Theme:
Write a science fiction story that refers to itself or breaks the fourth wall in some interesting way.
Metafiction is a set of literary devices that make a story self-referential. This can be done in various ways. Examples are:
Authors write themselves in as fictional characters in their stories (Canterbury Tales).
A story refers to itself recursively (Don Quixote, Part Two).
The author speaks directly to the reader while identifying themself as the author (Slaughterhouse-Five).
Time travel and other temporal shenanigans are used to tell a story within a story (The Time Traveler's Wife).
There are multiple alternative paths through a story, or alternative endings (The French Lieutenant's Woman).
For this prompt, we ask you to use one or more of these metafiction tools (this is not an exhaustive list) to write a compelling flash science fiction story that is self-referential or recursive.
What is Recursion?
Recursion is a powerful tool, both in fiction and science. To geek out on the science part for a moment, here's an example of a recursive Python function to calculate the factorial of an integer (the product of the number times all the numbers below it):
def factorial (n): if n == 1: return 1 else: return n * factorial (n-1)
If you don't know Python, don't worry. The thing to notice is the function calls itself within its own definition! Which seems weird, like a dictionary that uses a word to define that word. Recursive functions like this one are known for being powerful, compact, elegant, and difficult to wrap your head around.
But it works, and it is an important mechanism in computer programming and computation theory (a branch of pure mathematics). It turns out that there is a class of recursive functions that is theoretically equivalent to Turing Machines, which as you probably know, are universal computers, able to compute any algorithm any real computer can.
Caveats and Warnings
Incorporating a metafiction narrative style in your science fiction story can make it feel fresh and new wavy. It is one of the hallmarks of experimental and postmodern fiction. But, as you can tell from the list at the beginning, metafiction doesn't always mean science fiction, and it isn't necessarily new. Cervantes and Chaucer are hardly considered to be postmodernists.
And then there's this: the inelegant use of metafiction can make a story difficult or impossible for a reader to understand. Even in expert hands, some of the novels listed above can seem pretentious, even impenetrable on a first read. For example, there are many readers, I suspect, who gave up trying to slog through Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow or follow Billy Pilgrim's semi-autobiographical, time-hopping, alien zoological adventures in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. Both novels are well worth the extra effort, mind you.
That also sounds pretentious, doesn't it? It's like, "You may find these to be difficult books, but I read them in high school. So there!" Should I mention that both novels are about events in World War II? Interesting, but irrelevant to the prompt. That whole thing about Python and computer code doesn't belong here either, I suppose. Probably no one kept reading past the first paragraph anyway. Just finish this so we can all get back to writing.
So, be recursive in your prompt story this month, but be careful and use it sparingly.
Rules
Entries should be submitted in the usual way using the Write for Us submissions link.
Mention the title of the prompt (Meta-Sci-Fi) in the Notes field of the submissions form.
Submissions must be received by May 15 to qualify.
Entries must comply with all the usual SFS Guidelines.
Your work can be horror, dystopian, alien, or whatever, as long as it’s Sci-Fi and addresses the prompt's theme.
Submit only one story for this prompt.
You may continue to submit stories to SFS that are outside the contest, and we encourage you to do so.
If you have more than one story that fits the theme, please submit your best one for the prompt and send us the others as non-theme entries. Also, if the editors feel your theme entry is good enough to publish but does not satisfy the theme requirements, we reserve the right to accept it as a non-theme submission.
After the prompt has ended and all the entrants have been processed (usually before the first day of the following month), we will list and link to the participating stories in a blog post. The editorial staff will choose one story for special mention as the Editors' Choice of the Month.
Exemplars
These science fiction short stories span nearly seven decades and employ at least three types of metafiction. Click the links to read a free online version of each story.
Blank! — Isaac Asimov, Infinity Science Fiction, June 1957
Of course, I had to start the list with a story by Asimov from the 1950s. To be honest, it's not one of his best, but it does refer to itself within itself. It also pokes fun at a couple of his contemporaries, whom you might recognize, and has one of the funnier time travel paradoxes.
What's Expected of Us — Ted Chiang, Nature, July 2005
This flash sci-fi piece proves that metafiction can be used effectively even in sci-fi stories with a thousand words or less. It is a compact but deep examination of a difficult philosophical question (perhaps the most difficult one) that uses recursion to make a powerful point.
Some Pebbles in the Palm — Keneth Schneyer, Lightspeed, July 2016
Schneyer's masterful meta-sci-fi short story is about reincarnation, which, itself, is a kind of recursive idea. The author also intersperses meta-commentary about how the story is structured and what choices he, the author, might have made instead. The recursion is more subtle here, but still a major ingredient.
Eventually he died this time, too, although life extension methods had progressed considerably and it took longer than it would nowadays. He died disappointed, unhappy with the world, wishing he’d had the moral fiber to do something more about it than he did.
The story goes on and on, but you understand how it’s going to go.
The pervasive fatalism of the piece is somehow lifted up by the final sentence and its metafictional message to the reader.
From where you stand, I am every bit as fictional as the protagonist of this story. He’s not real. I’m not real. Only you are real.
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Go ahead. Kick through that fourth wall. Tell your readers who you really are. Spin a yarn that makes our heads spin. Be meta!
— The Editors