Quantum fiction
Quantum fiction is a literary genre that reflects modern experience of the material world as influenced by quantum theory and new principles in quantum physics. The genre blurs the line separating science fiction and fantasy into a broad scope of mainstream literature that transcends the mechanical model of science and involves the fantasy of human perception or imagination as realistic components affecting the every day physical world.
This genre is characterized by:
The genre quantum fiction was coined by American novelist Vanna Bonta to define stories in which consciousness affects physics and determines reality; in her words, "the genre is broad and includes life." Bonta further explains her development of this new genre: "I don't write science fiction. Science fiction is a niche genre, defined by Ray Bradbury as depiction of the real. 'Quantum fiction' is the realm of all possibilities, and that is a core passion of my work. The genre is broad, and includes life because fiction is an inextricable part of reality in its various stages, and vice versa."
Summary of Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel
The book that labeled and introduced quantum fiction as a literary genre to readers was Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel (1995) by Vanna Bonta. The novel is a novel within a novel in which the protagonist struggles to sort out plot points of a fiction he is writing from reality as coincidences happen in real life from his novel's plot. The first line of Bonta's novel is “Which came first — the observer or the particle?†Various parts of Bonta's novel appear in pop culture philosophies and discussion.Quantum fiction - new forms of storytelling
In his book Loose Canon (Cosmos Press, 2001), author Charles Platt describes quantum fiction as "a blueprint for avoiding literary obsolescence." Platt writes, "I do believe that "Quantum Fiction" would circumvent some problems associated with traditional science fiction." Platt argues, "If a nineteenth-century writer such as Charles Dickens sampled a few modern science-fiction novels, he might be surprised by the writing style and the speculative content, but he'd find nothing new in the methods of storytelling. Popular novel-length narratives are built basically the same way today as a century ago, and science-fiction writers are in the ironic position of depicting the future using techniques derived entirely from the past." Platt writes, "My own modest proposal for revitalizing the novel is a form that I will call, for want of a better term, "quantum fiction." Like the quantum theory, it acknowledges the observer (in this case, the reader) as an active participant." In 2001, Platt states, "I believe it should be possible to develop from these prototypes a new genre of "quantum fiction" with genuinely broad appeal."To give witness to "realities hidden from the world you see," author Wilson Harris described he has been writing since his first novel what he was to eventually realize as quantum fiction. In the dissertation ''Quantum Value in Wilson Harris's "Architecture of the Tides, Andrew Jefferson–Miles states, "In quantum fiction, the whole cosmos is involved, and that cosmos will leave its trace, its spontaneous quantum of knowing and recognizing, on even the smallest, shortest-lived thing."
In the volume Redefining the Critical Enterprise in Twenty-First Century Hispanic Literature (Hybrid 2012), Spanish author Jorge Carrión writes "My books attempt to problematize these supposed units of meaning, because perhaps we are in a time of quantum fiction. I repeat: “quantum fiction.†This is a concept I have been working on for a very short time. It is a new concept, like “counter-space†or “theoryphobia†were in their time."
In 2009, in a doctoral thesis on the Science of Art, Alexis Blanchet defines the necessity of the quantum fiction genre distinction. "Fictional worlds now appear as shifting and undefined as ever to audiences. The notion of quantum fiction aims to provide a framework of production and reception to the contemporary processes of industrialization and diversification of fiction."
Quantum Theory and Quantum Fiction
Quantum fiction brings quantum theory forward as the explanation behind the concept of life imitating art and art imitating life via substantiation of literary plot developments, time sequence, character experiences and other literary elements based on quantum mechanics, pioneered by quantum physicists Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, and Eugene Wigner, as well as contentions of Louis DeBroglie, Max von Laue, Erwin Schrödinger and Albert Einstein. Among the contentions is that quantum mechanics is a statistical approximation to a deeper reality which behaves predictably via the observer being an inextricable part of reality (Observer effect (physics)).In quantum fiction, characters (the observers) within the work of literature experience (or affect) reality (time, place, the material world) via any number of aspects of quantum mechanics as distinct from classical mechanics.
