Not very long ago, I was driving home from a play with my friend, Bev, and the subject of books came up. We compared what we had read recently. I'd read a novel by Michael Ondaatje and a collection of science fiction stories by Larry Niven. Bev had read a book about DHTML and an autobiography by a retired polititian.

"No fiction?" I asked, innocently, and she gave me a strange look.

"No," Bev said and gave a tiny derisive snort that I might have missed if I didn't know her so well.

"Ah," I temporized. "So you haven't read any novels recently?"

There was a bit of a silence, in which I thought that I might have been better off letting the point go.

"I don't read novels," she explained. "I pretty much just read books that are about something."

My mind boggled, then balked. Then it strained and stumbled for a couple of moments before accidentally becoming completely gummed up with the foolishness of the words she'd just uttered.

"You..." I faltered. "You... don't read any fiction?"

That had been unwise. Now she was genuinely irritated with me and said, "I read lots. Magazines. Books. I bet I read more than you do."

"But no fiction?"

"No! What do you get out of novels anyway? You can't learn anything."

What could I possibly say to that? Yes, she was correct in that she probably reads more than I do. I never stop at the news stand for a copy of GQ. I don't buy newspapers (although I read one online). I rarely buy how-to books.

But to say that you can't learn anything... How can anyone read a novel and not learn from it? The lessons to be learned from fiction are more important than coding with DHTML or how Pierre Trudeau got along (or didn't get along) with the American president. Fiction allows you to think beyond the limitations of the real and explore the impossible and the imaginary. Fiction allows you to touch the spiritual and the whimsical at the same time. And even when it's sometimes in the form of a ripping good tale of adventure, it takes you away from your miserable routine and gives you unlimited room to think and live.

So while Bev learns how to make interactive web pages, I'm learning how to put a crippled spaceship into orbit around a Jovian moon using nothing but water as propellant. I'll leave it up to you to decide which is more useful.