History MindScrew / Literature

* ''Literature/JasonXDeathMoon''; the book is half coherent and half... not, having random meta and ranty parts, scenes involving poorly explained concepts like Teknopriests, Akasha.net, reality hackers, etc. and what's the definition of a GainaxEnding where Jason starts fighting his past self for no immediately discernible reason.

** ''Literature/OldPossumsBookOfPracticalCats'' is quite straightforward. So why did AndrewLloydWebber decide to throw in a fragment from ''Four Quartets'' as "The Moment Of Happiness"?

* ''Literature/TheGreyAutomobile'' by Alexander Grin. By the end it is strongly implied that the protagonist Ebenezer Sidney went off his rails: he believes that his girlfriend is [[LivingStatue a living wax sculpture]], and that he's pursued by an infernal grey car. All of this may or may not be true.

* Creator/MadeleineLEngle's Time Trilogy, or Quartet, or Quintet, depending on who you talk to, is absolutely a mind screw. Taking only the first trilogy, one of the main themes of the first book, ''Literature/AWrinkleInTime'', is that distance is an illusion. ''A Wind in the Door'' then argues that size is an illusion, and it is capped off by ''A Swiftly Tilting Planet'', where time is an illusion. (Fortunately, nowhere do the books imply that [[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender pants are an illusion]].) And these are by no means the only, or even the prominent, themes of each of the books. This is a kid's series.

* While the Creator/StrugatskyBrothers usually focused on rather hard social science fiction, they also wrote ''[[{{Literature/TheDoomedCity}} The Doomed City]]'' - a heavily psychological surrealist mystery full of symbolism, [[{{TheUnreveal}} loose threads]] and very weird occurrences. Let's see: people are chosen and taken (it's never explained how exactly) to participate in an Experiment (always spelled with a capital E in the novel) by the enigmatic Mentors (it's never explained who they are). The Experiment either takes place in an alternate dimension or on another planet or in a fully isolated, vast compound on Earth (it's never explained... you get the idea). The purpose of the Experiment is never even hinted at. The titular city, the sole settlement in the Experiment's area (whatever that may be), is really strange - even before supernatural things (which may or may not be planned by the Advisors - there is a lot of in-universe speculation about that) start to happen. After lots of dramatic events, psychological crises and character development, [[spoiler: there's a revolution and the humans proclaim the end of the Experiment and demand non-interference from the Advisors. They apparently get it, although quite a few of the main characters (now all in positions of power) suspect it's still all part of the Experiment, despite their "free choice"]]. Supernatural happenings cease and all seems fine, until [[spoiler: the leader gets the bright idea to dispatch an expedition to the North of the city (abandoned for decades, if not centuries, before the novel begins) in order to map the area and gather info on a possible threat]]. The last two acts of the novel, which consists of five, deal with this expedition - at which point [[{{RealityIsOutToLunch}} reality vacates the premises entirely]]. A textbook example of a GainaxEnding ([[spoiler:the protagonist gets shot and is back in Leningrad, with his Mentor telling him that he has passed the "first circle" but that "there are many of them ahead"]]) concludes the whole thing.

* While the Creator/StrugatskyBrothers usually focused on rather hard social science fiction, they also wrote ''[[{{Literature/TheDoomedCity}} The Doomed City]]'' - a heavily psychological surrealist mystery full of symbolism, [[{{TheUnreveal}} loose threads]] and very weird occurrences. Let's see: people are chosen and taken (it's never explained how exactly) to participate in an Experiment (always spelled with a capital E in the novel) by the enigmatic Advisors (it's never explained who they are). The Experiment either takes place in an alternate dimension or on another planet or in a fully isolated, vast compound on Earth (it's never explained... you get the idea). The purpose of the Experiment is never even hinted at. The titular city, the sole settlement in the Experiment's area (whatever that may be), is really strange - even before supernatural things (which may or may not be planned by the Advisors - there is a lot of in-universe speculation about that) start to happen. After lots of dramatic events, psychological crises and character development, [[spoiler: there's a revolution and the humans proclaim the end of the Experiment and demand non-interference from the Advisors. They apparently get it, although quite a few of the main characters (now all in positions of power) suspect it's still all part of the Experiment, despite their "free choice"]]. Supernatural happenings cease and all seems fine, until [[spoiler: the leader gets the bright idea to dispatch an expedition to the North of the city (abandoned for decades, if not centuries, before the novel begins) in order to map the area and gather info on a possible threat]]. The last two acts of the novel, which consists of five, deal with this expedition - at which point [[{{RealityIsOutToLunch}} reality vacates the premises entirely]]. A textbook example of a GainaxEnding ([[spoiler:the protagonist gets shot and is back in Leningrad, with an Advisor telling him that he has passed the "first circle" but that "there are many of them ahead"]]) concludes the whole thing.

