Tag Archive for: George Alec Effinger

Breaking the Fourth Wall Before It Was Cool: L. Ron Hubbard’s Revolutionary Typewriter in the Sky and the Birth of Recursive Fiction

What if you heard your life being typed out by someone else—literally? That’s the terrifyingly funny premise of L. Ron Hubbard’s Typewriter in the Sky, a swashbuckling romp with a metaphysical twist. Written in 1940, it helped invent recursive fiction long before The Matrix or Stranger Than Fiction wondered if we’re all just characters in someone else’s plot.

On Typewriter in the Sky

Mike Resnick explores the roots of recursive science fiction in L. Ron Hubbard’s Typewriter in the Sky—a genre-defining classic still fun to read.