Novels that have been described as quantum fiction include Vanna Bonta's Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel (1995), M. John Harrison's Empty Space trilogy (2002, 2006, 2012),[1] David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (2004),[2] Scarlett Thomas's The End of Mr. Y (2006)[2] Samantha Harvey's The Wilderness (2008),[2] and Andrew Crumey's Sputnik Caledonia (2008).
[9] Bonta defined quantum fiction as stories in which consciousness affects physics and determines reality; in her words, "the genre is broad and includes life.
His examples of possible quantum fiction influences include hypertext and the Choose Your Own Adventure series, Burroughs’ cut-up technique, Ballard’s ‘condensed novels’ containing multiple segmented perspectives, multimedia experimentation, and James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.
[12][13][14] In his book Loose Canon (Cosmos Press, 2001), author Charles Platt describes quantum fiction as "a blueprint for avoiding literary obsolescence."
"[15] 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."
"[17] In Sonia Front's Shapes of Time in British Twenty-First Century Quantum Fiction (2015), novels chosen as representative of the genre in Britain were Andrew Crumey's Sputnik Caledonia, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Samantha Harvey's The Wilderness and Scarlett Thomas's The End of Mr.
Instead, there are far more fantastic marvels, such as laptop computers, MRI machines, Blu-ray players, and other real-life wonders made manifest via quantum mechanics.[21][22][relevant?]
[26] Wilson Harris described he has been writing since his first novel what he was to eventually realize as quantum fiction, to give witness to "realities hidden from the world you see.
"[27] 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.
The field was pioneered by quantum physicists Erwin Schrödinger,[30] Werner Heisenberg,[31] Wolfgang Pauli,[32] Niels Bohr,[33] and Eugene Wigner,[34] as well as contentions of Louis DeBroglie, Max von Laue and Albert Einstein.
Biocentrism, a theory proposed in 2007 by American scientist Robert Lanza, posits that life creates the universe rather than the other way around.
New findings in particle physics and quantum mechanics are revising previously held views of reality, raising questions about the influence of ideas, human thought and other uncharted causalities in its creation.[37][relevant?]
Novelist Wilson Harris stated he realized what he was writing was quantum fiction, and further described it as giving witness to "realities hidden from the world you see."
"[38] Wilson is describing how Many-worlds interpretation and wave-particle duality[39] appear in and define the genre of his novels, and how it affects every day characters, not otherwise related to science per se in theme.
In 2003, when interviewed by British-Guyanese poet, novelist and playwright Fred D'Aguiar, Harris describes: "'Quantum' brings a hand in fiction that challenges all conventional fixtures of control within the psyche of art."
"The language of conventional, linear fiction, which seems so strong, becomes an illusion and is broken by quantum holes," Harris describes.
Devices of the technique include nonlinear plots and timelines unfolding in lives of characters or the narrator, or a characters experience of quantum reality, such as the infinite possibilities of being able to die and live multiple times, and with the creator's awareness, whether intended or not, of the interconnectedness of everything and a fluid behavior of reality that can appear surreal.
[64] The technique of constructing a quantum plot and narrative first person in the story-telling of Wilson Harris grew from his approach to perception of life and language.
It is unlimited to content or subject, and authors craft ordinary characters through sensibilities and perception affected by the quantum view of the world.
[65] Durrell's tetralogy presents three perspectives on a single set of events and characters in Alexandria, Egypt World War II.
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.
[66] Other retrospective categorization includes the vanguard work of Australian author Greg Egan who focused on a model of consciousness and reality in his 1994 novel Permutation City.
"[68] In 2007, Samuel Coale began teaching a college course on quantum theory's influences and effects upon contemporary American fiction.
Other topics include similarities between quantum theory and postmodernism, the themes of perception and time and space in DeLillo's work, and religious interpretation.
[71] 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.
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.