The kids are all right

The world’s falling apart. Can fandom save us?

“In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention,” wrote Oscar Wilde in 1889, at the height of a craze for things Japanese then sweeping Europe and the United States. “There is no such country. There are no such people.” This bit, from a play called The Decay of Lying, is well known. It gave my book, and this newsletter, their names. 

Less quoted is the r…