In Bonta's definitive 1995 Flight: a quantum fiction novel, the protagonist is a writer writing a novel within the novel. The character is a metaphor for the observer (any human being living, observing and interacting with reality). The writer begins to notice coincidences between what he is writing (about a girl in a parallel world) and his real life. Further, the protagonist in the novel mentions Bonta, the Flight author, thereby adding yet another parallel reality to the novel's two plot lines. Another quantum element that recurs in the book is by way of remarkable coincidences the characters experience, not by way of the mystical, but with which Bonta structures synchronicity as a device of quantum entanglement, the behavior of all matter connected on a subatomic level and intersecting by participation of the observers.
A paper by Jason Lee Miller titled Quantum Fiction was published in a literary journal in 2009. In it, Miller talks about quantum physics as it applies to literature. Miller states, "Since quantum theory represents a new way of looking at life, the universe, and everything, this paper serves the same purpose, but with fiction." Among aspects of quantum fiction discussed in the paper are "how the author’s intrinsic rhythm influences the perception, the consciousness, of the reader" and how metered poetry and limited genres behave more like Newtonian physics as opposed to quantum physics. He describes the act of writing quantum fiction prose as "the function of rhythm and reality creation." Miller states the act is not random. Quantum fiction prose, he interprets, lends itself to fluid rhythm in the creation of reality that involves "a kind of consciousness on the part of the creator, or god of the imagined world, and in part influenced by the reader, who is the observer recreating the reality in his mind."
New art of fiction: Linear vs. Quantum
Describing quantum fiction as giving witness to "realities hidden from the world you see," novelist Wilson Harris defined analogies between his fiction and quantum physics. "The quantum concept is that if one fires out an object, it breaks into particles and waves. Conventional novelists go along a linear road, but the quantum split can bring the past into the present in a new art of fiction." In 2008, Charis Anastopoulos published an overview documenting this evolution from mechanical, linear Newtonian physics to a reality that can behave as both, particle or wave, depending on whether or not it was being observed.As quantum theories such as wave–particle duality and the behavior of matter on a subatomic behavior evolves, theories have emerged that life is central to being, reality, and the cosmos. Biocentrism, a theory proposed in 2007 by American scientist Robert Lanza, posits that life creates the universe rather than the other way around. Biocentric theory builds on quantum physics, and this view asserts that current theories of the physical world do not work, and can never be made to work, until they fully account for life and consciousness.
Quantum fiction, emerging 21st century genre
In Fiction in the Quantum Universe (June 2002), Susan Strehle argues that new fiction has developed from the influence of modern physics. This book explores and advances a pluralistic view of the meaning of contemporary fiction as it relates to the quantum-defined view of "reality."While quantum fiction novels diverge markedly from a previously held view of reality, Strehle argues that they do so in order to reflect more acutely that aspect of reality which, only the advent of quantum mechanics evidenced as real, or actual; i.e., Reality is no longer "realistic." In in the new physical or quantum universe, reality is discontinuous, energetic, relative, statistical, subjectively seen, and uncertainly known — all terms taken from new physics.
Since the inception and coining work of quantum fiction recognized by Publishers Weekly in 1995, the influence and definition of literature by this as a genre is evidenced in the creation of novels, short fiction, calls for submissions , television and film. In 1999, Debra Di Blasi categorizes one of her stories as quantum fiction in the collection Prayers of an Accidental Nature: Stories.
In 1996, Aesthetics and Ethics, Literary Criticism Vol. 41 talks about a literary genre 'quantum fiction', "Charles Platt has evidenced a form he has decided to call, "for want of a better term, quantum fiction."
Editorial reviews of new fiction recognize and analyze the defining and qualifying elements of the distinct genre of quantum fiction, which vary from work to work.
