Quantum fiction

Recently I’ve been reading about quantum physics in another (futile) attempt to understand it. I studied it years ago as part of my degree, and I’ve read umpteen books about it. The first book I ever read about it – when I was a teenager – was ‘The Dancing Wu Li Masters’. Before that I’d never even heard of the term ‘quantum physics’ but that book got me hooked and was one of the reasons why I did a physics degree.

The reason for all the reading is because I want to write some fiction about, or inspired by, quantum physics. But the immediate problem is: what sort of fiction could that be? Traditional realist fiction is by its very nature at odds with the findings of quantum physics. The former uses words to generate some sort of underlying reality in the reader’s head, although this might be different for each reader. The standard interpretation of quantum physics is that there is no underlying reality, all we can do is explain observations and not invent some reality that cannot be directly observed. Although Einstein disagreed with this interpretation ( which was most famously articulated by Bohr in his debates with Einstein), it has come to be accepted. Think, for example, of the nature of light, sometimes it behaves as if it were a particle, other times as if it were a wave. Einstein said that this showed quantum physics was inadequate. Bohr argued that light simply exhibits either wave-like or particle-like characteristics, depending on the experimental set-up.

So, traditional fiction about quantum physics seems like a non-starter. There is quite a lot of fiction inspired by the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, in which new Universes pop into being every time an experiment is carried out. But there is little fiction that seems to be directly inspired by the more standard ‘Copenhagen’ interpretation, in which the mutually contradictory realities of an object can co-exist in this Universe unless and until that object is observed. This interpretation is illustrated by Schrödinger’s cat, an apparently reductio ad absurdum thought experiment which cannot be faulted. The cat is both dead and alive until the box is opened and the cat is observed (although sometimes when I observe my cat, he’s so deeply asleep and so furry I panic and think he’s stopped breathing…).

And how do you capture those apparently mutually contradictory states in fiction? I can’t think of many examples. One not so immediately obvious example is ‘A Dark-Adapted Eye’ by Barbara Vine (the pen-name of Ruth Rendall). In this thriller, the story turns on which one of two sisters is the mother of a child. There is compelling evidence both for and against each woman being the mother, and the book never resolves the problem.

I’ve been inspired by this in writing a short story, loosely based on the real-life Italian physicist Majorana who disappeared in 1938, when he was 32 years old. He most likely committed suicide by jumping overboard off a boat, but there is evidence that he may have actually staged this suicide and continued to live in Argentina. So he seems to have been both dead and alive…

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14 thoughts on “Quantum fiction

  1. Excellent piece. I’ve just finished reading Ali Smith’s ‘There But For The’, which interestingly ties in with this theme. I’ll not spoil it for you, in case you want to read it!

    I also wrote a short piece myself a while ago, just called ‘Paradox’. It’s still waiting to be turned into either a poem or a short story or an essay – I’m not sure which. Which in itself is an example of something co-existing in several states. Here are my original notes:

    “None of us can ever really know ourselves – our real true self, the core self, that is fixed in childhood, that emerges by the time we are four or five years old. At that age, we are the person we will be for the rest of our lives, but we haven’t yet become self-aware. We don’t filter anything, we haven’t learned the social mores, we don’t judge. We just are what we are.

    But when, as adults, we try to remember what we were then, we cannot experience the same lack of self-awareness, so we can only see our young (true) self filtered through the years of experience and later understanding. We change our past (real) self by observing and measuring it.

    The ultimate quantum paradox.

    Our parents saw us as children as our real selves, but they, in turn, could only view us through the filter of their own experience. When they saw us, they imparted their own spin on their perception of us. Their understanding of who we were was entangled, inextricably, with themselves.

    Like dreams, which change in the telling, which cannot be expressed in words, our real selves cannot be labelled, explained, analysed.

    Even in writing this, I fail to express the paradox. By definition, paradox in unsolvable. We are all a mystery.”

  2. I started a story once, though never completed it, about a guy who works out how to go back in time and kill his father as a way of committing suicide. That involved a bit of quantum jiggery-pokery 🙂

    Meanwhile, have you seen the film, Sliding Doors? That’s built around an idea of 2 lives running parallel, changed by a split second.

  3. Excellent article and looking for your work.

    >>mutually contradictory states in fiction? I can’t think of many examples>>
    Check out critiques and interviews with Wilson Harris. Harris describes the quantum world at play as contradictory states within characters in his development and choices.

    It’s an interesting distinction that “quantum fiction” is not necessarily about science or physics — setting it apart from sf; rather, quantum behavior can be used as a literary device — e.g., non sequitur plot (time), or character development in any themed story.
    An interesting example is in Vanna Bonta’s novel Flight, which posits “coincidences” are the result of entanglement in everyday, mundane reality.

    I found some interesting references on “quantum fiction” — how it differs from science fiction and includes all genres (including reality). Apparently the genre has gone through the usual curve of being welcomed (Publishers Weekly 1996), then attacked, fought & ridiculed with vehement anger (drove some people to website vandalism & major hating on author) from an amateur SF community. Two decades later reveals writers writing it in many universes;) … countries. Then full circle, just saw now quantum fiction is being sponsored as a genre fiction contests with a judge on the panel one of the detractors 20 years go!

    Heady stuff.

    Thanks for a great read. You’re on the cutting edge. More!

    1. hi Pan G. Thanks for this – really interesting. I partly wrote this post to see if there were good examples of quantum fiction, so I will check out Wilson Harris. And yes, there is now the ‘Quantum Shorts’ short story competition – very exciting.

  4. There are at least a couple of quantum mechanical works of fiction (outside of science fiction) already, one obvious, and one less so. The obvious one is Tom Stoppard’s “Hapgood”, a play. The other is Akira Kurosawa’s film “Rashomon”. The film never mentions quantum mechanics; nonetheless it embodies better than any other fictional work I know the ambiguities and internal difficulties of quantum theory and the role of the observer.

    Feynman is right. Nobody really understands quantum mechanics. You just learn how to calculate with it, and try to get used to it.

  5. If you haven’t read it already “Journey Across Three Worlds” by Alexander Abramov and Sergei Abramov will be a worthwhile reading. There is a story on Everette-Wheeler model.

  6. “The Dancing Wu Li Masters” has been laying on my bookshelf for umpteen decades. Maybe there is the time to blow the dust off.

  7. Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter. I can’t even start describing how much this book is a must.

    Also, which story is it by you that was inspired by this as you mentioned in the last paragraph? Sorry if you said which one and I happened to have missed it. [just arrived to your blog for the first time]

    1. hi Mark – sorry for the tardy reply! I was inspired by Barbara Vine’s ‘Dark Adapted Eye’ to write an as yet unpublished story about the physicist Majorana. Actually that story isn’t even finished…

  8. “The first book I ever read about it – when I was a teenager – was ‘The Dancing Wu Li Masters’. “

    Yes, I read this as well back in the late 1970s or whenever. I enjoyed it at the time, but in retrospect it contains too much woo (no pun intended, but nevertheless it should be appreciated).

    1. yeah – I don’t think I’d enjoy it so much now. And I remember skipping large chunks of the ‘woo’ because I was more interested in the actual physics.#

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