Fiction can teach us about the world in the sense that we learn about people and the way they behave, especially in cities and cultures which we may never have a chance to visit. When we read fiction, we bring to each reading the person we are at the time. We then interact with the characters, the settings, the plots, and the themes when we read, so that we come away somewhat different than we were before we read the story or novel. In all ways, fiction offers us a look into a world with which we may be unfamiliar, but which could, in all ways, be something with which we need to be familiar.