Fantasy stories about entering a book or a movie?

[Dave]

You really have to start with Jasper Fforde’s superb Thursday Next stories.

In those books literary fiction characters (most notably Jane Eyre) exist in a reality which can crossover, but there are also those in his Nursery Crimes series which does a similar thing with nursery rhyme characters.

No one has mentioned Redshirts by John Scalzi.

Spoiler: Redshirts

Where the less important crew of a starship slowly discover they are actually extras on a fictional pulp TV show from the past, and so endeavour to prevent themselves being written out out of the script. In many ways, quite similar to Galaxy Quest.

However, that is only the first half of the book. In the first of the three codas to that book, Scalzi fictitiously discusses these issues as if he was a real TV scriptwriter with writers block. He mentions the film Stranger than Fiction, a Will Ferrell movie where he's a character in someone's book, The Purple Rose of Cairo, the Jasper Fforde books, and then the books of a fictitious writer named Denise Hogan, where, as the author, she's arguing with her own characters about the direction of the plot and sometimes loses. They then meet via the internet to discuss his writers block, which takes the surreal to a new level. Many people don't like Redshirts. It gets a lot of 1 star reviews. I think those people couldn't have bothered to read the codas.

 

[Danny McG]

Out of the Inkwell , in the 1960's updated series, we have Koko the clown interacting with his cartoonist

 

[Toby Frost]

Both the old computer game Oblivion, and the newer one Dishonoured 2, contain scenes where the character enters a magical painting.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

It hadn't occurred to me to draw parallels between reveries/dreams, and the more contrived portals we started out with. Very interesting. There is clearly an overlap, whether it is deliberate or inadvertant.

They all express, in fantasy mode, some way in which we actually relate to these works. We talk about being "swept away" by a book, or "absorbed" in it, or "immersed," or "transported." If you don't take these as metaphorical, but as literal, you get fantasy. In some way, our language of expressing appreciation of art is just a taming of our fantasies before it. And as for dreams, there's a beautiful passage in Dostoevsky's Demons (one of @Extollager 's favorite books, IIRC) where one of the characters dreams of being in a painting by Claude Lorrain. Dream, reverie, magic -- in a way it doesn't matter which one you choose to express being IN the painting or novel. Just as long as you get there.

 

[BAYLOR]

They all express, in fantasy mode, some way in which we actually relate to these works. We talk about being "swept away" by a book, or "absorbed" in it, or "immersed," or "transported." If you don't take these as metaphorical, but as literal, you get fantasy. In some way, our language of expressing appreciation of art is just a taming of our fantasies before it. And as for dreams, there's a beautiful passage in Dostoevsky's Demons (one of @Extollager 's favorite books, IIRC) where one of the characters dreams of being in a painting by Claude Lorrain. Dream, reverie, magic -- in a way it doesn't matter which one you choose to express being IN the painting or novel. Just as long as you get there.

The Land of Laughs by Johnathan Caroll I think you might find that one to be of interest

Mythago Woods by Robert Holdstock

 

[Randy M.]

Not exactly what you asked for, but Ramsey Campbell's The Grin of the Dark is about how film influences reality, and one character in particular getting more and more drawn into it.

Randy M.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

To go along with my other thread, about paintings, can you think of any fantasy stories or novels (or comics or movies) about a reader entering the world of a book? How about that of a movie? And let's also expand it to characters coming out of a book or movie to enter "real life."

Many! Besides Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series and it's off-shoot Nursery Crimes, I can also think of these ones:

Inkworld Trilogy by Cornelia Funke
Story Thieves series by James Riley
Storybound series by Marissa Burt
The Forbidden Library series by Django Wexler
The Librarian series by Eric Hobbs
The Incredible Umbrella series by Marvin Kaye
Unbound series by Eve Marie Mont
The Collector's Society series Heather Lyons
Bookweird series by Paul Gannon
Worlds of Ink and Shadow by Lena Coakley
The Book of Story Beginnings by Kristin Kladstrup
Between Two Ends by David Ward
The Sylvie Cycle series by Roderick Townley
Between the Lines series by Jodi Picoult
The Word Changers by Ashlee Willis
Dodger's Doorway by Alessandro Reale
Genrenauts series by Michael R. Underwood
Master of Books series by Robert J. Fluegel
Magic Ex Libris series by Jim C. Hines.

Just to name a few, but I know there are more. I have a whole 'to-read shelf' on Goodreads for book/library themed fantasy, and story-jumping is a common theme in a lot of them.

