Overview
surfiction
Quick Reference
A term coined in 1973 by the American experimental writer Raymond Federman to designate a new kind of fiction which is now more often referred to as postmodernist. Rather than attempt to mirror some pre‐existing reality, surfiction abandons realism in favour of metafiction, self‐consciously advertising its own fictional status. Federman proposed that ‘the new fiction will not attempt to be meaningful, truthful, or realistic’. He reprinted his 1973 manifesto ‘Surfiction—A Position’ in a volume of essays, Surfiction: Fiction Now…and Tomorrow (1975), which also included contributions from Ronald Sukenick and John Barth. The term's reference is broadly similar to that of Robert Scholes's fabulation, although it has not been so widely adopted.
