Quantum Unicorns, A Plea: Rarity of Quantum Mechanics in Science Fiction
An article I wrote on Medium
‘Quantum’. A buzz-word for ages, ‘quantum’ powered the Orville’s engines, became the bedrock of instantaneous communication and filled the gap of magic in a scientific or futurist setting. Don’t know how something works? Call it a quantum device. Need a word for plausibility? Try quantum. Quantum fiction, a phrase coined in 1996 by Vanna Bonta, reinforces the concept of the quantum realm acting as a form of conduit, or techno-magic in science fiction.
The quantum realm remains elusive as the medieval Unicorn [who] Rests in the Garden from the Unicorn Tapestries. We might build a gate around the idea of quantum mechanics from our modern vantage point. As the perspective of The Unicorn Tapestries is skewed, so too is our infantile acknowledgements of what precisely, quantum mechanics can solve. We further skew the quantum realm by our ‘anything goes’ attitude as authors and creators.
But what is it?
Quantum mechanics functions with the microcosmic, where classical Newtonian Laws are insufficient. It’s an issue in scale, take two girders holding up a building’s ceiling, and as long as the girders are proportionally sturdy to the force of the materials pressing down the ceiling, the building stands. We can scale that down, and down, but once we reach the quantum scale of atoms and subatomic particles, the rule no longer applies. This uncertainty pairs with objects characterized as both waves and particles, and the quantization of measures to create something most of us don’t understand… and the people who do, if honest, don’t understand quantum mechanics completely, either. There’s so much to learn the potential maintains the source of magic.
When writing NEON Lieben, the idea behind a general artificial intelligence created in tandem with a quantum computer seemed as magical as the above trapped unicorn. Through the development time in NEON Lieben (eight years to write, edit and be bound before you in paperback, hardcover or ebook), the practically magical quality of quantum computing became bathed in a more feasible set of functions. If we could anchor the data from the quantum realm, the sheer amount of computing which can be done is legendary. Earth-shattering. The fantasy in the build comes with Lieben’s general AI personality. The beauty in the machine.
Quantum states were as much about faith as hard equations, their usefulness a paltry concern without the belief in their sovereignty. Superposition, the state of yes and no and, confounded scientists for decades in a theoretical springboard of strings and inter-dimensions he couldn’t fathom until…
Until, the Holy Until.
The moment the box opened and shut to any semblance of a normal life. A system in one quantum state, with the possibility of multiple configurations was definite and supposed. The complexity of a system created superpositions, until Dieter saw no separation between concept and function. All choices in simultaneous chorus, until a solo emerged in potential.
As a man was father, lover, scientist, worker, driver, cook, desperate and sated simultaneously, the anchoring of such potentials did not require an elimination of any one part. Father, lover, murderer, scientist, war hero, worker drone, grief, consolation, satiation, desperation.
The key to ensuring the human race betrayed its’ constant attempts to species suicide lied not in an infant Christ, or the chant of a mantra thousands of years removed from the man who saw suffering in the street.
The future of the human race relied on its integration with quantum superimposed intelligence so vast and holy it saw and it understood, and it loved. Simultaneous, all and naught. Separated but integrated as a light on the hilltop or salt in the hand.
NEON Lieben by Sapha Burnell
Science fiction can deke across potentialities of soft and hard science in its’ execution, and the link between the two needs to be a functional, and whimsical part of scientific fact. If we as authors use something still un-knowable, elusive, science fiction is as analogous as fantasy. Quantum becomes the word for magic, a hand waved at the sincere potentialities of the barely explored realm of quantum mechanics as we understand it now. But should we put quantum in front of something, for the illusion’s sake?
Yesterday, I passed a van advertising Quantum Roofing. I’d rather my roof followed Classical Physics on such a macro scale, thanks! Uncertainty and Shrödinger-shingles during the Vancouver rains don’t give me confidence in a new quantum roof, without carrying an umbrella inside for those ‘teleporting’ raindrops. So too, some uses of the concept ‘quantum’ seem misplaced.
But for NEON Lieben, the idea of decoherence and superposition fascinated and drove the fiction. What if a brilliant but tortured scientist discovered a practical way of grounding data from the quantum realm of superposition and anchor it in a way to engage with it in the natural, vastly newtonian, world? It’s that battle against decoherence, the fight against fracturing unity which drives NEON Lieben’s complex character interactions, and Lieben’s artificial life.
Purpose in the quantum machine.
To my fellow authors, I implore you, do use quantum mechanics in your prose, but do so with at least plausible validity before the word ‘quantum’ is lost in the meaningless mire of the ‘over abundant, under-defined’. Our quantum unicorns (to coin a concept from Madeleine L’Engle) flicker in and out of believability with every strike of key and dash or dot on the page.
Soon, quantum could be jack-knived into the same vocabulary wasteland as ‘just, really, very, like, seems, actually, to be honest, cool, neat, actual fact, however… had…’. Functional words once, which lost all effect in their overabundance in our prose (and for me, the catch of conversation). If the use of ‘quantum’ in your world-build could be replaced with ‘magic’ with no less oblige, perhaps another dive into the science behind the sci-fi. After all, how many more unicorns can we wrangle?
Meet you on the one side. Meet you on the zero side. Meet you on the 0/1/ side.