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The Science Finction Universe of Lindsay Ellis · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, I've got an idea for a new movie genre.
0:11
Speaker 1: Who I'm excited and a little terrified. Well you should be, because,
0:16
Speaker 1: first of all, you've got aliens in this movie. Okay,
0:18
Speaker 1: I'm loving it so far. Okay. And now you add
0:21
Speaker 1: a romance connection and you get an alien rom com,
0:26
Speaker 1: you know you might have something there. Miscommunication is the
0:30
Speaker 1: basis for basically every rom com. Yeah, and can you
0:33
Speaker 1: imagine the meat cute giant spaceships first looks? Love it
0:38
Speaker 1: first standing. It gives the phrase first contact a whole
0:41
Speaker 1: new spin. That might be an approvate Daniel, It'll be
0:46
Speaker 1: p G. I'm sure I am more handmade cartoonists and
1:03
Speaker 1: the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a
1:06
Speaker 1: particle physicist, and I want to have some relationship with aliens,
1:10
Speaker 1: but maybe not that kind of relationship, just the intellectual kind, right, Yeah,
1:14
Speaker 1: I want a platonic conversation with the aliens. You don't
1:18
Speaker 1: want to be friends with them, you just want to
1:19
Speaker 1: be like colleagues. No, I definitely want to physics zone them,
1:23
Speaker 1: all right. I don't want to give them the wrong
1:25
Speaker 1: impression and say, you know, I have other intentions, right,
1:27
Speaker 1: But what if they're really cool, you want to hang
1:30
Speaker 1: out with them? You know, I don't really know what
1:31
Speaker 1: those social cues are. You know, how do you read
1:34
Speaker 1: the signs? And alien is throwing you right? If you
1:36
Speaker 1: put a tentacle in a certain you know shape, who knows,
1:40
Speaker 1: how do one interpret that? Yeah? Exactly if you cross
1:43
Speaker 1: off something in my equation, what does that mean? Usually
1:47
Speaker 1: that you're the professor and the other person is the
1:49
Speaker 1: crowd student. But welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge
1:52
Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio, in
1:55
Speaker 1: which we think about all the crazy and hilarious stuff
1:58
Speaker 1: that's going on in our universe, all the weird stuff
2:01
Speaker 1: that's happening here on Earth, all the stuff that might
2:04
Speaker 1: be happening on an alien planet somewhere where they are
2:07
Speaker 1: also trying to figure out the universe. We squish it
2:10
Speaker 1: all up and we try to stuff it into your
2:12
Speaker 1: brain in just forty short minutes. That's right, because it's
2:15
Speaker 1: a big universe, and who knows what's out there or
2:18
Speaker 1: who is out there? And hopefully we are not alone
2:21
Speaker 1: in trying to figure out the secrets of the universe.
2:24
Speaker 1: Hopefully there's a whole community of physicists and mathematicians and
2:27
Speaker 1: scientists out there trying to puzzle over the nature of
2:30
Speaker 1: this beautiful and bonkers universe, and one day we could
2:33
Speaker 1: all get together and share notes and maybe even meet
2:36
Speaker 1: cute Do you think it'd be collegial, Daniel, like when
2:39
Speaker 1: you feel competitive with the aliens, like when they put
2:42
Speaker 1: you out of a job. If they come here with
2:44
Speaker 1: all the answers to particle physics, I don't think I'd
2:47
Speaker 1: feel more competitive with the aliens than I do with
2:49
Speaker 1: my other physics colleagues already, That's what I mean. Like,
2:52
Speaker 1: you know only one person can get the intergalactic Noble Price. Yeah,
2:57
Speaker 1: well I already have tenures, so I don't have to
2:58
Speaker 1: worry about my job. He don't care like dealing comes,
3:03
Speaker 1: Let them do my job for me, so I can
3:05
Speaker 1: work less, even less. What if the aliens come and
3:10
Speaker 1: then they take over all the good jobs? You're saying
3:12
Speaker 1: so like human grad students can become professors anymore. I mean,
3:16
Speaker 1: like they come with all the answers, so there's nothing
3:18
Speaker 1: for you to do. There's always going to be something
3:21
Speaker 1: to do. Even if they come with answers to our
3:23
Speaker 1: current questions. There are always more questions. You know that
3:27
Speaker 1: every answer just leads to more questions. Maybe they have
3:30
Speaker 1: tenure two and they are slacking off too, that's one
3:33
Speaker 1: thing to hope for. But anyway, there is a lot
3:36
Speaker 1: of space out there in the universe, and it might
3:39
Speaker 1: be filled with other species, and who knows what kinds
3:42
Speaker 1: of wonders are out there, And so that's a big
3:44
Speaker 1: part of physics to wonder about this and to think
3:47
Speaker 1: about what could be out there and for us to
3:49
Speaker 1: discover that's right. And also to do some thinking in
3:52
Speaker 1: advance about how we might talk to those aliens if
3:55
Speaker 1: they did come and visit. Could we communicate with them mathematically?
