PBS Idea Channel

What is Fiction? (ft. War of the Worlds) (2x42)

Air date: Feb 19, 2014

What IS fiction? That's the question that popped into our minds when thinking about Orson Welles' radio War of the Worlds performance, which set off a public panic of listeners who thought NJ was truly being attacked by aliens. Now those aliens didn't really exist, since it was all pretend. But on the other hand, they did (and do) KIND OF exist. They can be described, referenced, and can have as much veracity to people as physical objects. And the worlds created in fiction can contain REAL things - cars, people, New Jersey. Can something both exist and not exist? Whoa.