A passage of fiction is not an account of something that might once have happened in the visible world; it is not even an account of something that could conceivably have happened in that world… Such issues are irrelevant; a passage of fiction reports his or her contemplation of what did happen or what did not happen or what might have happened or what can never happen.
“Members of the human race bring destruction on each other: they make murderous instruments that can sever hands and feet and slice limbs from torsos. Most of those not killed by fate are killed by their fellow men, and since nowadays men disdain the old ways of war as inadequate, they are constantly thinking up new techniques and dreaming of ways to increase the damage they cause. It has truly reached the point that in every stretch of countryside and in every town the killing never stops.”
Matteo Ricci | Jiren shipian