Little excerpts before chapters

[Locksmith]

"Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives." Dr Tom Horton​

Is there a name for the little bits of (often irrelevant) information/excerpts from invented books which appear before the body of chapters in many SF/F books?

What do people think of them? I can recall times where I have found them useful additions which move the story onward (e.g. Foundation), and other times where I didn't really see the point (for example, I didn't think the ones in the otherwise excellent A Darkness that Comes Before were up to much).

 

[Marky Lazer]

I use them in my sci-fi/fantasy story, but they are characters within the universe the story plays. I think it's just to create a realistic feel in a fictional world.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Indeed - it's making use of the story architecture to add extra ways of exploring the story. I guess the point is as to whether you think it works in your own story, when deciding whether to use it or not.

 

[Locksmith]

I think that, done well, they can add quite a lot to a story. Marky, I like the idea of thinking of them as an additional character.

I wonder though whether they are sometimes a lazy addition to a work to try and add substance to an under-developed or thought-out world. The reader is encouraged to think "oh look, he's invented an encyclopedia and a philosopher. He's really done his research. Never mind that many of his other concepts are ill-conceived."

 

[Marky Lazer]

If you read Dune, you can see every part start with an excerpt from the princess (I simply can't remember her name). In those pieces the tells some relevant things happened in the past or things of the propehcy, and I think it works very well. If you would simply put these parts above a chapter for the sake of putting it there, it would be rather silly and superfluous.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Those little excerpts before chapters are called epigraphs -- or at least that's what they're called when it's a quotation from a real person or an actual existing document. I've never come across a separate name for the fictitious epigraph we use in SF and Fantasy, although I've been looking for one for a long time. (Many years ago, I made use of that particular device quite freely. Why I gave it up is another story.)

There is a term "pseudo-epigraph" but that means something else.

 

[Marky Lazer]

I don't want to go off-topic, but was there an author POV why you gave up on them?