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I said this before, but one of the most embarrasing things, for me at least, is to regard others as fools and in the end find out that it's you who are the fool. The parrots keep screeching "it's FICTION, people" ('FICTION' usually capitalized for some odd reason), or even "it's FICTION, idiots!" Well, the joke is on the parrots. We idiots know that the book is categorized as fiction. We know it and have moved beyond that knowledge, unlike the parrots. It's fiction, but as every semi-educated person knows there are, as you pointed out above, certain parameters that good fiction observes.

Gore Vidal, to take one example, didn't make his fictional Abraham Lincoln the composer of Beethoven's works who marries Julia Roberts. Why not, it's FICTION, people?! Might of sold 40 million copies with such turns of plot! Brown fiction is not only blasphemous, it is prepostrous and should have been tossed in the shredder by the publisher before the printer saw any of it. But it's also bidnys, it's about money, the lowest common denominator of taste, and not about literary or educational value.

Gore Vidal, to take one example, didn't make his fictional Abraham Lincoln the composer of Beethoven's works who marries Julia Roberts.

But what would be wrong with doing that? Actually the idea is kind of interesting. That's one of the uses of fiction it seems to me - to play around with ideas, sort of ask "what if?". So what if it's not true? That's why they call it fiction.

fictional Abraham Lincoln

The gays are already taking wild license with Lincoln - and about every other historical figure - claims them as gay - and not claiming their convoluted and disingenuous claims as 'fiction'

Are you upset about that?