3:58
Speaker 1: Would we be able to figure out their language? Would
4:01
Speaker 1: there be some really awkward moments when we don't know
4:03
Speaker 1: what to say or they say the wrong thing. It's
4:06
Speaker 1: actually useful to think these things through because then the
4:09
Speaker 1: day that aliens do arrive, we will have figured out
4:11
Speaker 1: maybe a few strategies. Yeah, and so some advanced thinkers
4:15
Speaker 1: in this area of science and research are science fiction authors.
4:20
Speaker 1: Absolutely their job is to think of interesting possibilities for
4:23
Speaker 1: what could happen or what could be out there, or
4:25
Speaker 1: what what happened if we ever meet or discover these things.
4:29
Speaker 1: That's right. Even though science fiction authors are not always
4:31
Speaker 1: living in our actual, factual universe, they are on the
4:35
Speaker 1: cutting edge of thought, because where are they living, Daniel,
4:39
Speaker 1: If not in our universe? Are saying that authors are
4:41
Speaker 1: aliens to interdimensional aliens. They're living in a fictional universe,
4:46
Speaker 1: which amazingly is stored inside their brain, which is inside
4:49
Speaker 1: our universe. So that's sort of cool, Like our universe
4:53
Speaker 1: contains in it models of other universes inside people's brains.
4:57
Speaker 1: It sounds like the next Christopher Nolan movie. Yeah, I'm
5:02
Speaker 1: going to get a credit for that one. Christopher called
5:04
Speaker 1: me up. But the cool thing is that that's exactly
5:07
Speaker 1: what physicists do, right. I have in my mind several
5:10
Speaker 1: possible universes that I'm wondering about. Is this one hour universe?
5:14
Speaker 1: Isn't that one hour universe? So it's a pretty important
5:16
Speaker 1: job to be creative and come up with other universes
5:19
Speaker 1: that might actually relate to reality, that might give us
5:22
Speaker 1: inside into how ours work. So we on the podcast
5:25
Speaker 1: are always champions of science fiction authors on the cutting
5:28
Speaker 1: edge of thought. Yeah, and so do they on the program.
5:31
Speaker 1: We'll be tackling the science fiction universe of Lindsay Ellis.
5:40
Speaker 1: That's right. Lindsay Ellis is the author of a really
5:43
Speaker 1: fun book called axioms End, which explores a lot of
5:46
Speaker 1: these topics in some pretty interesting ways. Yeah, and this
5:49
Speaker 1: is part of our series of science fiction author interviews
5:53
Speaker 1: and discussions about their work. We have a bunch of
5:55
Speaker 1: them in the podcast archive, right, Daniel, that's right. We've
5:58
Speaker 1: talked to a huge number of really fun and creative
6:01
Speaker 1: authors who have been really generous and told us about
6:03
Speaker 1: how they created the universe of their novel. This is
6:07
Speaker 1: the literary podcast. We're digging into the physics of their universe.
6:10
Speaker 1: Is it plausible, how does it work, how do they
6:12
Speaker 1: put it together? And what can we learn about our
6:15
Speaker 1: universe from their created fictional universe. Yeah. To Science Literary
6:19
Speaker 1: Podcast on occasion. So if you're interested in discovering new
6:23
Speaker 1: authors or hearing interviews with well known authors of science fic,
6:27
Speaker 1: champ check out our archive. Do you think if you
6:29
Speaker 1: wrote a science fiction novel you'd be up for being
6:31
Speaker 1: interrogated about the physics of it by physicists. I get
6:34
Speaker 1: interrogated by physicists every week, twice a week. Actually, wouldn't
6:39
Speaker 1: be it wouldn't be that hard, you'd be especially experienced. Yeah,
6:44
Speaker 1: I have a special degree on that. Then you should
6:46
Speaker 1: write a science fiction though that sounds like something to
6:49
Speaker 1: add to your list. Write horror. It's more like horror
6:53
Speaker 1: or you know, period drama. Your horror novel is called
6:57
Speaker 1: being on a podcast with the Physicist Scream. That's right,
7:01
Speaker 1: Misery Part two. But anyway, so we're talking to me
7:04
Speaker 1: about Lindsay Ellis's work, and she's a pretty interesting author.
7:07
Speaker 1: I mean, she's pretty multifaceted, and she does a lot
7:10
Speaker 1: of things online, right, Yeah, she has a pretty big
7:12
Speaker 1: presence online. She has a YouTube channel, and she does
7:15
Speaker 1: literary criticism, and so this is the beginning of her
7:19
Speaker 1: career as an author. She's like cracking into the science
7:22
Speaker 1: fiction community. It's pretty cool to see that the community
7:24
Speaker 1: is open this way, that people can still come in
7:26
Speaker 1: with a new idea and a debut novel and make
7:29
Speaker 1: the best seller list. Yeah, it's a pretty big splash.
7:31
Speaker 1: I mean, she made the New York Times best seller
7:34
Speaker 1: listen her first trying. Yeah, exactly of her novels have
7:37
Speaker 1: been best sellers. Yeah, that's a pretty good it's right there.
