I'm trying to find a great story I read in an SF compilation book of some sort.
It was about a poet living in a world where we can simulate universes in computers, and people like him go in and basically plagiarize the art - stories, poetry - and sell it to people in our universe.
Problems occur when the universe in the simulation figure out how to do it, because it nests too many universes and it's too much data. At the end:
we realize his universe is collapsing because it's simulated too.
This could be Hugh Howey's The Plagiarist:
Adam Griffey is living two lives. By day, he teaches literature. At night, he steals it. Adam is a plagiarist, an expert reader with an eye for great works. He prowls simulated worlds perusing virtual texts, looking for the next big thing. And when he finds it, he memorizes it page by page, line by line, word for word. And then he brings it back to his world.
But what happens when these virtual worlds begin to seem more real than his own? What happens when the people within them mean more to him than flesh and blood? What happens when a living thing falls in love with someone who does not actually exist?
This review mentions the recursion and the negative effects that lead from it:
When the virtual worlds create more and more virtual worlds of their own, the servers in the real world are pushed to their limit, and some programs are slated for deletion.
I found it by looking at Similar works for Daniel Galouye's "Simulacron-3".
