Truths, Lies And Fictions

We learn the distinction between true statements, lies and fictions - and I wonder whether there is a fourth category: entertaining yarns that may be believed but that do no harm? In Voice Of The Fire, Alan Moore creates a prehistoric moronic boy who does not understand lies. He "...is not glean that one can say of thing when thing is not." Also, he does not differentiate appearance from reality. He tells us not that a tree resembled a man until he got nearer to it but that a man became a tree.

I was concerned when a teacher denounced a comic that I was reading as "lies." Lies were sinful. Was fiction not a valid alternative category after all?

Could there be rational beings with no concept of fiction? When Shakespeare's company plays A Midsummer Night's Dream for Auberon's court, the Puck says:

"This is magnificent...and it is true! It never happened; yet it is still true. What magic art is this?"
- Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Dream Country (New York, 1995), p. 75.

It is magic. The actors create something from nothing. The superficial Puck lacks evaluative terms like "valid" and "authentic." A member of CS Lewis' family said that, in a TV drama of his life, the actors did not resemble the real people, events were simplified and the conversations were, of necessity, made up but it was all true.