{"id":2187,"date":"2024-10-10T08:28:07","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T08:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quantum.closelycoded.site\/?page_id=2187"},"modified":"2024-12-17T09:59:46","modified_gmt":"2024-12-17T09:59:46","slug":"backstory-shinichis-tricycle","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/events.cqt.sg\/shorts\/backstory-shinichis-tricycle\/","title":{"rendered":"Backstory: Shinichi’s Tricycle"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Backstory: Shinichi's Tricycle<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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A Q&A with\u00a0Ariadne Blayde<\/strong>, People\u2019s Choice winner<\/p>

Read the story first: Shinichi’s Tricycle<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Is there anything you would like readers to know about you, beyond the bio in your story?<\/strong><\/p>

I\u2019ve always been passionate about history, the humanities and the arts, but it\u2019s only recently that I have become interested in science. Really, science and art are two sides of the same coin: they are both methods of trying to make sense of the universe and find meaning in it. I\u2019m excited to be stepping into the fascinating world of quantum physics, and wish I could go back to school to learn more.\u00a0<\/p>

And here\u2019s a fun fact about me: until I make it big as a writer, I have the very unscientific day job of telling ghost stories! I give ghost tours in the historic French Quarter of New Orleans, where I live.\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

Where did you get the idea for \u201cShinichi\u2019s Tricycle\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>

I\u2019ve spent the last 9 months researching the Manhattan Project (the United States\u2019 top-secret atomic bomb program) for a novel I\u2019m writing. In January I visited the National Museum of Nuclear History Science and History in Albuquerque. At the museum I learnt about Shinichi, a real boy who died in the bombing of Hiroshima, and saw a picture of his charred tricycle (the real thing is actually on display at the Peace Museum in Hiroshima). Until this point I had spent most of my time thinking and reading about the bomb from the point of view of the scientists who designed it, and the sight of this little boy\u2019s tricycle really helped me understand the suffering the bomb caused in a non-abstract way.\u00a0<\/p>

In the course of my research, I\u2019ve also read a lot about quantum physics. One of the most fascinating ideas in quantum physics, sometimes referred to as \u201cMany Worlds,\u201d explains the baffling results of the famous \u201cdouble slit\u201d experiment (in which a photon behaves as both a particle and a wave, and doesn\u2019t \u201cdecide\u201d which until it is measured) with the proposition that every time an act of measurement occurs, reality splits, yielding parallel realities with a different possibility realized in each. This essentially proposes that every time a decision is made, a parallel reality is created\u2014in which case, there could be all kinds of realities in which nuclear weapons were never developed.\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

The story has an interesting structure, having short scenes and moving forward and backward through time. Was this difficult to plan or write?<\/strong><\/p>

I knew I wanted to write a story that presented two realities: one in which the bomb was dropped, and one in which it wasn\u2019t. The backward\/forward structure of the story followed easily from that concept.\u00a0<\/p>

The only really difficult thing in writing the story was staying within the 1000-word limit. I had a hard time writing succinctly enough to communicate the full idea in such a short space, but it was a fun challenge and I feel that I managed to do it. Without the word limit, I could have gone absolutely wild with this concept. But I am grateful for the 1000-word limit; the economy of language helped me focus the story in an effective way.\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

What kind of research did you do to inform your writing?<\/strong><\/p>

I was absolutely delighted to come across this contest, because it drew on research I\u2019ve already been doing for months. Some favourites from my reading list include:\u00a0American Prometheus<\/em>\u00a0(Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin),\u00a0The Age of Radiance<\/em>\u00a0(Craig Nelson),\u00a0What is Real?<\/em>\u00a0(Adam Becker),\u00a0The Hidden Reality<\/em>\u00a0(Brian Greene),\u00a0The Order of Time<\/em>\u00a0(Carlo Rovelli),\u00a0An Atomic Love Story<\/em>\u00a0(Shirley Streshinsky and Patricia Klaus), and\u00a0109 East Palace<\/em>\u00a0(Jennet Conant).\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

How did you feel about winning the People\u2019s Choice Prize?<\/strong><\/p>

I\u2019m so thrilled! It really gives me hope, because the story is a sketch of my novel-in-progress and getting this kind of validation so early in the process gives me a huge boost of confidence. I am so glad that my story spoke to so many people, and I hope that this success will help me find a literary agent and\/or a publisher for the novel when the time comes.\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

Can you tell us more about the novel that you are working on?<\/strong><\/p>

I keep mentioning it and I\u2019m so happy to finally tell you about it in detail: \u201cShinichi\u2019s Tricycle\u201d contains the main ideas in my novel-in-progress, titled \u201cFirst Cry of a Newborn World.\u201d The novel follows J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller as they develop the atomic bomb in the secret city of Los Alamos, New Mexico; it also follows their two counterparts, versions of them in a parallel reality with different names and lives. In this parallel reality, the bomb was never developed.<\/p>

In my novel, the characters in the no-nuke reality live in an unending, bloody World War III that they are desperate to escape. And so, like the scientists of our own reality\u2019s Manhattan Project, they are working to use quantum theory to create a device that will end the war; but in their case, they are attempting not to split the atom, but to split reality itself. If the device succeeds, they will abandon their timeline for a more peaceful one: ours. Like \u201cShinichi\u2019s Tricycle,\u201d the novel will travel backward and forward in time and across realities, exploring all possibilities of how these scenarios unfold.\u00a0<\/p>

I hope that this novel will bring together historical fiction and speculative fiction in a way that explores not just scientific questions about quantum physics, parallel realities and the nature of time, but philosophical questions as well. What is the self? Can a soul remain intact across dimensions? Can we ever learn to be content with our circumstances, or will we always yearn for something different? How do we make sense of history? And more fundamentally, how do we make sense of time?<\/p>

It\u2019s a huge project but a very exciting one. I hope to have a solid first draft completed within a year.\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

Can you name one or two science-inspired books that you would recommend to others?<\/strong><\/p>

I would highly recommend two collections of science fiction short stories:\u00a0Exhalation<\/em>\u00a0by Ted Chiang, and\u00a0Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation<\/em>, edited by Ken Liu. Both contain beautiful writing and fascinating scientific concepts. Ted Chiang even has a story about parallel realities.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Backstory: Shinichi’s Tricycle A Q&A with\u00a0Ariadne Blayde, People\u2019s Choice winner Read the story first: Shinichi’s Tricycle Is there anything you would like readers to know about you, beyond the bio in your story? I\u2019ve always been passionate about history, the humanities and the arts, but it\u2019s only recently that I have become interested in science. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2187","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBackstory: Shinichi's Tricycle - Quantum Shorts<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/events.cqt.sg\/shorts\/backstory-shinichis-tricycle\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Backstory: Shinichi's Tricycle - Quantum Shorts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Backstory: Shinichi’s Tricycle A Q&A with\u00a0Ariadne Blayde, People\u2019s Choice winner Read the story first: Shinichi’s Tricycle Is there anything you would like readers to know about you, beyond the bio in your story? 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