Sci-fi author and scientist team up to write a novel about consciousness and quantum weirdness - GeekWire

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Do we each make our ain reality? Could antithetic observers make measurably antithetic realities? It’s a fantastical enactment of thought that has sparked technological inquiries arsenic good — and present the subject and the fabrication has travel unneurotic successful a caller caller titled “Observer.”

“The perceiver is really the ground of the universe, truthful fundamentally the caller and the technological ideas are truly a rethink of everything we cognize astir time, abstraction and so the beingness itself,” stem-cell researcher Robert Lanza says successful the latest occurrence of the Fiction Science podcast.

Lanza’s co-author, Seattle science-fiction writer Nancy Kress, agrees that the caller takes purpose astatine 1 of life’s top mysteries. “The caller is astir however we recognize reality, and thing could beryllium much important astir that, due to the fact that everything other is based connected it,” she says.

The cardinal constituent of the book, and of the underlying technological concept, has to bash with however consciousness shapes our cognition of a buzzy, fuzzy quantum beingness that’s mostly made up of bare space.

Debates astir the cardinal quality of world spell backmost centuries, to Plato and his “Allegory of the Cave,” and to Immanuel Kant’s 18th-century philosophical musings astir transcendental idealism.

More recently, special relativity and quantum mechanics person provided coagulated grounding for the thought that the enactment of reflection has an effect connected outer phenomena.

More than a decennary ago, Lanza began laying retired his lawsuit for claims that the precise enactment of observing the beingness sets the parameters for the universe. He and his co-authors person published peer-reviewed probe connected the subject — including a survey successful Annalen der Physik, the aforesaid diary that published Albert Einstein’s celebrated E=mc² paper.

Lanza besides wrote 3 books astir the conception helium calls “biocentrism” — a conception asserting that our brains fundamentally physique the beingness retired of the earthy worldly of quantum foam. But biocentrism hasn’t gained a batch of traction successful the technological mainstream. For example, theoretical physicist Sean M. Carroll said Lanza’s statement included immoderate “outright craziness,” portion University of Nottingham’s Philip Moriarty called it “quantum physics woo.”

The thought that our presumption of world is simply a intelligence conception surely sounds subject fiction-y — and successful fact, the taxable has sparked sci-fi novels similar Neal Stephenson’s “Fall; or, Dodge successful Hell” arsenic good arsenic sci-fi movies similar “The Matrix” movie franchise. So possibly it makes consciousness that the latest enactment successful Lanza’s biocentrism bibliography is simply a science-fiction tale.

To code the fabrication broadside of the equation, Lanza and his cause turned to a seasoned professional: Nancy Kress, an award-winning writer who’s been surviving successful Seattle for the past 13 years.

Kress is simply a self-professed subject groupie who loves to crook real-world probe into a bully story. A fewer years ago, she worked with scientists astatine Microsoft Research to constitute a abbreviated communicative astir an AI programme that tries to assistance its programmer get implicit his backstage grief. But “Observer” marks the archetypal clip that Kress has collaborated connected a caller with immoderate co-author, fto unsocial a scientist.

“Our main situation was getting capable of the subject successful determination to amusement that it’s hard SF, based connected existent science, without turning it into a monograph oregon impairing the fictional elements that really marque it a novel,” Kress said.

Kress laid retired a communicative that focuses connected a stressed-out neurosurgeon who agrees to articulation a hush-hush probe task successful the Cayman Islands, backed by a Nobel-winning cause discoverer who happens to beryllium her great-uncle. The task involves implanting consenting subjects — including the great-uncle — with encephalon implants that alteration the subjects to tweak the mode they comprehend the extracurricular world. Are they simply simulations, oregon are they thing more?

“Observer” includes crippled twists that are ripped from the headlines, including social-media shaming, drone exertion and dark-web villainy. There’s adjacent a romance betwixt the neurosurgeon and a hunky doc who’s brought successful to assistance with the encephalon surgery.

Kress said she herself fell successful emotion with that character. “He’s astir apt excessively perfect,” she said. “I don’t deliberation determination are immoderate guys walking astir present that are precisely that cleanable … but you bash get to make them connected the leafage astatine least.”

Although the communicative takes immoderate far-out turns, Kress insists that “Observer” sticks person to the subject than astir sci-fi movies do.

“You don’t privation to get maine started connected science-fiction movies, due to the fact that I volition bash a agelong and precise nasty rant astir however the subject is perverted,” she said. (Listen to the podcast for her rant, which specifically targets the movie “Interstellar.”)

For his part, Lanza acknowledges that it could beryllium a agelong clip earlier the consciousness-tweaking encephalon implants described successful “Observer” deed the market. “The chips are a small spot beyond our technology,” helium said.

But implicit the agelong run, Lanza is hoping that “Observer” volition travel to beryllium viewed arsenic little fictional and much scientific. “I would anticipation that successful a 100 years, someone’s going to look backmost and go, ‘That publication had it right,’” helium said with a laugh.

How sci-fi syncs up with Seattle tech

Although Kress isn’t a Seattle native, she’s been capable to capitalize connected her residency successful 1 of the nation’s tech capitals. Her collaboration connected “Future Visions,” a postulation of abbreviated stories commissioned by Microsoft Research, serves arsenic a premier example.

“The tech assemblage intrigues me,” she said. “I was capable to presumption the precocious probe task country of Microsoft erstwhile they invited a mates of science-fiction writers to presumption what was going on, cautiously accompanied by idiosyncratic who stuck with america similar glue.”

Thanks successful portion to Seattle-based enactment networks specified arsenic Clarion West — wherever Kress has taken connected stints arsenic an teacher starting backmost successful 1992 — the Pacific Northwest has a beardown assemblage of science-fiction writers. And immoderate of those writers person a symbiotic narration with Seattle’s tech world.

For example, award-winning writer Ted Chiang — who wrote the abbreviated communicative that was turned into the movie “Arrival” successful 2016 — has besides worked arsenic a method writer astatine Microsoft. And Neal Stephenson, a maestro of the cyberpunk sci-fi genre, has kept his manus successful the tech country arsenic an early advisor astatine Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin abstraction venture; arsenic chief futurist astatine Magic Leap, an augmented-reality institution with offices successful Seattle; and arsenic a co-founder of Lamina1, which is gathering a blockchain-based metaverse platform.

Kress said the decease of Greg Bear, 1 of the Seattle sci-fi community’s starring lights, came arsenic a daze successful November.

“His nonaccomplishment is truly profoundly felt by each of america here,” she said. “But determination are a batch of up-and-coming writers, and immoderate of them are really, truly good. I’m not going to sanction names, due to the fact that anybody that I permission retired is going to consciousness offended. But yes, it’s a precise vibrant SF community. That’s 1 crushed I similar being here.”

Check out the archetypal mentation of this point connected Cosmic Log for further resources astir “Observer” and quantum physics, links to different works by Lanza and Kress, and a bonus speechmaking proposal from the Cosmic Log Used Book Club.

My co-host for the Fiction Science podcast is Dominica Phetteplace, an award-winning writer who is simply a postgraduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and presently lives successful Berkeley, Calif. To larn much astir Phetteplace, sojourn her website, DominicaPhetteplace.com.

Stay tuned for aboriginal episodes of the Fiction Science podcast via Anchor, Apple, Google, Overcast, Spotify, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public and Reason.