Editing Story within a story (section)

==== Nested science fiction ====
The experimental modernist works that incorporate multiple narratives into one story are quite often science fiction or science fiction influenced. These include most of the various novels written by the American author [[Kurt Vonnegut]]. Vonnegut includes the recurring character [[Kilgore Trout]] in many of his novels. Trout acts as the mysterious [[science fiction]] writer who enhances the morals of the novels through plot descriptions of his stories. Books such as ''[[Breakfast of Champions]]'' and ''[[God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater]]'' are sprinkled with these plot descriptions. [[Stanisław Lem]]'s ''Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius'' from ''[[The Cyberiad]]'' has several levels of storytelling. All levels tell stories of the same person, Trurl.

''[[House of Leaves]]'' is the tale of a man who finds a manuscript telling the story of a documentary that may or may not have ever existed, contains multiple layers of plot. The book includes footnotes and letters that tell their own stories only vaguely related to the events in the main narrative of the book, and footnotes for fake books.

[[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s later books ([[The Number of the Beast (novel)|''The Number of the Beast'']], ''[[The Cat Who Walks Through Walls]]'' and ''[[To Sail Beyond the Sunset]]'') propose the idea that every real universe is a fiction in another universe. This [[World as Myth|hypothesis]] enables many writers who are characters in the books to interact with their own creations. [[Margaret Atwood]]'s novel ''[[The Blind Assassin]]'' is interspersed with excerpts from a novel written by one of the main characters; the novel-within-a-novel itself contains a [[science fiction]] story written by one of ''that'' novel's characters.

In [[Philip K. Dick]]'s novel ''[[The Man in the High Castle]]'', each character comes into interaction with a book called ''The Grasshopper Lies Heavy'', which was written by the Man in the High Castle. As Dick's novel details a world in which the [[Axis Powers of World War II]] had [[Axis victory in World War II|succeeded in dominating the known world]], the novel within the novel details an alternative to this history in which the Allies overcome the Axis and bring stability to the world – a victory which itself is quite different from real history.

In ''[[Red Orc's Rage]]'' by [[Philip J. Farmer]], a doubly [[recursive method]] is used to intertwine its fictional layers. This novel is part of a science fiction series, the ''[[World of Tiers]]''. Farmer collaborated in the writing of this novel with an American psychiatrist, A. James Giannini, who had previously used the ''World of Tiers'' series in treating patients in group therapy. During these therapeutic sessions, the content and process of the text and novelist was discussed rather than the lives of the patients. In this way subconscious defenses could be circumvented. Farmer took the real life case-studies and melded these with adventures of his characters in the series.<ref>{{cite journal |first=A. J. |last=Giannini |title=Use of fiction in therapy |journal=Psychiatric Times |volume=18 |issue=7 |pages=56–57 |year=2001 |url=http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/use-fiction-therapy }}</ref>

The [[Quantum Leap (1989 TV series)|''Quantum Leap'']] novel ''Knights of the Morningstar'' also features a character who writes a book by that name. In [[Matthew Stover]]'s ''Star Wars'' novel ''[[Shatterpoint]]'', the protagonist [[Mace Windu]] narrates the story within his journal, while the main story is being told from the [[third-person limited]] point of view.

Several ''[[Star Trek]]'' tales are stories or events within stories, such as [[Gene Roddenberry]]'s [[novelization]] of ''[[Star Trek: The Motion Picture]]'', [[J. A. Lawrence]]'s ''Mudd's Angels'', [[John M. Ford]]'s ''[[The Final Reflection]]'', [[Margaret Wander Bonanno]]'s ''[[Strangers from the Sky]]'' (which adopts the conceit that it is a book from the future by an author called Gen Jaramet-Sauner), and J. R. Rasmussen's "Research" in the anthology ''[[Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (short story collection)|Star Trek: Strange New Worlds]] II''. [[Steven Barnes]]'s novelization of the ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "[[Far Beyond the Stars]]" partners with [[Greg Cox (writer)|Greg Cox]]'s ''[[The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh]]'' (Volume Two) to tell us that the fictional story "Far Beyond the Stars" (whose setting and cast closely resemble ''Deep Space Nine'')—and, by extension, all of ''Star Trek'' itself—is the creation of 1950s writer Benny Russell.

The book [[Cloud Atlas (novel)|''Cloud Atlas'']] (later adapted into a film by [[The Wachowskis]] and [[Tom Tykwer]]) consisted of six interlinked stories nested inside each other in a Russian doll fashion. The first story (that of Adam Ewing in the 1850s befriending an escaped slave) is interrupted halfway through and revealed to be part of a journal being read by composer Robert Frobisher in 1930s Belgium. His own story of working for a more famous composer is told in a series of letters to his lover Rufus Sixsmith, which are interrupted halfway through and revealed to be in the possession of an investigative journalist named Luisa Rey and so on. Each of the first five tales are interrupted in the middle, with the sixth tale being told in full, before the preceding five tales are finished in reverse order. Each layer of the story either challenges the veracity of the previous layer, or is challenged by the succeeding layer. Presuming each layer to be a true telling within the overall story, a chain of events is created linking Adam Ewing's embrace of the abolitionist movement in the 1850s to the religious redemption of a post-apocalyptic tribal man over a century after the fall of modern civilization. The characters in each nested layer take inspiration or lessons from the stories of their predecessors in a manner that validates a belief stated in the sixth tale that "Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present and by each crime, and every kindness, we birth our future."