Finance fiction

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Finance fiction
/ˈfaɪəns ˈfɪkʃən/ (n.)
(As per the phonetics, pronounced “fience fiction”)

Finance fiction, or “fi-fi”, is a post-post-modern literary genre combining elements of science fiction, fantasy, history, legal drafting, management theory and jurisprudence into a single amorphous, disintegrating, gonzo whole.

It is reflexive, illogical, self-refuting, enlightened, primordial, analytical, continental, rational, impossible, anarchic, auto-erotic world-building and self-destructive.

The first universally recognised example of fi-fi was Hunter Barkley’s 2022 opus the The ISDA Protocol.

The genre then split into so-called “hard fifi” and “mundane fifi”, in which all elements of the narrative elements were constrained by an overriding concern for juridical accuracy and a primacy placed on technical details, and soft fifi and “fantasy fifi”, where the emphasis is on the human element of the story and the technical feasibility or even possibility of the world-building is less important, and may be bent to accommodate the psycho drama.

How to categorise Barkley’s own work has been the subject of much debate: its non-linearity and frequent digressions into plainly made-up and self-aggrandising fantasies places it squarely into the fantasy fifi camp; dedicated followers point out that this fantasy world is in fact a brutal, painful, shockingly accurate rendition of how the world really is.

See also

• Hard fifi (as opposed to Fantasy fifi).