A few months ago, I picked up my sister's copy of the latest edition of "Locus" magazine. On the cover was some bearded guy who was wearing a T-shirt that said "I tell lies". (And I've been reticent in my personal duties to talk about this stuff here, which is why I'm talking about it now instead of a few months ago.)

With no idea what the meaning behind the T-shirt was, I jokingly said to my sister, "Hey, I guess this guy tells lies." She explained to me that "I tell lies" has sort of become a slogan for fiction writers. After all, the fictional worlds they create and the stories they tell aren't real. Therefore, the writers "tell lies" as they work their craft and weave their stories.

Umm... Does this strike anyone else as a height of dumbassery, or is it just me?

Fiction writing is an art form, you dips! A "lie" is when you've been cheating on your wife/hubby, he/she says "Are you having an affair?", and you answer "No." A "lie" is when mommy finds the cookie jar half empty after you gorged yourself on cookies, and you say your little brother/sister did it. A "lie" is any combination of words that are uttered by a politician (har har). A "lie" is "Naw, you won't surely die when you eat that fruit. I ate that fruit, and it made me like God, knowing all that He knows." To "tell a lie" is to speak anything other than the truth as if it were the truth. Der!

Fiction writing is entertainment. It's an art form. It's no different from a painter or sculptor creating a work of fine art. Okay, I guess you could dispute the word "fine" as it relates to the word "art" in that sentence when describing the science fiction and fantasy genres, but hopefully you get the general idea. It's a classic case of an artist (the writer) working his craft and producing... what?... a lie? No, a piece of artwork using words and sentences and paragraphs to tell his story.

No one in their right mind actually believes that "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" there were Jedi knights who were the guardians of peace and justice in the old Republic. Some guy made it up to tell a story. For ****'s sake. No one believes that there's really a planet called Pandora with a bunch of blue-skinned cartoon characters living there.

http://www.examiner.com/movie-in-gaines ... tendencies

Oh.

Wait, I stand corrected. Maybe some people are that stupid.

News flash! Reality check! Some guy made it up! But for what purpose? What was the intent behind this seeming "lie"? It was made up for entertainment purposes. Der! A "lie" created to entertain an audience is not a "lie" because there's no malicious intent to deceive behind it. Same goes for those Jedi knights who lived "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away". It's just entertainment and art.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/10/11/t ... rtainment/

Oh.

Wait, I stand corrected again. Maybe some of this stuff isn't really entertainment after all.

Umm...

Yeah, I pretty much agree. It's like sarcasm: it's not lying, it's sarcasm. Some people just don't get sarcasm, is all.
No, I am not being clever.

Lying is a willful distortion put forward as truth. Writing fiction is not.

I just think the T-shirt was tongue-in-cheek, though.

Good responses, both. Thanks.

Okay, I'll go with that. Sarcasm, tongue-in-cheek. I still find it ("I tell lies") to be kinda dopey, but that's okay.

I'm a bit confused on whether you've decided sarcasm is like fiction or the shirt was being sarcastic. But yes, it's a humorous shirt. I like it. If i was an author of fiction i would totally wear it.

Interesting articles as well, especially rusch's thing about written sci fi being too jargony, what would be the point of it if it wasn't? Sure, you need your star wars to hook people in, but you need your beebean outposts as well. Some like to think it up and others like to read it. Totally wouldn't have expected that kind of stance to be thought up by a scifi writer.

The shirt was being sarcastic. Or tongue-in-cheek. Or cute.



I love Scalzi's article. It fits right in with "The secret history of Star Wars". (Google it for an eye-opening read)

I wouldn't say sarcastic. But that makes more sense than the 'fiction=sarcasm' thought strand that i was trying to get my head around the logic of x_x id agree more with tounge in cheek, or even more with cute because it's a nice catch all word, though when i try to explain these kind of memes to irl based ppls i just say 'it's the internet!' =P

I'll have to do that when im not on my phone, a lot of it was cut off and wouldn't let me scroll for some reason o.O

"Every lie contains the truth, and every truth contains a lie." - Shu (Suikoden 2)

BOOOM

"Lies become truth, and truth becomes lies." -Carl Allen (A minstrel)

LOOOL.