Authors have begun defining their work quantum fiction. In 2001, when Charles Platt wrote that he believed quantum fiction would circumvent some of the problems with science fiction, he stated "...and the only person who tried to use this form was me (in my novel Protektor, Avon Books)."
The term is used by Susan H. Young in her book ''Quantum Fiction: Relativity and Postmodernism in Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet (2000) to retrospectively best categorize the genre of novels by Lawrence Durrell published in 1957—1960. Durrell's tetralogy presents three perspectives on a single set of events and characters in Alexandria, Egypt World War II. Durrell explains the four novels are an exploration of relativity and the notions of continuum and subject–object relation. In a 1959 Paris Review interview, Durrell described the ideas behind the Quartet in terms of a convergence of Eastern and Western metaphysics, based on Einstein's overturning of the old view of the material universe, yielding a new concept of reality.
A 2002 university dissertation on humanities and social sciences, in the chapter "Quantum Scripts", examines the question of what knowledge quantum fiction requires its readers to have.
Discussion about the emerging genre of quantum fiction is the subject of 21st century academic papers and some university courses. In 2006, in a dissertation about quantum mechanics and modern fiction, Samuel Sean Kinch discusses the work of Nicholas Mosley as quantum fiction and cites Susan Strehle's Fiction in the Quantum Universe as an organized analysis of the emerging genre. He writes, "To date, Strehle offers the most systematic poetics of quantum fiction."
In 2007, Professor Samuel Coale began teaching a college course on quantum theory’s influences and effects upon contemporary American fiction. Coale presents his theories in several papers. In Quantum Flux and Narrative Flow: Don DeLillo’s Entanglements with Quantum Theory'', Coale presents novels by Don DeLillo and discusses DeLillo's use of quantum theory and how it is revealed in the structure and style of his novels. Other topics include similarities between quantum theory and postmodernism, the themes of perception and time and space in DeLillo's work, and religious interpretation.. In the essay "Psychic Visions and Quantum Physics: Oates’ Big Bang and The Limits of Language," Coale analyzes the literary style of novelist Joyce Carol Oates. According to the Coale, the characters of Oates are indicating that the individual self recognizes the strange and unfathomable otherness at the mysterious center of self-hood.
Alexis Blanchet's 2009 dissertation and doctoral thesis mentions quantum fiction, and argues the new genre quantum fiction is a necessary framework genre for relationships between fiction, cinema, and video game involving life and interactive participation as overlapping of realities. In a 2007 interview about quantum fiction, Vanna Bonta states, "As people become more aware of this universe as a quantum universe, it will embrace things like holographic entertainment experiences. Already, virtual reality and virtual interaction are an element of quantum fiction."
Quantum fiction television
On March 1, 2012, NBC premiered the quantum fiction television series Awake_(TV series) in which the protagonist lives in parallel realities with differing circumstances.Quantum fiction (as "Actualism")
Susan Strehle explores how the changed physical world appears in both content and form in recent fiction, calling it "actualism" after the observations of Werner Heisenberg. It is characterized by incompletions, indeterminacy, or "open" endings that involve the reader or some undetermined element to continue or resolve the work. Within that framework, ''Gravity's Rainbow'' is cited as an example as it ends not with a period but with a dash. Strehle sets forth that although important recent narratives diverge markedly from realistic practice, they do so in order to reflect more acutely on what we now understand as real.Within this framework, Strehle's book also presents a critical analysis of major novels by Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coover, William Gaddis, John Barth, Margaret Atwood, and Donald Barthelme.
Strehle argues that such innovations in narrative reflect on twentieth-century history, politics, science, and discourse.
The perception of a changed reality reaches into philosophy, psychology, literary theory, and other areas. The final chapter extends the discussion beyond North American borders to African, South American, and European texts, suggesting a global community of writers whose fiction belongs in the quantum universe.
Quantum Fiction Titles
Books described or reviewed as quantum fiction:(incomplete list)
See also
References
Further Reading
Category:Literary genres
Category:Science fiction
Category:Quantum mechanics
Category:Fantasy
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