7:41
Speaker 1: But congratulations to her and so they were going to
7:43
Speaker 1: talk about her book Axioms and meaning like the end
7:47
Speaker 1: of axioms or like the end of an axiom. It's
7:51
Speaker 1: the end of an axiom. Yeah, And I don't want
7:53
Speaker 1: to spoil exactly what the title means because you only
7:55
Speaker 1: find out about two thirds of the way through the book.
7:57
Speaker 1: But a lot of the book is about questioning your axioms,
8:00
Speaker 1: is about questioning your thoughts about how the universe worked,
8:03
Speaker 1: and also questioning your thoughts about how aliens operate and
8:06
Speaker 1: how to communicate with them. It's sort of like a
8:09
Speaker 1: paradigm shift. It's kind of what it's about. Yeah, exactly,
8:13
Speaker 1: all right, Well, maybe step us through. What is the
8:15
Speaker 1: basic premise of the book. Well, in the universe that
8:17
Speaker 1: she created, it's like a slightly alternative history goes back
8:20
Speaker 1: to two thousand and seven, all the way back to
8:22
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, I know exactly. If you can cast
8:25
Speaker 1: your mind back before your fuzzy memories of how the
8:29
Speaker 1: world used to work, it does feel like a different world,
8:31
Speaker 1: doesn't it. Well, she literally has a different world. And
8:35
Speaker 1: in her world, aliens have arrived on Earth, but they
8:38
Speaker 1: arrived like decades ago, you know, in the sixties and
8:41
Speaker 1: the government covered it up. So it's sort of like
8:44
Speaker 1: the ros Will scenario where there aliens and Area fifty one,
8:47
Speaker 1: but only the government knows about them. Wow. So in
8:50
Speaker 1: the fifties they landed like in flying Saucers or so,
8:53
Speaker 1: they landed decades ago and they sort of crash landed.
8:56
Speaker 1: But then the governments are like swept it up and
8:58
Speaker 1: kept it under wraps until more aliens arrive. So now
9:02
Speaker 1: here we are in two thousand and seven, more aliens
9:04
Speaker 1: are landing and the secret is getting out. They have
9:06
Speaker 1: like a Julian Assange like character that's trying to blow
9:09
Speaker 1: the whistle on the government and leak the fact that
9:11
Speaker 1: the government has been keeping aliens a secret for decades
9:15
Speaker 1: and then it's all blown up when more aliens arrive. Wow.
9:17
Speaker 1: You know, I've always wondered why in all these science
9:20
Speaker 1: fiction movies and shows they always to portray the government
9:24
Speaker 1: is wanting to cover this up. Do you know where
9:25
Speaker 1: that comes from? Like, what would be the rationale for
9:27
Speaker 1: government to cover it up? I don't think there is
9:29
Speaker 1: any rationale. I think it's a born of conspiracy theories,
9:33
Speaker 1: Like it just doesn't make any sense, doesn't make any
9:36
Speaker 1: sense from an individual point of view, like why would
9:38
Speaker 1: an individual scientist or government worker not want to share
9:42
Speaker 1: this information? And it doesn't make sense from the sort
9:44
Speaker 1: of government policy point of view, like I never believe
9:47
Speaker 1: the argument that, like people are gonna go crazy if
9:49
Speaker 1: they find out, like you gotta deal with it. There's
9:52
Speaker 1: plenty of bad news out there, you know, just let
9:54
Speaker 1: us know and we'll figure out a policy. So I
9:56
Speaker 1: never really made sense to me. I think it just
9:58
Speaker 1: comes from people who think the government is lying to
10:00
Speaker 1: us about everything because the government has lied to us
10:03
Speaker 1: about stuff before. Just a general sort of suspicion of government. Yeah, exactly.
10:09
Speaker 1: And also, if you want to believe that aliens exist
10:12
Speaker 1: and the government is not telling us that they do,
10:14
Speaker 1: then the only way for you to believe that the
10:16
Speaker 1: government has aliens is to assume that they're lying. Right. Well, So, anyways,
10:21
Speaker 1: in the book, the aliens landed a long time ago,
10:24
Speaker 1: and then they just started landing again. Now that she
10:27
Speaker 1: explained why they came back, yeah, she does. The aliens
10:30
Speaker 1: that have landed now are sort of coming after the
10:32
Speaker 1: ones that landed forty years ago. But one of the
10:34
Speaker 1: really fascinating things about the aliens that landed forty years ago.
10:37
Speaker 1: Is that they didn't die. It's not like they crash
10:39
Speaker 1: landed and we have corpses. The government has custody of
10:43
Speaker 1: living aliens. But the fascinating thing is that those aliens
10:46
Speaker 1: have been refusing to communicate, They like ignored every effort
10:50
Speaker 1: to make contact or talk to them. Wow, because we
10:54
Speaker 1: imprisoned them, or they're just being shy, or they're just
10:59
Speaker 1: giving us a cultural Well, that's a great question, right,
11:01
Speaker 1: and it goes to the heart of like why are
11:03
Speaker 1: the aliens doing something? To answer that question, you have
11:06
Speaker 1: to understand, like what do the aliens want? Why are
11:08
Speaker 1: they here? What's important to them? And that's really the
11:11
Speaker 1: heart of the book is trying to make sense of
11:13
Speaker 1: could you ever understand what the aliens want and why
11:17
Speaker 1: they do things? Can you even do basic communication with
11:20
Speaker 1: the aliens? Could you develop a language to talk to them?
