The Observer Problem in Fiction

April 8, 2026 — Craft — The Classical Zone

Part of The Classical Zone blog series.

How the scientific observer problem — the act of observation changes the observed — maps onto the literary problem of character. The meta-question beneath both the books and the writing of the books.

In quantum mechanics, the act of observation collapses the wave function. Before observation, a particle exists in a superposition of possible states. After observation, it exists in one definite state. The observation has changed the thing observed — not just our knowledge of it, but the thing itself.

This is not a metaphor. It is a physical fact.

The Literary Observer Problem

In fiction, the act of writing about a character changes the character. Before the writer commits to a description, the character exists in a superposition of possible versions. After the description, the character is fixed — not just in the writer's mind, but in the reader's. The act of writing has collapsed the wave function of the character.

This is also not a metaphor. It is what happens.

The question that interests me — the question that is, I think, beneath all of my books — is what it means to observe something carefully. What it costs. What it changes. What it reveals.

The Cost of Observation

In The Dimming, the cost of observation is literal: the act of looking at the stars is dimming them. The universe is paying a price for being observed. The physicist going blind is, in some sense, the universe's attempt to reduce the cost.

In the Substrate Series, the observer problem is the central mystery: why does the act of observation collapse the wave function? What is it about consciousness that changes physical reality? The hypothesis the series explores — that the substrate of reality is an attending mind — is, among other things, an answer to this question.

Writing as Observation

When I write a character, I am observing them. I am collapsing their wave function. I am making them real in a way that has consequences — for the character, for the reader, for the story.

The responsibility of this is something I think about. The characters in my books are not real people, but they are not not-real either. They are something in between — possibilities that have been collapsed into specificity by the act of writing.

The act of observation changes the observed. The act of writing changes the written. The act of reading changes the reader.

This is the observer problem in fiction. It is also, I think, the reason fiction matters.