Better to say that Thomas Jefferson was thought by his wealthy neighbors to be a witch. For really, how else to explain how this prosperous Virginian slave owner would suddenly become a radical revolutionary--other than Satanic possession?

Plain or "true" facts such as Jefferson's rash conversion to American liberty are taken for granted now, even though his motives (and dare I say, PSYCHOLOGY) are still a mystery to scholars even now (dare I say, TODAY).

Ideally, fake facts help to jostle our imaginations. They remind us how much of actual history is so strange, and novelistic, and practically unbelievable.

But I am not a lunatic. Obviously I know that it wasn't Satan who had taken over Jefferson's mind, but the Mole-Men.

•How similar are you to your persona?

I bear an uncanny resemblance to myself. Obviously, I am named John Hodgman, and the details revealed about my life in my books always have one foot in the truth. Or at least a peg leg.

•In the world of real facts, in which domain(s) do you know more information than you require (or want)?

Though I came to the novels late, I absorbed an unseemly amount of LORD OF THE RINGS trivia in a very short space of time. For a brief time in the early 2000s, being able to quickly name the three races of Hobbits was a handy skill that made you popular at parties. That is all over now, even though I still know the answer (Harfoots, Fallohides, and Stoors).

So I could probably free up some brain-space there. But the truth is, I can never get enough information about invented, whole worlds. Including the whole world.

•Where does your children's expertise trump yours?

As you know (or have used private investigators to find out), I have two human children. To protect their privacy, I refer to them only as "Hodgmina" and "Hodgmanillo." They know a lot more about my neighbors than I do, for the common playdate allows the child access to other people's apartments and private lives that no adult will ever enjoy. In fact, it seems to me that children would make very good private investigators. OR HAVE YOU FIGURED THAT OUT ALREADY?

•Your delivery is famously dry. Do you ever crack yourself up?

I find it to be comedically unethical to laugh at your own jokes on stage. But I probably feel so strongly because it happens pretty frequently lately, and I am ashamed. My deadpan needs re-deadening (see my new book, on the various historical styles of deadpan).

But the reverse is true when writing. I generally only like a joke of my own if I make myself laugh when I write it. If my brain can fool myself into a surprised chuckle, even when I am the one who wrote the joke, my guess is that it can also fool you.

That said, it may be that those are just the weird, unconscious, half-literal "inside jokes" that only my brain and I get. For example: "Stun Gravy" gets me every time. But do you know what it means? NO ONE DOES.

•As a man of letters, do you have a favorite number?

22, and not just because it is an even number (it is also a palindrome). When my first book was initially priced at 21.95, I insisted that we take the extra nickel to make it an even 22. And guess what? IT WORKED. My new book, however, is priced at 25 dollars. I'm disappointed, but it was necessary. First, the new book contains almost twice as much COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE as the last; and second, I need more of your money. Life is full of such trade offs.

•Leading a double life as both a PC and a human repository of complete world knowledge, your answer to this may be biased in either direction, but: In the future, will humans need to remember facts when computers are so much better at it?

I doubt it. I have already outsourced most of my memory tasks to the web, especially when it comes to remembering historical trivia, TV theme songs, where my friends live, and the full cast of "SUPERTRAIN." I can only imagine that this trend will continue until the computer remembers all, and we all live utterly in the present. Perhaps this will be Nirvana. Or else this will be the moment the dolphins finally rise up and enslave us all. It's hard to say. I can't predict the future, though it will almost certainly be one of those things.

•Is truth stranger than fiction?

Yes. But never as strange as lies.

That is all.

Not quite. Here's his performance at the RTCA dinner.

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