11:22
Speaker 1: And even if you had that, could you ever really
11:25
Speaker 1: understand them and empathize with them? Right? Right? Because who
11:28
Speaker 1: knows they're what conditions they evolved, right, they could have
11:31
Speaker 1: evolved on their totally different conditions, and so there are
11:33
Speaker 1: a sort of way we see the world could be
11:35
Speaker 1: totally different than the way they see the world. Absolutely,
11:38
Speaker 1: it's very tempting to think about aliens and sort of
11:40
Speaker 1: star tricky with They're like us, but just a tiny
11:43
Speaker 1: little bit different. So talking to aliens is sort of
11:46
Speaker 1: like talking to somebody from the other side of the
11:48
Speaker 1: world that each stuff that feels weird to you, but
11:51
Speaker 1: you're capable of sort of extending and extrapolating from your
11:54
Speaker 1: experience to theirs. And do you hear It's like aliens
11:56
Speaker 1: will be pretty alien, and so it might even be
11:59
Speaker 1: that there's so puzzling that they just ignore you for
12:02
Speaker 1: forty years for reasons of their own. I like that
12:06
Speaker 1: element of it. There's a realistic sense of frustration and
12:09
Speaker 1: difficulty in the same sense of like remember that movie Arrival,
12:12
Speaker 1: aliens show up, it's just sort of like, what's your deal?
12:14
Speaker 1: What are you doing here? It's hard to even know
12:16
Speaker 1: how to begin communicating with them. They're so weird, right,
12:19
Speaker 1: But I guess I have questions about the practicality of it,
12:22
Speaker 1: like how do you keep aliens hitting somewhere? Do you
12:24
Speaker 1: have to like put them in a cage habitat? And
12:27
Speaker 1: how do you feed them? What do they eat and poop? Yeah? Right,
12:31
Speaker 1: so these aliens, they keep them under wraps, and the
12:34
Speaker 1: aliens are actually like self powered. So these aliens have
12:37
Speaker 1: pretty cool biological technology. They're actually post biological. They're like
12:43
Speaker 1: part nervous system, but the rest of them is sort
12:45
Speaker 1: of like advanced cyboards. And they come with some internal
12:49
Speaker 1: power source, so I guess they don't need to eat
12:51
Speaker 1: for decades. You have some sort of magical like nuclear
12:55
Speaker 1: something source inside of him, and then they're they're like
12:58
Speaker 1: in a cage or dome or how did they how
13:01
Speaker 1: are they kept? Yeah, so the government keeps them basically
13:04
Speaker 1: in the equivalent of Area fifty one and has been
13:06
Speaker 1: constantly trying to communicate with them, but they just sort
13:09
Speaker 1: of sit there, ignoring the scientists until the new Aliens arrive,
13:13
Speaker 1: and then everything changes. What happens when the new Aliens arrived.
13:17
Speaker 1: So the new Aliens arrive and they meet the main character,
13:20
Speaker 1: the protagonist, and then they try to rescue the original aliens.
13:23
Speaker 1: They try to save the original aliens. So then the protagonists,
13:26
Speaker 1: the person that we get to know best as the character,
13:29
Speaker 1: actually ends up trying to serve as an interpreter between
13:32
Speaker 1: this new alien and the rest of humanity. On this
13:35
Speaker 1: new aliens mission to rescue the original aliens from a
13:38
Speaker 1: third match of aliens that are coming to take them out. WHOA,
13:42
Speaker 1: maybe we should have given a split elder. That sounds
13:45
Speaker 1: like a big part of the plot, so that the
13:47
Speaker 1: new aliens can communicate and do communicate with the main character.
13:50
Speaker 1: They can and they have decided to. And so a
13:53
Speaker 1: lot of the book is about learning, like what's that
13:55
Speaker 1: like for the aliens? How to communicate with the aliens?
13:57
Speaker 1: Why haven't the original ones communicated? And it's really fun
14:01
Speaker 1: and fascinating And if you've read the book, I would
14:03
Speaker 1: love to hang out and have coffee and talk to
14:04
Speaker 1: you about it, but I don't want to give too
14:06
Speaker 1: much away about the sort of intellectual ideas behind the book, right, right?
14:10
Speaker 1: And so what do they look like? Are they humanoid?
14:12
Speaker 1: Do they look like a cube? What do the what
14:15
Speaker 1: do the alien bodies look like? They're sort of humanoid
14:18
Speaker 1: in my mind's eye, they look a little bit like
14:20
Speaker 1: the alien in the movie Alien that's like a big
14:24
Speaker 1: long head and really really large eyes, but roughly humanoid.