 

[BAYLOR]

Many! Besides Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series and it's off-shoot Nursery Crimes, I can also think of these ones:

Inkworld Trilogy by Cornelia Funke
Story Thieves series by James Riley
Storybound series by Marissa Burt
The Forbidden Library series by Django Wexler
The Librarian series by Eric Hobbs
The Incredible Umbrella series by Marvin Kaye
Unbound series by Eve Marie Mont
The Collector's Society series Heather Lyons
Bookweird series by Paul Gannon
Worlds of Ink and Shadow by Lena Coakley
The Book of Story Beginnings by Kristin Kladstrup
Between Two Ends by David Ward
The Sylvie Cycle series by Roderick Townley
Between the Lines series by Jodi Picoult
The Word Changers by Ashlee Willis
Dodger's Doorway by Alessandro Reale
Genrenauts series by Michael R. Underwood
Master of Books series by Robert J. Fluegel
Magic Ex Libris series by Jim C. Hines.

Just to name a few, but I know there are more. I have a whole 'to-read shelf' on Goodreads for book/library themed fantasy, and story-jumping is a common theme in a lot of them.

A huge list of writers ive never even read and most ive never even heard of.

 

[Boaz]

@dannymcg I never read Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionovar Tapestry series, but aren't all the people already in the tapestry and only become aware of itthrough experience?

 

[BAYLOR]

Not exactly what you asked for, but Ramsey Campbell's The Grin of the Dark is about how film influences reality, and one character in particular getting more and more drawn into it.

Randy M.

Its not the first film related work that Campbell did . His novel Ancient Images about a supposed the never produced Karloff /Lugosi.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Many! Besides Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series and it's off-shoot Nursery Crimes, I can also think of these ones:

Inkworld Trilogy by Cornelia Funke
Story Thieves series by James Riley
Storybound series by Marissa Burt
The Forbidden Library series by Django Wexler
The Librarian series by Eric Hobbs
The Incredible Umbrella series by Marvin Kaye
Unbound series by Eve Marie Mont
The Collector's Society series Heather Lyons
Bookweird series by Paul Gannon
Worlds of Ink and Shadow by Lena Coakley
The Book of Story Beginnings by Kristin Kladstrup
Between Two Ends by David Ward
The Sylvie Cycle series by Roderick Townley
Between the Lines series by Jodi Picoult
The Word Changers by Ashlee Willis
Dodger's Doorway by Alessandro Reale
Genrenauts series by Michael R. Underwood
Master of Books series by Robert J. Fluegel
Magic Ex Libris series by Jim C. Hines.

Just to name a few, but I know there are more. I have a whole 'to-read shelf' on Goodreads for book/library themed fantasy, and story-jumping is a common theme in a lot of them.

Wow. Thanks! I'm going to have to look all these up.

Let me guess. You're a librarian yourself?

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Speaking of which, Librarians are a pretty major part of The Magicians TV show. Less so in the Lev Grossman trilogy on which it's based.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

Wow. Thanks! I'm going to have to look all these up.

Very welcome! Hope you find some you like .

Let me guess. You're a librarian yourself?

Close!! I was a library page for 3.5 years and a library clerk (both front desk and public service desk) for another 4.5 years . Some things you just can't unlearn.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

Speaking of which, Librarians are a pretty major part of The Magicians TV show. Less so in the Lev Grossman trilogy on which it's based.

Libraries/librarians are such a great theme for fantasy books! There are just so many interesting possibilities. Genevieve Cogman's The Invisible Library series, Brenda Drake's Library Jumpers, Rachel Caine's The Great Library series had some great ideas too.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The Never-ending Story. I have never read it or seen the movie, but I understand that the boy who takes the book from the bookshop does eventually enter the events of the story he is reading.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Never-ending Story. I have never read it or seen the movie, but I understand that the boy who takes the book from the bookshop does eventually enter the events of the story he is reading.

Ive seen the movie and ive read that book I loved both,

This is a book that I think you would like.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Actually, I tried reading it (years ago), but didn't get far. May try again someday, because sometimes a book will strike me differently on a second reading.

 

[paranoid marvin]

As for movies - Mel Brook's loves to break the fourth wall, and in this film Dark Helmet watches a videotape of the movie to find out where the heroine is hiding. Also in the tv series Red Dwarf, the crew go to visit the actor who plays Dave Lister whilst he's an actor in Coronation Street.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

A couple more movies that would fit with this are The Pagemaster and Last Action Hero. In The Pagemaster, the main character ends up inside multiple bookworlds. In Last Action Hero, the main character travels into the world of his favorite action movie, and, at some point, if I remember correctly, I believe that that movie's hero comes into the real world as well.

 

[Spectrum]

In Japanese fiction this kind of thing is a huge genre. It called isekai (異世界, "other world" or "different world"). The genre has exploded in popularity this last decade after the success of Sword Art Online. If you are interested in Japanese light novels, manga, anime or video games, there are tons of them out there.