Why do we often care more about imaginary characters than real people? A new book suggests that fiction is crucial to our survival as a species.

Kryptos remains partially unsolved, obsessive geeks remain obsessive geeks, and Dan Brown remains Dan Brown. Not quite sure why the Indy is running a feature about an admittedly fascinating but remarkably un-newsworthy topic. But if, as it suggests, Brown has dropped his book about the Masons, then that *is* interesting…