: How to express concisely the circular concept of a beginning and future simultaneously? There are many movies/books which have an ending that is the foundation for the beginning of the story,
There are many movies/books which have an ending that is the foundation for the beginning of the story, an example is Terry Pratchett's book Pyramids. In a way these stories become trapped in a repeating circular process.
How can these types of stories be classified?
What term is used for this type of dependency?
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The TV Tropes jargon for this kind of story is stable time loop. They list Pratchett's Pyramids as an example of the trope. The concept of a stable time loop as ontological paradox is called the bootstrap paradox, after a Robert A. Heinlein story of this nature.
I propose ouroborean story, after the fabled snake Ouroboros, who ends up eating its own tail.
The cinematic or literary device of placing the ending at the beginning of a film or novel is called flash-forward.
It places an ineluctable, fixed point in the viewer's (or reader's) mind.
(To Jubobs's point, this phrase describes the fixed point, but is less about the story classification.)
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