"Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying." - Ursula K. Le Guin (from the introduction to "The Left Hand of Darkness")
Manufactured Truth: Where does it come from, what is it, and why is it so desirable?
I think a lot about what it is that makes people sit and read, sit and play games or sit and watch. There is something meaningful that happens in the process of entertainment, and I think I agree with the authors of "Rules of Play" when they say it's interaction with others, real or imagined. With games it's easy to disassemble - you input, you receive a response.
With movies and books and things... it's a little harder. What is it that people receive from the experience of riding along with the experience in a manufactured reality? Memories, I think. Memories of these places you've never been, but through the emotions described and subsequently experienced in these locations they become so real and so tangible that it's like a photograph you can go back to and look at.
Readers remember a time when they read a book that completely absorbed them to the point where the words on the page became a liquid mess of symbols representing ideas representing images which are absorbed by the sponge of your mind.
Of course, simplifying the experience to such a mechanical level is as betraying to the core of the enjoyment as is completely dissipating it's meaning into a cloud of existential idealism... (wow that sentence sucks)
Reading is enjoyable because you like the stories. Writing is enjoyable because the stories spark in your mind and exploring them is frequently more fun than reading them, at a deeper level of commitment.
