On Monday, July 30, 2001, at 03:04 PM, G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl 
wrote:

>> Ger: Who is here talking about interactive story-telling?
> ..The first meaning of fiction in my old Oxford (1980 $5.95)is: 
> fiction= a
> product of imagination. (I place a good simulation or a good 
> TextAdventure
> under this definition and even prefer a combination of these; like
> independent Characters moving in a story-maze.)

The sense of "imagination" as you are using it here is quite different 
from the dictionary definition to which you refer.  The "imaginative" 
use is not the sense of child-like wonder, but rather the pejorative 
sense of fiction vs. fact.

The Amazon One-Click patent is also a product of imagination 
(intentional multiple-entendre).  Nobody would consider it to be fiction 
in the sense in which you intended it here (although many consider the 
allegations of the complaint to be an excellent form of fiction).

> ..The second meaning: fiction= an invented story.
> Even inside this second meaning you could wonder when a story is 
> created:

Indeed, I was equating fiction with "good fiction" qua "good 
storytelling."  I think the best of the genre to date derived from those 
who recognized the story-telling limitations of a simulation medium, and 
worked around that rather than trying to harmonize the unharmonizable.