Quantum suicide and quantum immortality in fiction
Authors of science fiction have used themes involving both quantum suicide and immortality. The basic idea is that a person who dies on one world may survive in another world or parallel universe.
Quantum suicide
Quantum suicide themes have been explored in the following works:
Quantum immortality
Quantum immortality themes have been explored in several works:
Books
TV and film
- The episode Perfect Circles in the third season of Six Feet Under contains references and allusions to quantum immortality, as a major character observes several possible outcomes of his life.
- In David Lindsay-Abaire's play Rabbit Hole, a grieving mother takes solace in the possibility that her dead son may enjoy quantum immortality. She comes to prefer to believe that this world in which she lives may simply be a "sadder version" of other co-existing, parallel universes. Rabbit Hole won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
- In The Prestige, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) repeatedly duplicates himself and kills his previous copy; his continued belief in the survival of his consciousness in the new (living) copy mirrors the principles of quantum immortality without utilizing parallel universes.
- In Source Code, Capt. Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) repeatedly experiences "death" as he investigates the bombing of a train. Ultimately, he survives in the universe where the train was not bombed and no one died.
- In the Stargate series, as well as plenty of other science fiction TV shows, the writers regularly brought back "dead" characters for an episode using this mechanic. They also used it to temporarily "kill" characters; in episodes where the timeline is altered and must be fixed, regulars were sometimes killed before the rest of the team finally fixed the timeline, restoring the killed characters in the process.
- In the Misfits series, especially in the "Episode four" of the first season, main characters are killed or end up in terrible situations, but are resurrected as time is rewound.
Video games
- In the video game Alan Wake (Remedy Entertainment, 2010), an in-game TV series called "Night Springs" has a demonstration of quantum immortality, in which a scientist demonstrates that a gun he is holding can't fire. However, the device used to maintain this quantum immortality is accidentally unplugged and the scientist dies.
Webcomics