The great thing about coining a term is that it gets to carry a bunch of ideas I intended and also a bunch of ideas I never anticipated. Such is the christening of the name hydro-realism. I am unaware of this being coined by someone other than me, though it is possible and, like many of my great ideas, this too was probably stolen.

So what is it? Is it a style of writing? A rebranding of old and well-worn ideas? Is it, for example, another version of magical realism? I suspect not, although there are magical elements to be sure. In magical realism, the world of the mundane meets the uncanny. In this sense, hydro-realism is a version of magical realism. The programs, however, are distinct. The dragons magical realism seek to slay are different than the two-headed dragon I’m pursuing. By that, I mean the all-consuming, world-destroying plague of hyper-realism and its parasitic ethos of unrelenting irony.

Is it a form of realism? It is in the sense that all forms of realism strive in one way or another to portray reality as it is lived and experienced. As a brief aside, there is no need for scare quotes around the terms presented. Everything in this discussion is contextual, so quotes would be redundant.

So what is the realism of Hydro realism? First, it accepts the basic proposition the quantum field theory is our best, most complete, and most accurate picture of understanding the physical world. That’s a good place to start as any because the hydro is meant to be descriptive and structural, not merely mechanical. Hydro, in this sense, encapsulates (perhaps poorly, since words can only serve as headstone markers) the wave-like properties of the universe. The building blocks are not particles roaming around in vector space, but fields and forces. Particles are an emergent reality based upon the interplay of these dynamic fields governed by physical laws.

Second, it accepts the prima facie evidence that the many worlds theory is the best approach to understanding quantum mechanics. In general, you have a universal, non-collapsing wave-function obeying Schrödinger equations evolving over time. Why not simply call it quantum-realism? Probably a matter of taste. It’s a silly proposition to put quantum in front of everything…quantum fiction, quantum writing, quantum tragedy…too many things are described as quantum as to render the word trite and meaningless. Hydro gets to the sense of the reality of the wave-function, this smearing or spreading out across an excited field in Hilbert space.

But I caution not to make too much out of my limited understanding of science. This matters more to me than it should to you. It is really a question of posterity which everyone is entitled to presume. It is a statement about the way I think and process rather than a true article of conviction. In other words, these ideas are not necessary to the enjoyment of my writing. The point of fiction is not to discover brand new formulas and equations, but to entertain. The enlightenment is mine alone. I write to entertain and illuminate the grey clouds of my mind. My role as a writer is to explore the problems of moral freedom and possibility given a QFT framework.