Fiction or non-fiction?

[madnak]

Given the question as posed, I'm firmly in the fiction camp. The power of a creative narrative to deliver a message, illustrate a concept, spark the imagination, and inspire a sense of wonder is unparalleled. Nonfiction, by contrast, is pretty irrelevant. We don't need accounts that are presented as fact - the content of a story doesn't depend on whether it really happened, and since textbooks/etc are allowed abandoning nonfiction wouldn't greatly affect human knowledge.