14:28
Speaker 1: But they're not like, you know, a big gaseous cloud
14:31
Speaker 1: or like a gelatinous cube or anything too weird. So
14:34
Speaker 1: is that part of the conspiracy that the movie alien
14:36
Speaker 1: actually came from the real aliens. You just birth that
14:41
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory right here today. Man, good job, all right,
14:45
Speaker 1: but it spread disinformation. Done my duty for today. So
14:48
Speaker 1: that the whole character arc and the arc of the
14:50
Speaker 1: book is really about this character getting to know this
14:53
Speaker 1: one alien that's coming to rescue the others and learning
14:56
Speaker 1: also sort of the larger context of the galaxy. How
14:59
Speaker 1: many species are out there, how many intelligent species there are,
15:02
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. So, you know, from the point
15:04
Speaker 1: of view with somebody who's really curious about whether this
15:07
Speaker 1: is true in reality, is fascinating for this character at
15:10
Speaker 1: least to get some answers. Oh, I see that the
15:13
Speaker 1: new aliens that come and talk to our main character
15:16
Speaker 1: sort of give them the scoop on what's going on
15:18
Speaker 1: in the galaxy. Yeah, a little bit, and sort of grudgingly,
15:21
Speaker 1: what does that mean? Those aliens are not here to
15:24
Speaker 1: educate us and share, you know, their intellectual wealth. They're
15:27
Speaker 1: here to save their brothers and sisters. So, you know,
15:30
Speaker 1: only when absolutely necessary do they give away a tidbit
15:33
Speaker 1: of information that we are desperate to learn. Honestly, the
15:36
Speaker 1: humans are like the annoying kid who keeps asking questions, yes,
15:39
Speaker 1: exactly how many of you are there? And how do
15:42
Speaker 1: you achieve fascinating like trottle that kind of thing exactly?
15:46
Speaker 1: So does she paint a friendly universe out there or
15:48
Speaker 1: does she paintless sort of like a warring kind of
15:51
Speaker 1: hostile universe. It's a complicated question. The picture she paints
15:54
Speaker 1: is that communication with aliens is complicated, is difficult, It
15:58
Speaker 1: is maybe impossible and potentially dangerous because meeting these aliens
16:03
Speaker 1: and talk to them could begin a conflict between humans
16:06
Speaker 1: and those aliens. And so it's not necessarily seen as
16:09
Speaker 1: like a good thing to establish communication with these aliens.
16:12
Speaker 1: It's a tricky topic. I says, tricky because you might
16:14
Speaker 1: say the wrong thing and the next thing you know,
16:16
Speaker 1: you're in a star war. That's right, you say, hey,
16:19
Speaker 1: didn't I see you guys in that movie? And then boom,
16:21
Speaker 1: humanity is eradicated. The worst thing you can say to
16:24
Speaker 1: an alien, aren't you? The ones based on that movie
16:26
Speaker 1: Alien by Ridley Scott? How dare you? And that's why
16:29
Speaker 1: we don't send cartoonists to be ambassadors or anything. Keeping
16:34
Speaker 1: my home in a pencil and paper and that's it,
16:38
Speaker 1: all right, Well, let's get into some of the signs
16:40
Speaker 1: that she talks about in her novel Lncy Ellis is
16:43
Speaker 1: Axioms End, and then let's get to your interview with her.
16:46
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. Alright. We're talking
17:01
Speaker 1: about the science fiction universe of author Lindsay Ellis and
17:04
Speaker 1: her book Axioms And, which is about aliens coming to
17:08
Speaker 1: visit us and giving us a culturaler exactly. And it's
17:13
Speaker 1: about how to develop communication with aliens, you know, how
17:16
Speaker 1: you actually would get to talk to them and ask
17:19
Speaker 1: them questions and use them as a way to learn
17:21
Speaker 1: about the universe, and whether that's at all possible. M
17:24
Speaker 1: all right, So maybe step us through. What are some
17:26
Speaker 1: of the interesting science bits that she uses or imagines
17:30
Speaker 1: or talks about in her book. So the main character
17:32
Speaker 1: in the book is actually a linguist who went to
17:35
Speaker 1: UC Irvine. No way, why did you get her degree? Totally? Yes? Absolutely,
17:40
Speaker 1: nice to see you see I like appear in culture somewhere.
17:44
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Why it's I'm not I'm not saying anything
17:49
Speaker 1: against your university, but it does seem like an unlikely
17:51
Speaker 1: university to pick. Does she have roots in California or something?
17:54
Speaker 1: How did how did she arrive at that, did you
17:55
Speaker 1: ask her? Yeah, she lives in Long Beach, and so
17:58
Speaker 1: I think she just wanted sort of like a nearby
18:00
Speaker 1: university and the story takes place in l A. I
18:02
Speaker 1: also suspect she didn't want it to be too glamorous.
