fiction is dead, long live fiction

Over at The Millions, David Backer muses on the role of fiction in society and its more recent evolution in his piece “Long Live Fiction: A Guide to Fiction Online.” Here’s an excerpt:

Like the political revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, the people are acting and felling old, crumbling giants of power in favor of their own voices, slowly bringing the system to the masses. And this is the hope of fiction: that it take an active role in our culture’s conversation with itself. That citizens read and explore and question what it means to be a human being by reading the stories that their peers compose. In this sense fiction is very much alive, but in the mode of becoming. It’s old forms may be dying, but in these small journals and blogs it’s being born again. So I say, once more: Fiction is dead, long live Fiction.

He also lists some of his favorite fiction finds on the web. You can read all about it here.

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~ by Valerie Palmer on February 23, 2010.