* While the Creator/StrugatskyBrothers usually focused on rather hard social science fiction, they also wrote ''[[{{Literature/TheDoomedCity}} The Doomed City]]'' - a heavily psychological surrealist mystery full of symbolism, [[{{TheUnreveal}} loose threads]] and very weird occurrences. Let's see: people are chosen and taken (it's never explained how exactly) to participate in an Experiment (always spelled with a capital E in the novel) by the enigmatic Advisors (it's never explained who they are). The Experiment either takes place in an alternate dimension or on another planet or in a fully isolated, vast compound on Earth (it's never explained... you get the idea). The purpose of the Experiment is never even hinted at. The titular city, the sole settlement in the Experiment's area (whatever that may be), is really strange - even before supernatural things (which may or may not be planned by the Advisors - there is a lot of in-universe speculation about that) start to happen. After lots of dramatic events, psychological crises and character development, [[spoiler: there's a revolution and the humans proclaim the end of the Experiment and demand non-interference from the Advisors. They apparently get it, although quite a few of the main characters (now all in positions of power) suspect it's still all part of the Experiment, despite their "free choice"]]. Supernatural happenings cease and all seems fine, until [[spoiler: the leader gets the bright idea to dispatch an expedition to the North of the city (abandoned for decades, if not centuries, before the novel begins) in order to map the area and gather info on a possible threat]]. The last two acts of the novel, which consists of five, deal with this expedition - at which point [[{{RealityIsOutToLunch}} reality vacates the premises entirely]]. A textbook example of a GainaxEnding ([[spoiler:the protagonist gets shot and is back in Leningrad]]) concludes the whole thing.

* While the Creator/StrugatskyBrothers usually focused on rather hard social science fiction, they also wrote ''[[{{Literature/TheDoomedCity}} The Doomed City]]'' - a heavily psychological surrealist mystery full of symbolism, [[{{TheUnreveal}} loose threads]] and very weird occurrences. Let's see: people are chosen and taken (it's never explained how exactly) to participate in an Experiment (always spelled with a capital E in the novel) by the enigmatic Advisors (it's never explained who they are). The Experiment either takes place in an alternate dimension or on another planet or in a fully isolated, vast compound on Earth (it's never explained... you get the idea). The purpose of the Experiment is never even hinted at. The titular city, the sole settlement in the Experiment's area (whatever that may be), is really strange - even before supernatural things (which may or may not be planned by the Advisors - there is a lot of in-universe speculation about that) start to happen. After lots of dramatic events, psychological crises and character development, [[spoiler: there's a revolution and the humans proclaim the end of the Experiment and demand non-interference from the Advisors. They apparently get it, although quite a few of the main characters (now all in positions of power) suspect it's still all part of the Experiment, despite their "free choice"]]. Supernatural happenings cease and all seems fine, until [[spoiler: the leader gets the bright idea to dispatch an expedition to the North of the city (abandoned for decades, if not centuries, before the novel begins) in order to map the area and gather info on a possible threat]]. The last two acts of the novel, which consists of five, deal with this expedition - at which point [[{{RealityIsOutToLunch}} reality vacates the premises entirely]]. A textbook example of a GainaxEnding concludes the whole thing.

* Many titles in the ''Literature/{{Suggsverse}}'' (written by Lionel C. Suggs) apply extreme Mind Screw and defy logic.

* Many titles in the ''Literature/{{Suggsverse}}'' (written by Creator/Lionel C. Suggs) apply extreme Mind Screw and defy logic.

* Many titles in the ''Literature/{{Suggsverse}}'' (written by Creator/{{Lionel C. Suggs}}) apply extreme Mind Screw and defy logic.

* Many titles in the ''Literature/{{Suggsverse}}'' (written by Lionel C. Suggs) apply extreme Mind Screw and defy logic.

