  However, in view of his exaggeration of the alleged break with modernity, it is ambiguous whether Baudrillard’s last two decades of work is best read as science fiction or theory. He obviously wants to have it both ways with social theorists thinking that he provides salient perspectives on contemporary social realities, that Baudrillard reveals what is really happening, that he tells it like it is. And yet more cynical anti-sociologists are encouraged to enjoy Baudrillard’s fictions, his experimental discourse, his games, and play. Likewise, he sometimes encourages cultural metaphysicians to read his work as serious reflections on the realities of our time, while winking a pataphysical aside at those skeptical of such undertakings. And Baudrillard’s philosophical writings provoke philosophers to defend their positions against his and to rethink certain traditional questions in the light of contemporary realities.