A fictional universe is still real, in a sense. If you ask what Spiderman's name is, there's a right answer. The original author may carry some extra weight in her universe, but she isn't god. A great film can create a second, related universe - Blade Runner, or the English Patient. And in some cases, such as Gregory Maguire's Wicked, the later author alters fictional reality. Maguire presents a more convincing, more real Oz than Baum did, and now the original books and the movie are the secondary materials, glossing over or hiding the embarrassing, grittier realities of social strife, racism, and alienation behind the Glenda, the Wicked Witch, and the rest.

Ophelia's Revenge, which is the story of Hamlet told by Ophelia, is more in the mold of "Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead," taking the original material as a departure point but very careful never to contradict anything in the source, instead presenting new history, revealing angles, and showing what happens after scenes end and the curtain comes down. It's quick-paced, makes real humans out of the characters, well written enough, but ultimately too respectful of the source to make enough space for its own story.

Reefer Madness, Eric Schlosser.

Disappointing compared to his previous masterpiece, Fast Food Nation. That book set up a powerfully convincing argument one piece at a time, backed by years of dedicated reporting and research. Reefer Madness has the reporting, and even more footnotes, but does not satisfy at its goal: the exploration of the underground economy in the US. In part this is because it's too short relative to its huge subject, and in part it simply is too weak on actual economics, as opposed to statistics. Educational, a good read, but I wanted a lot more.

A Cook's Tour, Anthony Bourdain.

Another book that fails to live up to its excellent predecessor. Bourdain tours the world and eats lots of weird food. The writing, and the thinking behind it, shows promise but never quite delivers any deep thoughts. Frequently very depressing, which I respect. The bad meals - the pet iguana, the poorly prepared sheep's face - are more memorable than the good ones, and sadder.

Bruce Schneier: So I am very much in favor of those sorts of things: hiring linguists at the FBI, getting investigative teams in place, tracking terrorist funding, interdicting communications, that stuff also works.

And then I also advocate stuff at the back end, emergency response, first response, whether it is police, fire, medical, spending money there helps us, again, regardless of what the terrorist plans are.

We can never anticipate the terrorist plans. Inasmuch as we do, they will change them, so by definition you can’t anticipate them. We can’t all say, “My God! They’re are going to attack the rail system! Let’s secure the rail system,” because then they’ll decide to attack something else.

Doug Kaye: So what are some of the examples of the expenditures that the United States is now making that you think aren’t well justified?

Bruce Schneier: You know, generally all of the big budget IT systems. CAPS II, the airline profiling system, is a complete waste of money. I think fingerprinting foreigners at the border, if you actually sit down and think about it, makes absolutely zero sense.