In the middle of the 20th century, the British historian Isaiah Berlin wrote an essay called "The Hedgehog and the Fox." He used the animals alle-gorically to distinguish between two types of people. Hedgehogs are those who demand one single, encompassing explanation for the world, while foxes are people who prefer multiplicity and diversity. When I listen to the debate over the future of fiction in an age of electronic media, I am convinced that Berlin was right: People reveal themselves as either hedgehogs or foxes. The hedgehogs get more attention. They predict one grand future for fiction, although they disagree among themselves about what that future is. For some, it is interactive television; we will interact with the television screen in some way to determine how a story unfolds. For others, the future of fiction will be virtual reality; we will determine the story by interacting with virtual characters just as we do with people in the physical world. Most hedgehogs would agree that we will not be reading text. Rather, we will be seeing and hearing it. Our stories will be plays or movies, not novels.
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