I am 100% certain that fiction, the type of stuff we write, is not going anywhere for a long, long time. Stories have been and always will be a part of human culture. Whether it was the great epics of Gilgamesh, the myths of the Greek and Roman gods, the many religious stories, right on through the many myths we have about our own culture(s). Yes, you might argue that people believed these examples I cited as real. But how is that different from a biopic like “Milk,” which is a supposedly true story, but has probably been dramatized and elaborated to appeal to a movie-watching audience?

Humanity IS a story. Whether you believe in evolution or take the Garden of Eden literally, both are alternate fictions. (Before you say that evolution has been “proven” let me finish my thought). No one was there 65 million years ago to know exactly what happened to the dinosaurs. No one was there 100,000 years ago when modern humans arose. What we do is conjecture based on evidence. We build a story. Same thing for the Big Bang, cosmogenesis. We are building stories about humanity’s emergence from the Cosmic soup. You may argue that those examples are not entirely fiction, but I can cite certain examples of events that we all shared (e.g. the Crit from Hell) which have become epic, fictionalized, and remembered probably not at all how they originally occurred. We made a story out of it. That’s what humans do.

So, yeah, maybe print is going to be a luxury, collectors’ item type of medium, but fiction, stories, I believe they’ll be with us as long as humanity exists.

Thanks for inaugurating the Altered Fluid site, Poore Man! I loved your post.