 A recent family of approaches analyses models by drawing an analogy between models and literary fiction. This analogy can be used in two ways, yielding two different version of the fiction view. The first is primarily motivated by ontological considerations rather than the question of scientific representation per se. Scientific discourse is rife with passages that appear to be descriptions of systems in a particular discipline, and the pages of textbooks and journals are filled with discussions of the properties and the behaviour of those systems. In mechanics, for instance, the dynamical properties of a system consisting of three spinning spheres with homogenous mass distributions are the focus of attention; in biology infinite populations are investigated; and in economics perfectly rational agents with access to perfect information exchange goods. Their surface structure notwithstanding, no one would mistake descriptions of such systems as descriptions of an actual system: we know very well that there are no such systems.