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?
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski fits that model really well.
+1 to this book, it’s really surreal
I immediately thought of House of Leaves. Do not read it as an ebook, if there even is an ebook version. It must be read as a physical book.
It gave me actual nightmares about houses. Such a high quality book!
Agreed! House of Leaves is a must read. Get the physical book, it won’t work with an Ereader. I got the softcover edtion and it was totally worth it. If I ever sell my house I am going to rough up my copy real good and hide it somewhere for the new owners to find.
House of Leaves is fantastic.
Another book of his, Only Revolutions, is wild, but I couldn’t get through it. You have to turn the book upside down to read half of it.
Great call, you have to be careful that you get the color version!
I lost my original copy and when I replaced it, there was no more color. Had to return that one to find one with color. I think it adds so much.
Wait… there’s a color version?? Now I have to go book hunting!
Fun fact, his sister is the singer Poe
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As an answer to the request for a “book that plays with what it means to be a book”, this is 100% the best answer (that I’ve experienced). It’s as much art project as book, but also a fantastic story. Very challenging, and very rewarding.
As others have said, this MUST be read as a physical paper book. Not an e-book, and not an audiobook (if one even exists? It would be wild that someone OK’d an audiobook version of this).
Player of Games is told in reverse, it works really well. Book of the New Sun is an Ouroborus, so you don’t really understand it until you read it twice.
Edit: I mean “Use of Weapons” not Player of Games.
Use of Weapons is among my absolute favorite books. What an absolutely incredible journey
Redshirts by John Scalzi. A book about people who realize they’re characters in a badly-written TV show. Near the end, though, the main character starts to realize he’s the main character in a book about people who are characters in a TV show. Very surreal.
Redshirts suuuuuuuucked. Good lord I could barely stomach getting through it after absolutely adoring Kaiju Preservation Society. The audiobook being narrated by Wesley Crusher didn’t help certainly but that was some of the most pat, ham fisted deus ex machina bullshit I’ve ever read. And the premise “no actually we’re just in a *badly written show * does nothing to make those chapters easier to stomach’s.
Well, to each their own then. I rather enjoyed it. It was a silly self-aware little romp. I’m pretty sure being ham-fisted was kind of the point, in keeping with original Trek tradition.
Didn’t know Will Wheaton narrated the audiobook.
I agree. Scalzi isn’t exactly attempting to be a modern-day Dostoevsky. He is a very self-aware author, and he writes fun, entertaining, and sometimes dumb (in the best way), stories.
Wheaton does a good job with the audiobook. Because of his minor celebrity, I feel that he gets more credit than other, equally talented, narrators, but there is no denying he’s pretty good at it.
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
You mean If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino? Still do check it out
yea this definitely fits the description. brief summary: chapters alternate between the first chapters of different novels, and the main character (addressed as “you”) trying to track down the different novels whose chapters youve just read which are cut off for various reasons. it is great, relatively short (i think 250-ish pages in my copy), and if you dont mind the wild stylistic jumps between chapters its pretty delightful.
What a weird fucking book! It’s not the exact one I was looking for (I believe in my novel, one of the characters in the book begged the reader not to finish the book, because then the character would die).
Thanks so much for the recommendation though, it’s definitely the sort of weird I was looking for. I found it a bit hard to get through - I think it being a translation made some parts a bit stilted and a bit unrelatable for me - but I still read it over only a couple of days. I felt at chapter 8 where we read a Certain Character’s diary that the book was coming together and starting to make sense for me.
glad you liked it in the end. I still have to read it, never went past the first couple of chapters myself :)
Ilium/Olympos by Dan Simmons has a very interesting theory about reality and fiction, and what ties them together. Unfortunately, it’s tied to a very late plot point that I would hate to spoil on a Lemmy comment.
Not sci-fi, but The Princess Bride.
This was awesome, it had me so confused when the author described the legal problems they were having.
The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brookes is a detailed fictional instruction manual. It’s sequel is World War Z which is closer to a normal book, but still has an odd structure of creating a world through interviews … and the The Zombie Survival Guide book exists within it.
WWZ is one of my all time favorite books. They should really make it into a movie. Or, even better, an HBO miniseries.
I dunno, I think maybe some things should just be left alone
WWZ is a banger!
It is at that :-)
The WWZ audiobook is really solid.
Did they get different people to record each story?
Yup! Alan Alda and Henry Rollins are the only 2 I can remember off the top of my head. Get the expanded version - the original was abridged, but the new one has all the content.
Oh fab, I’ll keep an eye out for it. It’s one of my favorite books :-)
Thanks for the suggestion. Should I read WWZ first?
As with so much in life, it’s best to read the manual first. It can get a little dry in places though, like any instruction manual, but I enjoyed all of it because I’m the sort of person who likes normal manuals, lol
Adding to this to say you MUST get it in physical form. DO NOT read it on an e-reader. There are important reasons for this.
Not sci-fi but The Princess Bride is also a story-within-a-story.
Thursday Next series by Jasper FForde. Very meta, humorous.
I just started reading Jasper FForde. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve seen so far.
Love his Thursday Next books to bits!
Not sci-fi, but Mister B Gone by Clive Barker was really good. The book is a conversation with a demon who is telling you his life story. It is the story of how he came to be trapped in the book you are reading.
I thought the book was super funny and surreal. I saw reviews after finishing that it is considered some of his worst work. That might be true, but the worst 24 carat bar of gold is still a 24 carat bar of gold. Well worth the read imo.
Great suggestion. I had this book sitting by my computer when I was waiting on the computer to finish processing something. Idly picked it up and started reading, then just read the whole book in one sitting. I liked it a lot :)
What a great question. I have added S and House of Leaves to my to-read list.
Of course Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes cannot be overlooked in terms of experimental writing.
There is a novel that will eternally be on my mind to wonder if it was drivel or I was not smart enough for it - The Troika by Stepan Chapman. It has some of the greatest imagination ever and you will probably not understand what is going on at all. Just find the description and decide if it’s nonsense or worth it.
Self-Reference ENGINE by Toh EnJoe definitely fits this description.
In the middle it feels like nonsensical chaos, by the end it all folds back in on itself.
“Building Stories” by Chris Ware. Not a book, but a deconstructed graphic novel that comes in a box full of different formats and sizes - from a newspaper to a tiny bubblegum sized strip. You read them in any order you please, learning stories of people who live in the same building, while also building your own path through the stories.
It’s one of my most prized pieces of literature.
