The nature of fiction is that it tells things that could be true, but aren’t – yet, anyway. 

A couple of my Amazon reviewers (may they live forever!) have compared The Seduction of Braulio Jules to the Netflix series “House of Cards.” Several other observers have compared “House of Cards” to Shakespeare. So it is only logical that…

I don’t normally watch much TV, but when I heard that the Netflix folks might be ripping off my novel, I binge-watched the first eleven episodes. ($22 – basically, my entire profits from my writing career). It’s very cool, but not really like Seduction and not really like Shakespeare, so all of us can quit worrying about suing each other.

Let me see if I can lay it out for you without giving away any of the great surprises. Frank Underwood is the House Majority Whip – a Democrat from South Carolina (Yeah. I know. It’s fiction.) Disappointed that the President – a 98-pound weakling named Garrett Walker – has passed him over for Secretary of State, he clandestinely exposes some past blemishes of the Secretary-designate so as to sink the nomination, all the while pretending to support it.

Then, with someone more congenial at State, he proceeds to sow havoc elsewhere – getting the House Majority Leader fired for an attempted coup (imaginary, and wholly manufactured by Underwood) against the Speaker; setting a poor alcohol and drug-addled Congressman up for a disastrous run at a Governorship; going to war on education against a passionate Union head and winning by taking advantage of his opponent’s emotions.

Underwood and his wife Clare have something between a marriage of convenience and an open relationship. They each have affairs – he with a young, useful reporter, she with a bohemian photographer – which the other grumblingly acknowledges. Nonetheless, they seem to have great affection for each other – or perhaps they are just useful to each other; it’s hard to tell.

There are wheels within wheels. Frank’s ultimate goal is world domination, and some nice real estate on Pennsylvania Avenue. He schemes to get it in the same way the great Willie Mosconi would scheme to drop the 8-ball: bank shot, hitting the 5, which hits the 2, which drops the 8. And we see it unfold in the same way we see the shot unfold: when the Congressman’s campaign collapses, we see who Underwood gets to replace him as candidate for Governor, and then we see who Underwood gets to replace the replacement.

These same storytelling tropes have guided Seduction. Here, of course, the objective is even more sinister: geronticide, the murder of a generation – the only solution our leaders can think of to the catastrophic effect the aging of the massive baby boom generation will have on Social Security, Medicare and retirement systems generally. We watch it unfold through the eyes of two patsies, who are unknowingly enlisted through their own egos and inflated self-regard. There are, here too, wheels within wheels.

There are parts of “House of Cards” which are simply not credible, but that’s OK. Underwood initiates his scheme against the Majority Leader by first approaching him and promising him that if he will challenge the Speaker, Underwood will get a handful of Democrats and all of the Republicans behind him – enough to win. The Majority Leader turns him down, but in real life he would do more than that. The scheme is insane – even if it worked, how would the new Speaker rule? He would have a constituency which was 90% Republican. How could he satisfy them while remaining a Democrat? And if he switched ideologies, how could he keep his Democrat defectors – let alone his own seat? Had a real Whip brought such a plan to a real Majority Leader, the Majority Leader would immediately report it to the Speaker, with the strong suggestion that Underwood has lost his mind and could no longer hold the Whip’s position.

But here’s a recommendation I have for all lovers of fiction: don’t let a minor question of plausibility get in the way of a good story. Too many stretchers – of course. But the nature of fiction is that it tells things that could be true, but aren’t – yet, anyway. Perhaps if it was possible to overthrow the Speaker by joining forces with the minority party, someone would have done it already, and that would have rendered the House of Cards plot a little less fresh.

One of my Amazon critics (and I urge you to read them all!) scored me for having a President autopsied in Russia after he died there. Wouldn’t happen, the critic averred. Secret Service wouldn’t stand for it.  And the people wouldn’t stand for it.

Well, maybe the critic is right, although I tried hard to establish an environment where government employees, including the Secret Service, would do anything required by their Federal Masters, and where the people so detested the President that they were indifferent to his cause of death. But even if I didn’t, I think the best way to enjoy a piece of fiction is to take the author’s givens, at least a little bit.

And, by the way, old Bill had the same problem, back at The Globe. I mean, how easy is it to believe that Orlando, having fallen cataclysmically in love with Rosalind, could, while in exile in Arden Forest, take lessons from an androgynous lad in how not to be in love – not knowing that the lad is actually Rosalind in disguise? (Or, for that matter, that Rosalind would undertake such a scheme – apparently for laughs?) Yet that is As You Like It. Or who could believe that a woman, disguised as a man, would be confused for her twin brother? But it is a given in Twelfth Night.

Every writer of stories has the same hope: to think of something new and tell you about it. We don’t expect you to believe it – it would be alarming if you did – but we hope you will imagine it with us, and draw pleasure from the imagining.