Metafiction is a genre of fiction characterized by awareness of itself as fiction and of the reader’s experience of the text. Metafictional works typically refer to their own narrative structures, pointing out patterns that engage with the reader’s expectations of how the narrative is supposed to progress. This literary genre became especially popular with the rise of postmodernism. It often relies on the reader’s knowledge of literary conventions to leverage critiques on the function of stories and art.

The American writer William H. Gass first proposed the concept of metafiction in Fiction and the Figures of Life (1970). Some of the best-known examples of metafiction date as far back as English author Geoffrey Chaucer’s work The Canterbury Tales in the late 14th century. Metafiction found its apex in the 1960s and ’70s with global authors commenting on literary structure, textual validity, and the social function of literature through their stories. Italian author Italo Calvino’s 1979 novel If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler begins by directly addressing the reader as they engage with the novel and discover other novels hidden within it.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is primarily a work of metafiction.