SOURCE: "Surfiction: A Postmodern Position," in Critifiction: Postmodern Essays, State University of New York Press, 1993, pp. 35-47.

In the following essay, Federman proposes that surfiction is the only contemporary literature that revels in humankind's intellect, imagination, and irrationality because it recognizes life itself as fiction.

Now some people might say that the situation of fiction today is not very encouraging, but one must reply that it is not meant to encourage those who say that!

—Raymond Federman

Writing about fiction today, one could begin with the usual clichés: the novel is dead; writing fiction is no longer possible nor necessary because real fiction happens, everyday, in the streets of our cities, in the spectacular hijacking of planes, in space, on the Moon, in the Middle-East, in China, in Eastern Europe, and of course on television (especially during the news broadcasts); fiction has become obsolete and irrelevant because...