Samuel Delany's great surrealist sci-fi classic Dhalgren features the main character discovering a diary apparently written by a version of himself, with incidents that usually reflect, but sometimes contrast with the main narrative. The last section of the book is taken up entirely by journal entries, about which readers must choose whether to take as completing the narrator's own story. Similarly, in Kiese Laymon's Long Division, the main character discovers a book, also called Long Division, featuring what appears to be himself, except as living twenty years earlier. The title book in Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe exists within itself as a stable creation of a closed loop in time. Likewise, in the Will Ferrell comedy Stranger than Fiction the main character discovers he is a character in a book that (along with its author) also exists in the same universe. The 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter includes a narrative between Achilles and the Tortoise (characters borrowed from Lewis Carroll, who in turn borrowed them from Zeno), and within this story they find the book "Provocative Adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise Taking Place in Sundry Spots of the Globe", which they begin to read, the Tortoise taking the part of the Tortoise, and Achilles taking the part of Achilles. Within this self-referential narrative, the two characters find the book "Provocative Adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise Taking Place in Sundry Spots of the Globe", which they begin to read, this time each taking the other's part. The 1979 experimental novel If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino follows a reader, addressed in the second person, trying to read the very same book, but being interrupted by ten other recursively nested incomplete stories.
Samuel Delany's great surrealist sci-fi classic Dhalgren features the main character discovering a diary apparently written by a version of himself, with incidents that usually reflect, but sometimes contrast with the main narrative. The last section of the book is taken up entirely by journal entries, about which readers must choose whether to take as completing the narrator's own story. Similarly, in Kiese Laymon's Long Division the main character discovers a book, also called Long Division, featuring what appears to be himself, except as living twenty years earlier. The title book in Charles Yu's How t,o Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe exists within itself as a stable creation of a closed loop in time. Likewise, in the Will Ferrell comedy Stranger than Fiction the main character discovers he is a character in a book that (along with its author) also exists in the same universe. The 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter includes a narrative between Achilles and the Tortoise (characters borrowed from Lewis Carroll, who in turn borrowed them from Zeno), and within this story they find the book "Provocative Adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise Taking Place in Sundry Spots of the Globe", which they begin to read, the Tortoise taking the part of the Tortoise, and Achilles taking the part of Achilles. Within this self-referential narrative, the two characters find the book "Provocative Adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise Taking Place in Sundry Spots of the Globe", which they begin to read, this time each taking the other's part. The 1979 experimental novel If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino follows a reader, addressed in the second person, trying to read the very same book, but being interrupted by ten other recursively nested incomplete stories.