In what was once considered the stuff of science fiction, the development of laser technology has been fraught with setbacks.
Automation is perhaps the most captivating and science-fiction-like development.
These are characters who have plenty to express without this onslaught of pulp-fiction plot developments to magnify their points.
The subject collection could range from fields as sweeping as classics or American literature to books on chess, coffee, prizefighting, detective fiction, or the development of nuclear energy.
While books like these were further blurring the lines between fact and fiction- a development that had begun years before with the rise of the new journalism, which appropriated the techniques of fiction without assuming its prerogative of invention - academics were questioning the very nature of reality.
But just as the fiction, despite many developments, still contained many stylistic and narrative features continuous with the earlier work, so, too, the man remained a "human hurricane," though he had aged considerably, his health had deteriorated, and his nerves had been jangled by travelling ever since his being in a railway accident in 1865.
The "facts" of the present situation merge into the "fiction" of future developments (we use quotes because "facts" are never unambiguous and "fiction" has some factual basis).
An interesting development in fiction, abetted by Modernism, was a shift from naturalistic to poetic writing.
It is a fluid and dynamic process, not unlike what is called "character development" in fiction.
