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Ask HN: Examples of Recursion in Literature or Cinema?

3 points by Emigre_ ↗ HN
Escher is the popular example when thinking about art influenced or exmplifying the concept of recursion. In Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter makes some connections between the music of Bach, Escher's art and other areas of knowledge related with recursion and self-reference. I was wondering what other works of fiction in film or literature exemplify recursion in their structure. That is, not works about recursion, but works in which recursion plays some kind of role in their structure or meaning.

14 comments

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l3x
David Mitchell's book Cloud Atlas might fit I think. There was a film made of it in 2012. The children's book Charlie Cook's Favourite Book has the same premise.

You might also find things in Jorge Luis Borges' short stories (although I can't think of any specifically off the top of my head).

The film Inception has a recursive theme to it.

And there is a popular sci-fi book called Recursion, but I've not read it so not sure how much it fits the actual idea of Recursion!

Emigre_
Inception is an exceptionally good example! I'm a big fan of Borges and although I'm sure that there must be one of his stories containing a relationship with recursion, I can't think of one right now.
Emigre_
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996) has an interesting structure using hundreds of footnotes some of which have themselves footnotes. The ending is not straightforward and the novel's chronology non-lineal. It contains disgressions on many topics. According to the Wikipedia, in an interview Wallace mentioned that the plotting and notes have a fractal structure modeled after the Sierpiński gasket, suggesting some degree of recursion.
Emigre_
Raymond Smullyan's riddles book What is the Name of This Book paradoxically refers to itself in its title.
PaulHoule
There is a disturbance in references in this movie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_(film)

based on the Heinlein short

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Zombies

If it is than that's not a neat "recursion" with nesting but more of a spaghetti code paradox.

Another example is the prevalence of fractals in all forms

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal

these are motifs in nature (plant and animal structural systems not to mention hydrogeological) and seem to be common to the psychedelic drug experience but they do appear in an occasional movie set or image montage and become a theme in literature from time to time.

Emigre_
Federico Fellini's 8½?... Criterion Collection mentions that "8½ is a film about making a film, and the film that is being made is 8½".
Emigre_
I saw the movie ages ago and can't remember the plot. It was really good, though.
raincom
In Indian Purana-s, stories exemplify recursion: story A has story B, which has story C, and so on, then backtrack.
Emigre_
That sounds really interesting! I need to take a look at it!
nvm0n2
The Man In The High Castle is an alt history in which the characters read an alt-history book describing our actual timeline. That probably counts!
soueuls
I would say the TV show : Dark.

In my opinion it’s one of the most complex thing I have ever watched.

I don’t want to tell too much about it to keep the surprise