 Zalta offers a similar picture of fictional objects which is subsumed under his general theory of encoding. According to him, a fictional object x which originates in a certain story is the object that encodes exactly the properties F such that according to the story, Fx (Zalta 1988: 123–29). Zalta’s treatment of the problem of impossibility is similar to Parsons’. A fictional object to which the story ascribes incompatible properties is an object which encodes those properties, among others. Such an object is harmless because it does not exemplify the incompatible properties. Zalta’s solution to the problem of non-uniqueness is equally similar to Parsons’. Sherlock Holmes, for Zalta, is simply an incomplete object which does not encode the property of having exactly n-many hairs, for any n.