarrative, a highly intriguing recursive game centered on storytelling itself.

I believe it is difficult to enumerate the inventions and mental models born in books and movies that have subsequently become part of our actual present. This translation occurs so frequently because the trigger of culture is not so much necessity as it is the scope of imagination, especially collective imagination. Stephen Jay Gould once defined human beings as a "narrative species," an attribute far more realistic than "wise". His remark was intended more as a critique, but I have always taken it as a wonderful compliment to our ability to imagine together and then, at times, to materialize a collective fantasy.