Books get divided into fiction and non-fiction early in the classification. History books classed non-fiction often have a lot of footnotes, and yet much of what they say connects dots in a way that is more estimation than fact. Sometimes they are shown to be dead wrong but subsequent discovery, yet they don’t get reclassified.
Authors of fiction declare up front there is created story involved. The setting can be historical, and fiction may fill in blanks with stories that might have true, or could have been true. While there is no obligation to stick to history, some writers do — or at least they tell where they have departed from it.
Some story, like Rekindled, is conjecture, a hypothesis set out of what may have been or will be true. Such stories fit neatly into neither fiction or non-fiction. The skeleton is non-fiction and the story fills out the skeleton. Conjectured stories, like software, want to be fixed over time if discoveries are made or facts verified and reinforced.The library system doesn’t have a good place for conjecture. Most business cases are conjecture looking for investment, and if the product is built we find out if they were nonfiction or fantasy. Books have no such process. Why not?
Ancient people seem to have had a process. For example, the assertions from prophets claiming to speak for God were monitored, and if the teachings did not verify the prophet was run out of town, but if the assertions verified, the prophet’s writing grew treasured as revealed scripture. Unfortunately the prophets carrying revelation were also run out of town just because the message was unpopular. That made prophet’s lives fairly miserable (Jeremiah writes as if he nearly suicidal at times) even when they will be remembered well centuries later. Worse, if the message isn’t what the authorities expected, it is supressed.
The story of Christmas is such a story. The person of Jesus, a historically verifiable baby born in time, would give up everything he had on earth to tell us truths about life eternal. Pay attention. Don’t shut out the messenger.
Originally published at Medium.com in About Rekindled
