this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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Science Fiction

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Lemmy World Rules

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Book recommendations that play with what it means to be a book (lemmynsfw.com)
submitted 10 months ago by Worx@lemmynsfw.com to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world
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I really love sci-fi novels and I read a lot of books. I read 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson a while back and that book is particularly interesting to me. Rather than each chapter advancing the narrative of the story, there were occasional breaks where a chapter would have a list of semi-random words which just gave the vibe of what's happening, or some history of a scene, or a recipe for how to build an asteroid.

There's another book that I have heard of but neglected to write the name down, where the reader of the book is a character within the book, and the narrator speaks directly to you (but not a choose-your-adventure style book).

All of this got me interested in finding other books, preferably sci-fi or maybe fantasy, where the concept of being a book is played with and new ideas are tried. Any recommendations?

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[–] adam_y@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

A lot of Douglas Coupland novels play with the form. Microserfs has a similar thing to 2312, except it is one of the characters random txt files on their desktop that lists words in a David Foster Wallace way.

Wallace also plays with the form of the book, particularly with end notes in Infinite Jest.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski plays with the physical form of the book by rending two stories in parallel and playing all manner of interesting typesetting tricks.

Then there's Tristan Shandy by Laurence Sterne and published in 1759. It's argued that it is the first post-modern novel. The "author" is attempting to tell you the story of his life, but never really gets there because of endless digression.

You should check this page out: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_and_Opinions_of_Tristram_Shandy,_Gentleman