* Many titles in the ''Literature/Suggsverse'' (written by Lionel C. Suggs) apply extreme Mind Screw and defy logic.

* Many titles in the Literature/Suggsverse (written by Lionel C. Suggs) apply extreme Mind Screw and defy logic.

* Many titles in the ''Suggsverse'' (written by Lionel C. Suggs) apply extreme Mind Screw and defy logic.

* Mark Z. Danielewski's ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves'' ranks with the most convoluted in any medium. You might not understand what happened in the book, but you might have trouble with [[DarknessEqualsDeath poorly lit areas]] afterwards. It says that the house changes based on who is in it, so YourMindMakesItReal. Also, the book has many layers and narrators - it's about a guy reading a manuscript for the book describing the movie about a House that's BiggerOnTheInside, written by a blind guy who can't have actually watched the movie, and the movie doesn't exist anyway, but after all of this it still becomes frighteningly real in the "real" world. The book's also got hundreds of footnotes, sometimes going for pages, which can be severely screwed up. Some passages are also struck out, sometimes for whole pages, and there is a lot of blank space and sideways and backwards or both. And, main narrator Johnny is an UnreliableNarrator (whether due to innate insanity, or to drug abuse and general neglect, or (the most probable, but most sinister explanation) due to the influence of his own reading of the manuscript about the House) - who even likes to tout the reader with that - at a certain point totally making up about a week's worth of entries and then mocking the reader for not noticing the lack of swear words in those giving away they're fake. It's that kind of book.
* Danielewski's next book, ''Literature/OnlyRevolutions'', makes less than zero percent sense. Made even more screwy when, after you read through the entire book only to realize you can truly make the entire thing a circle and just start from the beginning all over again.

* Mark Z. Danielewski's ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves'' ranks with the most convoluted in any medium. You might not understand what happened in the book, but you might have trouble with [[DarknessEqualsDeath poorly lit areas]] afterwards. It says that the house changes based on who is in it, so YourMindMakesItReal. Also, the book has many layers and narrators - it's about a guy reading a manuscript for the book describing the movie about a House that's BiggerOnTheInside, written by a blind guy who can't have actually watched the movie, and the movie doesn't exist anyway, but after all this it still becomes frighteningly real in the "real" world. The book's also got hundreds of footnotes, sometimes going for pages, and they can be severely screwed up. Some passages are also struck out, sometimes for whole pages, and there is a lot of blank space and sideways and backwards or both. And, main narrator Johnny is an UnreliableNarrator (whether due to innate insanity, or to drug abuse and general neglect, or (the most probable, but most sinister explanation) due to the influence of his own reading the manuscript about the House) - who even likes to tout the reader with that - at a certain point totally making up about a week's worth of entries and than mocking the reader for not noticing the lack of swear words in those giving away they're fake. It's that kind of book.

* Mark Z. Danielewski's ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves'' ranks with the most convoluted in any medium. You might not understand what happened in the book, but you might have trouble with [[DarknessEqualsDeath poorly lit areas]] afterwards. It says that the house changes based on who is in it, so YourMindMakesItReal. Also, the book isn't about a house, but a guy who made a movie about a house which is BiggerOnTheInside. The book is a book about the movie about the house -- or to be more precise, about a guy reading a manuscript for the book describing the movie, written by a blind guy who can't have actually watched the movie, and the movie doesn't exist anyway, but after all this it still becomes frighteningly real in the "real" world. The book's also got hundreds of footnotes, sometimes going for pages, and they can be severely screwed up. Some passages are also struck out, sometimes for whole pages, and there is a lot of blank space and sideways and backwards or both.

* JRRTolkien 's books are full of these. Who was Tom Bombadil, actually? Or Ungoliant?

* "In the Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak (the author of ''Literature/WhereTheWildThingsAre'').