18:05
Speaker 1: And the character is actually the kind of student we
18:06
Speaker 1: get at U see I, you know, first in her
18:08
Speaker 1: family to go to college, not very wealthy, and so
18:11
Speaker 1: I think it actually puts U. C. I in a
18:13
Speaker 1: good light. You know, it offers an opportunity for lots
18:15
Speaker 1: of folks to get an education. Nice. So I guess
18:17
Speaker 1: maybe the main kind of science topic here is about
18:20
Speaker 1: communication with alien and I guess she posits the question
18:24
Speaker 1: of whether it's even possible to talk to an alien,
18:26
Speaker 1: like maybe they're so alien we can't even have a
18:29
Speaker 1: common basis on which to talk or communicate. Yeah, And
18:33
Speaker 1: she used this sort of linguistic knowledge of this main
18:35
Speaker 1: character to talk about how human knowledge is put together
18:38
Speaker 1: and trying to speculate about how an alien language might
18:41
Speaker 1: work and how you might sort of build the basic
18:44
Speaker 1: primitives you would need to learn to communicate with them.
18:47
Speaker 1: And so I give her kudos for like thinking it through.
18:49
Speaker 1: You know, it's not just like you start pointing and
18:51
Speaker 1: stuff and saying the words and then five minutes later
18:54
Speaker 1: you're having a deep conversation about philosophy. She does take
18:57
Speaker 1: us on that tour, and there's lots of you new
18:59
Speaker 1: things that are misunderstood, and subtle cultural references that aren't
19:03
Speaker 1: included in words. You know, there's there's a lot of
19:05
Speaker 1: that good stuff. But also she assumes that these aliens,
19:08
Speaker 1: the ones that arrived in her book, can have their
19:10
Speaker 1: language sort of cracked by this sort of linguistic analysis,
19:13
Speaker 1: that it's even possible to communicate with them, right, because
19:16
Speaker 1: I guess you have to assume, since there are a
19:19
Speaker 1: space faring civilization or species, that they do have communication
19:23
Speaker 1: at least between them. There there must be some way,
19:25
Speaker 1: assuming there are sort of separate you know, consciousness and
19:28
Speaker 1: minds and and things like that. It's not a hive
19:30
Speaker 1: mind or the borg, they must have some way to
19:33
Speaker 1: communicate themselves. So, you know, there must be something there
19:37
Speaker 1: that we can maybe the code or you know, figure out.
19:40
Speaker 1: I think it's a pretty good assumption that aliens will
19:42
Speaker 1: communicate with each other, but whether we could decode it
19:45
Speaker 1: and figure it out. I think that assumes a lot
19:48
Speaker 1: about the way alien brains work and the way they think,
19:51
Speaker 1: you know, the conditions under which they evolved. I think
19:54
Speaker 1: we want to be real about it. I think it
19:55
Speaker 1: would be really extraordinarily difficult. We'd be very, very lucky.
19:58
Speaker 1: I mean, there are still human languages that we have
20:01
Speaker 1: not decoded. Remember how difficult it was to decode like
20:04
Speaker 1: Egyptian hieroglyphics. If we didn't have the Rosetta stone, we
20:07
Speaker 1: might not have ever figured it out. And so there's
20:09
Speaker 1: lots of difficulties there. Just because you have a speaker
20:12
Speaker 1: of that language doesn't mean you can decoded, right. But
20:16
Speaker 1: you know, I guess there Rosettas done was hard because
20:18
Speaker 1: we didn't have anyone who knew those languages to talk to.
20:22
Speaker 1: But do you think maybe, you know, if somebody was alive,
20:24
Speaker 1: that you could maybe have a conversation and start to
20:27
Speaker 1: figure it out. I imagine, if there is life out
20:29
Speaker 1: there in the universe, it must have some sort of
20:31
Speaker 1: commonalities to our life, what it means to be alive
20:34
Speaker 1: and not alive, and also physics and math and things
20:36
Speaker 1: like that. Right, wouldn't that give us some common basis
20:39
Speaker 1: to start with? Perhaps? But that's sort of the exciting
20:42
Speaker 1: thing about this question. We're hoping if we do meet
20:44
Speaker 1: alien life, it will surprise us that it will exist
20:47
Speaker 1: in ways we hadn't imagined where possible, it will communicate
20:51
Speaker 1: or think in ways that we never even thought of.
20:53
Speaker 1: That's the purpose of exploration, right to go out and
20:56
Speaker 1: be surprised by reality, to see you when it disagrees
20:59
Speaker 1: with your preconcess options. And so it's sort of easy
21:02
Speaker 1: to imagine, Yeah, life could be sort of similar to
21:04
Speaker 1: us in these basic ways. We assume that these foundational
21:07
Speaker 1: things have to exist. But I'm hoping to be surprised,
21:10
Speaker 1: So I don't think it would make for a very
21:12
Speaker 1: fun book, though, you know, if aliens showed up and
21:14
Speaker 1: we just like couldn't talk to them for a hundred years,
21:16
Speaker 1: like not in a great story, you know. So I
21:19
Speaker 1: get as a as a sort of literary device, how
21:21
Speaker 1: she had to sort of assume aliens were similar enough
21:24
Speaker 1: for us to talk to them. But I think in
21:27
Speaker 1: the broader sense of our actual universe, it's much more
21:29
Speaker 1: likely to be much more difficult, if not impossible, right,
21:33
Speaker 1: And I guess it doesn't help that they're giving you
21:35
Speaker 1: the sign and treatment like they do it in her book. Yeah,
21:39
Speaker 1: and it's much easier if aliens come here, which I
21:41
Speaker 1: think is less likely, right because of the distances involved.
