Quantum fiction

Quantum fiction is a literary genre that reflects modern experience of the material world and reality as influenced by quantum theory and new principles in quantum physics. The genre is not necessarily science-themed and 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. Quantum fiction is characterized by the use of an element in quantum mechanics as a storytelling device. In quantum fiction, everyday life hinges on some aspect of the quantum nature of reality.

The genre reflects the modern human experience of new perceptions about material reality as affected by quantum physics, which transcends mechanical models of science and factors in imagination and human perception as components of reality. This genre is characterized by any or all of the following characteristics:

Novelist Vanna Bonta claimed to have coined the term quantum fiction in 1996, when she published her novel Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel. In the story, the protagonist struggles to tell real life from elements in a novel he is writing, as people and events from his novel begin to appear in reality. The first line of Bonta's novel is "Which came first—the observer or the particle?"

Bonta defined quantum fiction as stories in which consciousness affects physics and determines reality; in her words, "the genre is broad and includes life." Bonta further explained 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. The genre is broad, and includes life because fiction is an inextricable part of reality in its various stages, and vice versa."

Usage of the term quantum fiction began to appear in 21st-century books and academic papers that identified and discussed a new and emerging literary genre that is affected by the new view of the world given by quantum physics. Various artists, academia, and critics explored it independently of one another and in various contexts with the common denominator of a new literary genre. By 2010, hindsight reveals a movement and usage by multiple authors and critics.

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