Meanings
nounsurfiction (uncountable)
- uncountableA style of fiction that rejects realism and advertises its own fictional status, similar to metafiction, postmodernism or fabulation.
...it was of a piece with a broader postwar codification and intensification of modernist reflexivity in the form of what came to be called "surfiction" or, more durably, "metafiction."
2009, Mark McGurl, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing, Harvard University Press, page 9
Origin
Coined by Raymond Federman in his 1973 manifesto "Surfiction—A Position".
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
APA
surfiction. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/surfiction
MLA
“surfiction.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/surfiction. Accessed November 3, 2026.
Chicago
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “surfiction,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/surfiction.
Source: surfiction on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.