21:44
Speaker 1: What if we get a message from aliens on another planet,
21:47
Speaker 1: really really far away, and then our communication is like
21:50
Speaker 1: takes twenty years to send a message. Imagine learning to
21:53
Speaker 1: speak a language across that kind of distance and time
21:56
Speaker 1: when you only get to like ask three questions and
21:58
Speaker 1: get three answers and then you're it, and like, you know,
22:01
Speaker 1: the next generation of scientists have to take it up. Yeah,
22:04
Speaker 1: that would be pretty slow. All right, Well, let's talk
22:08
Speaker 1: all bad some of the other science bits here. So
22:10
Speaker 1: in her universe there are aliens all over the galaxy
22:13
Speaker 1: and how do they get around? So in her universe,
22:15
Speaker 1: she tried really hard to make realistics. She try to
22:18
Speaker 1: stick to the physics of our universe. In her universe,
22:21
Speaker 1: there's life all over the galaxy, but intelligent life is
22:25
Speaker 1: very very rare. There's only a couple of species that
22:27
Speaker 1: are intelligent to have the capability to even eventually develop
22:31
Speaker 1: like spacefaring technology. And here I think she's trying to
22:33
Speaker 1: make a comment on this question about you know, like
22:36
Speaker 1: how common is life and how common is intelligent life.
22:39
Speaker 1: But these aliens don't have life faster than light travel,
22:42
Speaker 1: so they fly through the universe, you know, close to
22:45
Speaker 1: the speed of light on their awesome ships. But they're
22:48
Speaker 1: also limited in the same way we are by the
22:50
Speaker 1: vast distances between stars. So how do these civilizations interact
22:55
Speaker 1: and stay cohesive? Yes, so these civilizations these aliens are
22:59
Speaker 1: not actually very broad. It's like there's one alien planet
23:01
Speaker 1: and there's another alien planet. And something that she talks
23:04
Speaker 1: about in the book a lot which I thought was
23:05
Speaker 1: really interesting, is the possibility of like interstellar war. You know,
23:09
Speaker 1: would an alien species want to wipe out another one?
23:12
Speaker 1: Like if they were aliens found on a star ten
23:15
Speaker 1: light years from here, which is very very close cosmologically,
23:18
Speaker 1: why would they ever want to kill us? Right? What
23:20
Speaker 1: does Earth have that they need? There's plenty of like
23:24
Speaker 1: platinum and iron and oxygen and water in Jupiter and
23:28
Speaker 1: in Neptune. They wouldn't need to come to Earth to
23:30
Speaker 1: kill us to take it unless they actually wanted us
23:33
Speaker 1: as slaves. There's no reason in my mind they would
23:35
Speaker 1: actually need to have a conflict with us. M does
23:38
Speaker 1: does she cover that in her book? Like what's the
23:40
Speaker 1: reason behind this war? Yeah? She does talk about that,
23:43
Speaker 1: and she takes this sense essentially all species are born
23:47
Speaker 1: in conflict. And it's very similar to another book we
23:49
Speaker 1: talked about once, Maxim Barry's book Providence, about discovering an
23:52
Speaker 1: alien species that's sort of weird and sort of feels
23:55
Speaker 1: a need to fight the ideas that like, when you
23:58
Speaker 1: grow up on a planet, they're limited resource and so
24:00
Speaker 1: you sort of learn to see threats. If somebody is
24:03
Speaker 1: so far from you that you don't see them as
24:04
Speaker 1: you're in group, then they're in your out group and
24:07
Speaker 1: that makes them a threat. So even if two communities too,
24:10
Speaker 1: aliens and different star systems could actually live independently and
24:14
Speaker 1: not bother each other, this sort of this natural tendency
24:17
Speaker 1: to see each other as a threat and then start
24:19
Speaker 1: pulling triggers. People are jerks. Basically, people are jerks, and
24:26
Speaker 1: I hope aliens aren't jerks, you know, But in her novel,
24:29
Speaker 1: they basically are all right. So the Alians are there,
24:33
Speaker 1: they're at war, and they have cyborg bodies. They're sort
24:36
Speaker 1: of like super advanced or they just kind of evolved
24:40
Speaker 1: into this kind of cyborg mixed technology existence. No, they
24:45
Speaker 1: are constructed, right, They build these bodies and they have
24:48
Speaker 1: really awesome capabilities. And I don't want to get too
24:51
Speaker 1: much into the detail because I don't want to spoil it.
24:53
Speaker 1: But it's this sort of host biological system and because
24:56
Speaker 1: of it, they can like live for hundreds of years
24:58
Speaker 1: and they can repair themselves, so you can do all
25:00
Speaker 1: sorts of cool engineering to these bodies that you could
25:03
Speaker 1: imagine if you could like replace your arm or get
25:05
Speaker 1: a new one or upgraded or all this kind of stuff.
