Walking in different worlds

"Fiction is lies," my brother told me once. But it's not lying, surely, if there's no intent to deceive. Fiction is the chance to walk in a different world--an imagined rendering of history, a fanciful palace of the future, a place outside our time and space, or maybe even the inside of a stranger's mind. Fiction lets us wear, not just different clothes, but different selves, as we walk on different roads and stretch muscles we never knew we owned. "Fiction is freedom" would be my reply. And...