The biggest novels are getting bigger than ever before. I give you real examples of how the top end in novel size is growing and explore this trend and its significance in postmodern fiction. Works covered include Ulysses by James Joyce, Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, Darconville's Cat by Alexander Thereux, The Tunnel by William Gass, The Christine Brook-Rose Omnibus, Dune by Frank Herbert, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, Jerusalem by Alan Moore, Underworld by Don DeLillo, TheMystery.doc by Michael Macintosh, LETTERS by John Barth, Novel Explosives by Jim Gauer, XX by Ryan Hughes, and House of Leaves, Tom's Crossing, and The Familiar by Mark Danielewski.

I pick out six unambiguous science fiction authors with strong postmodern tendencies and explain what they are. My list includes Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, Gene Wolfe, Stanislaw Lem, Harlan Ellison, and J.G. Ballard.

This episode explores the fascinating world of tabular narrative in fiction, examining how authors create parallel, simultaneous storylines that challenge and engage readers. Join me to explore examples from John Barth, Samuel R. Delaney, Steve Katz, Arno Schmidt, Vladimir Nabokov, Johan Harstad, and Mark Danielewski as we discover how these complex narrative structures reshape storytelling.

Traditional fiction defines specific forms it can take, such as short stories, plays, poetry, and novels. Postmodernism intentionally blurs these lines, challenging the traditional definitions of types of literature. In this episode I examine a handful of books and ask, is this a novel?

I discuss the postmodern focus on the form our writing takes as an empowered response to the Literature of Exhaustion. Form can be structure, or types of documents, or genre and tropes and stock characters. I include plenty of real examples to show how this interest in form manifests itself to the betterment of postmodern literature.

Thousands of years of previous writing captured in millions of books has seemed to many postmodernists to be a massive obstacle to their own original contribution to literature. I describe this sentiment and some of the responses we see to this predicament.

I define irrealism, fabulism, and magic realism and discuss how delightful they can be. I explain the fundamental strategy behind irrealism and how it fits into literary postmodernism.

Our books are full of fictional people, places, and events. But what if the books themselves could be fictional? Some clever postmodernists have done exactly that.