Quantum work as a type of the experimental fiction continued
Quantum Entanglement. Entanglement as a quantum phenomenon means a fusion of the objects'
quantum states. As a result of such fusion it becomes impossible to describe one of the objects without describing its counterpart. "Fusion," at this point, doesn't necessarily mean physical merge: the objects may be even spatially separated. This is valid for some characters in "quantum" fiction. The excerpt below from my flash fiction, A TempleFor My Mom, may serve as a brief example of such "fusion."
My Mother and I are inseparable. She is placed in my brain forever, and no surgeon can remove her without damaging my intellectual ability. This is the truth: a) about my mother; b) about me; c) about the current state of medicine.
23. Another form of fusion offered by QWs concerns the "melting" of the
border between the character's inner world and the outer space. The internal and the external may often permeate each other and merge into one, thus, making it difficult to distinguish in which of the spaces the action occurs. Such "fusion" contributes to one more way of structuring "quantum reality" in QG. In this connection, I'd like to refer to an excerpt from Rachel Kendall's short story, Axis at Cherry Bleeds, another amazing piece on "quantum reality" as given through the eyes of a mentally disturbed character.
It was still looking at her, through the skylight. This time she didn't fall. She didn't even break her gaze for a long while. They looked at each other, its eyes dark brown and wet, the pupils huge. It looked sad. It was… she didn't know what it was. A planet? It looked like a planet, or a moon, a fat yellow disc taking up most of the sky and a corner of her skylight. It had no other features, no mouth, no body. It was just a body in itself, a being, and she was sure she was the one who had created it. She sat down and let her mind stutter over the simple facts. She could find none. She could find nothing more than voodoo or sheer will or some kind of uterine stream of consciousness. Something miraculous. And now what? It seemed to be waiting for her to do something. But she was at a loss.
24. Quantum time. In QG a "multitude of worlds at a time in the future" [20] is as possible as in the past and the present. Each character is a world and each world represented by a character has its unique past and present that may or may not interact with the past and the present of others. For instance, characters may "simultaneously" appear as children, adults, and elderly, or divorced, engaged, and married, or living, unborn, and dead, and the like.
Your father is in your present - both living and dead. This is confusing and sometimes unbearable. You have to deal with it, but you don't know how, and there's no one who'd teach you that. Every morning you greet him, every evening you say goodbye to him, and then you disturb him in your sleep and a couple of times during the day. You've practically deprived him of his freedom, though you're not a newborn baby anymore. He must have his privacy, after all! Let him be, for God's sake!
(a story, Lighthouse, from my book, Snail)
25. The observer/interpreter effect. According to quantum physics, the role of the observer is crucial.
He actually influences the result of the experiment by being present and taking measurements. [21] This is true for any interpreter of any system, including literature and art. Indeed, the interpreter of a literary work "alters" the meaning of the original by evaluating and re-evaluating characters, their relationships and the like and deriving new conclusions about the whole or the part. At this point, he does break "the wave function" by interfering.
26. What does the interpreter "observes" in the QW?
27. QWs are not plot-driven. They are not character-driven either. They are modeling-driven, and the modeling has the indeterministic nature.
28. Unlike the traditional fiction that focuses primarily on the artistic meaning QG is mainly concerned with the expansion of unusual realities. The meaning, at this point, can't be
explained by the interpreter, only created by him as another unusual reality of what he "visited." The role of the interpreter of QWs, therefore, is to increase the number of unusual realities through his creative modeling. A traditional formulaic language of synopsis required by literary agents and commercial publishers doesn't work for QG. The QW can't be sold to them and it has no appeal to the general public directed toward obtaining straight information versus ambiguous message.
29. There are no "impossible" interpretations of QWs owing to their flexible and indeterministic structure. At this point, QW could be compared to the game of chess that is "potentially deterministic but effectively indeterministic "chess"."
30. The analogy to the game of chess regarding quantum physics comes naturally since like the game of chess quantum physics deals with indeterministic situations and faces the inability to determine them.
31. The meta-goal of the game of chess is to increase the number of the new positions on the chess board, using styles and methods elaborated for indeterministic systems. [23] In the same way, the meta-goal of the interpreter of the QW is to increase the number of unusual realities. At this point, the interpreter of QW should be like a sophisticated chess player - always innovative, highly imaginative, and indeterministically thinking. His role is to become an "indeterministic, developing" [24] co-creator of QW.
32. The indeterminism observed in literature and physics affects differently "physicists and lyricists." [25] It frustrates the former and excites the latter. As a result, two opposite approaches to indeterminism are observed.
33. Admitting the indeterministic nature of quantum physics, physicists attempt to find a solution to determine it. Here we face a clash between the new - indeterministic - representation of the universe and the old - deterministic - paradigm of thinking.
34. Writers and artists seem to be more adequate to the new conditions. They have intuitively
elaborated indeterministic methods of dealing with indeterministic reality. Instead of managing the artistic system through formulas and laws and calculating probabilities of the improbable they apply another method that was defined by Aron Katsenelinboigen, as predispositioning. [26]
35. Open for further observations and speculations.
C. APPLICATIONS/SURVEYS
1. Writers & Works
Although the idea of the QG occurred to me while I was working on my storylette, I strongly believe it is not limited to my work. First of all, - and this is important for those who reads the manifesto - I am a proponent of theoretical approach. I completely agree with Einstein that theory comes first and the
the variety is viewed through it, not vice versa. The manifesto, therefore, is such an attempt to formulate my theoretical views. The empirical part would be elaborated in time by those who'd be interested in making a research on some experimental works. Generally speaking, any new movement is prepared by a growing "underground" tendency that, as soon as defined, becomes instantly "recognized" by those who intuitively followed it. Therefore, it makes sense to assume that there is a number of experimental works which to a certain extent apply the principles inherent in QG.
I have recently made a survey, asking some editors and writers about authors who work in the experimental genre and may exploit some elements of QG. Again, their comments are only suggestions to read those authors
from another perspective; no research has yet been done.
Rachel Kendall with whom I've discussed the aspects of the manifesto, has named Joshua Walker, Willie Smith, Grant Perry, and Nicholas Alexander Hayes. I had a chance to read the works she mentioned and I agree on her comments regarding some "quantum" qualities in them. Interesting enough, when I referred to her own novel, The Blush, whose excerpts have appeared in Dogmatika, I was amazed by the "quantum" technique she used while describing some scenes. Read, for example, the sex scene below.
I could look up into space and watch my body from above as it writhes and rides, pressing his torso between my thighs and licking the sweat from his throat. (…) I feel like I'm in a dream where you know what's happening and you know who you are but you can't quite see it. I know who or what I am but it's foggy and it changes as from one identity to the next; from one animal form to the next, from a reptile to a bird and every time I morph I have to relearn how to live.
I can't tell about the whole novel, but the inclusion of "quantum episodes" is obviously not alien to her as the writer actively working in the experimental genre.
