An adapted excerpt of Dave Eggers’s forthcoming novel, The Circle, is the surprise main event in this week’s issue of The New York Times Magazine. While the magazine has featured fiction before, “We Like You So Much and Want to Know You Better†is the first time something made up has appeared on the cover “as far as we can tell,†according to an editor’s note by Hugo Lindgren. As for why it’s there, Lindgren writes that the piece, which is about the “all-too-real expansion of social media,†is “simply a great story, with a fascinating protagonist, sharply drawn supporting characters and an exciting, unpredictable plot. I must say, it reawakened the occasional fantasies I have of moving my family to the woods and living off the land.†Even the most hardened of Eggers’s skeptics will have trouble ignoring it, if only because of Christoph Niemann’s engrossing cover design.