** ''Loop'': [[spoiler: Okay now... so the first two books took place in a sophisticated computer simulation? And the curse/virus is leaking out into the real world? And the protagonist of Loop is actually a clone of a character that died in the first book... which we've already established took place in a computer simulation and [[AustinPowers oh dear I've gone cross-eyed]]]]

* Steven Brust's novel ''Literature/{{Orca}}'' ends with ''two'' of these in a row. First, we discover that [[spoiler:Kiera the Thief, who actually narrates a lot of the book, is really Sethra Lavode, vampire, sorceress, and all-around BadAss.]] Then, in ''the last sentence of the epilogue'', Kiera lets slip that she's been hiding another secret all through the book: [[spoiler:Vlad has a son.]] The all-around effect is that since everyone's been hiding things from each other and [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis it's clearly established that the characters are telling stories after the fact,]] both Kiera and Vlad may be [[UnreliableNarrator hiding things from us, too.]] Brust has something of a history of this; halfway through the first book in the series, ''Literature/{{Jhereg}}'', we find out that [[spoiler:Vlad is the reincarnation of the founder of house Jhereg.]]

** A lot of the Old Testament prophets get into this territory as well, what with the flaming wheels in the sky and weird human-animal hybrids and whatnot. The New Testament (for those who believe in it) acts as a MindScrewdriver for some of this, but much of it is just plain weird.

*** The closest equivalent of God in fiction, according to the above description, would be [[Creator/HPLovecraft HPL's]] Yog-Sothoth (certainly qualifying as a MindScrew character in its own right). Not a particularly comforting thought.

* Samuel R. Delany's ''Literature/{{Dhalgren}}'' actually begins and ends with [[TalkativeLoon schizophrenic word salad]].
* ''Empire Star'' by Creator/SamuelRDelany introduces a future interplanetary society where a big thing among more informed people is classification of minds, cultures and other things into [[https://thoughtsonx.wordpress.com/2016/04/10/simplex-complex-multiplex-a-collection-of-quotes/ simplex, complex and multiplex]] based on how much they can view things from different viewpoints. The thing is, even the most sophisticated reader is probably complex at ''most'', whereas a lot of the characters -- including the narrator -- and other elements of the story are multiplex. What the terms even ''mean'' is hard to divine and might need multiplex thinking to understand. Some of the events and things don't seem to be feasible or remain unclear, but the narrator would probably say "Trust me, it's multiplex." (Or maybe they should be considered less literally; the poet who has experienced almost exactly the same things as the protagonist, even with the same people, might just stand for someone whose art seems to express the same things you have experienced in a more general sense.) The part in the end where [[spoiler: you find that the seemingly linear story has actually involved a lot of time travel all the time]] is actually pretty easy to understand compared to many other things.\\

* ''Literature/SongsOfInnocenceAndOfExperience'' contains the story of Lyca, as told in "The Little Girl Lost" and "The Little Girl Found", a long and symbolism heavy story of how Lyca falls asleep in the wilderness, is discovered by a lion, and is taken to a cave. Her parents find her, seemingly in the afterlife. It makes a little more sense if you look at it as a metaphor for growing up or sexual awakening, but it's still a very strange and dreamlike narrative.

* The long, 'prophetic' books of Creator/WilliamBlake. Good God. Detailing the unfolding events of his complex {{mythopoeia}}, the poems ''Milton'' and ''Jerusalem'' are almost impenetrably complex, with the action taking place on multiple plains of temporal and spatial existence ''simultaneously'', where the same event can be repeated on several occasions from different perspectives, with each instance representing about three or four different 'events' with virtually no readerly amenities given in interpreting the layers and layers of dense symbolism.
** These 'events' of the poems, such as they are, are often incomprehensibly bizarre. One memorable moment in ''Milton'' has the titular poet Creator/JohnMilton descend from the afterlife and enter in Blake's left ankle. Also, Milton must fight Satan. Who is himself. And then the world ends. Suck it, Gainax Studios!

* Steven Brust's novel ''[[{{Dragaera}} Orca]]'' ends with ''two'' of these in a row. First, we discover that [[spoiler:Kiera the Thief, who actually narrates a lot of the book, is really Sethra Lavode, vampire, sorceress, and all-around BadAss.]] Then, in ''the last sentence of the epilogue'', Kiera lets slip that she's been hiding another secret all through the book: [[spoiler:Vlad has a son.]] The all-around effect is that since everyone's been hiding things from each other and [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis it's clearly established that the characters are telling stories after the fact,]] both Kiera and Vlad may be [[UnreliableNarrator hiding things from us, too.]] Brust has something of a history of this; halfway through the first book in the series, ''Jhereg'', we find out that [[spoiler:Vlad is the reincarnation of the founder of house Jhereg.]]