25:08
Speaker 1: All right, So it sounds like in general the books
25:10
Speaker 1: stays pretty close to science and ideas about linguistics. It's
25:14
Speaker 1: not like they're inventing a new kind of energy or
25:16
Speaker 1: particle or misconsidering any sort of dark matter notions or
25:20
Speaker 1: anything right now. There's no pim particle or anything crazy
25:22
Speaker 1: like that. You know. The signs of the book is
25:24
Speaker 1: pretty well done, and she's made some choices about how
25:27
Speaker 1: aliens might be, which to my mind I think makes
25:30
Speaker 1: them a little more human than they're likely to be.
25:32
Speaker 1: But I also get why for a literary point of view,
25:34
Speaker 1: she sort of needed to do that cool all right,
25:37
Speaker 1: And then so you got to talk to her. I did.
25:39
Speaker 1: She was really nice and spent like half an hour
25:41
Speaker 1: talking to me about aliens and what they might be
25:43
Speaker 1: like and what it's like to write a science fiction
25:45
Speaker 1: book where one of the main characters is really truly
25:48
Speaker 1: deeply alien. That we had a lot of fun, awesome.
25:50
Speaker 1: All right, Well here is Daniel's interview with Lindsay Ellis,
25:53
Speaker 1: author of the book Axioms, and all right, so I'm
25:57
Speaker 1: very happy to welcome to our program Lindsay Ellis, author
26:00
Speaker 1: of Axioms, And Lindsey, why don't you introduce yourself and
26:02
Speaker 1: tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. So I
26:05
Speaker 1: I mostly for the last ten years or so have
26:08
Speaker 1: been working in new media online video and to a
26:12
Speaker 1: lesser degree, podcasting, And like the whole time I had
26:16
Speaker 1: been secretly plotting to be a science fiction author, but
26:19
Speaker 1: that only really came to fruition last year particular. Really
26:23
Speaker 1: a long time. Getting published is really hard, especially in
26:26
Speaker 1: this sort of like weird, nebulous world of commercial sci fi.
26:29
Speaker 1: But yeah, I after doing YouTube for about ten years
26:32
Speaker 1: and I still do it, like it's still kind of
26:34
Speaker 1: my main bread and butter. I published my first novel
26:37
Speaker 1: last July, and the second one in the series comes
26:40
Speaker 1: out in October, and then we'll just take it from there. Well, congratulations,
26:44
Speaker 1: I'm glad to see that science fiction is open to
26:47
Speaker 1: newcomers and makes the rest of us aspiring science fiction
26:50
Speaker 1: authors have a little bit of hope. Yeah, so difficult. Yeah,
26:54
Speaker 1: I feel like I've noticed that a lot of like
26:55
Speaker 1: sort of the prestige novels lately, not mine, but like
26:59
Speaker 1: the last years, all the big winners of the awards
27:02
Speaker 1: were all deeput novels. So yeah, it's it's it's pretty
27:05
Speaker 1: opening to new blood I think that, you know, science
27:07
Speaker 1: fiction lately has been a lot less reactionary than it
27:10
Speaker 1: has been historically. Well that's great. So before we dig
27:13
Speaker 1: into the details of your book, we have a few questions.
27:16
Speaker 1: We ask every science fiction author to sort of orient
27:19
Speaker 1: them in the space. So here's some questions about science
27:22
Speaker 1: fiction in general. First question is sort of philosophical. Do
27:25
Speaker 1: you think that star trek transporters kill you and then
27:29
Speaker 1: clone you on the other side, or actually transport your
27:33
Speaker 1: atoms to your destination they kill you? No hesitation on
27:38
Speaker 1: that one, Huh, Yeah, I mean sorry, science it is
27:40
Speaker 1: what it is. That's an easy one, guys. I bet
27:45
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where it's like just don't
27:46
Speaker 1: think about it. Okay, So given that, would you use
27:50
Speaker 1: a teleporter? Would you use it to like get to
27:52
Speaker 1: go to the service of Pluto or whatever? No, especially
27:55
Speaker 1: since it only works short range anyway, It's like, come on, guys,
27:59
Speaker 1: Like I, I I feel like I'd be like that
28:01
Speaker 1: doctor in a second season of the Next Generation, the
28:04
Speaker 1: replacement doctor who was like, no, I won't do the thing,
28:08
Speaker 1: like yeah, it literally kills you, all right. Well, in
28:11
Speaker 1: that case, what technology in science fiction would you most
28:16
Speaker 1: like to see become reality? The one that cures like
28:19
Speaker 1: cancer and just like Parkinson's. I would really invite to
28:24
Speaker 1: not have Alzheimer's, you know, I think that's my biggie.
28:27
Speaker 1: It's like, I think for us, I assume you're like
28:29
Speaker 1: a millennial, is like, I think our generation is going
28:32
Speaker 1: to be one of the last generations that like doesn't
28:34
Speaker 1: really benefit from technology that can protect us from like
28:37
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's and dimension Parkinson's and stuff like that. So that
28:41
Speaker 1: kind of sucks because I feel like, you know, assuming
28:43
Speaker 1: civilization doesn't fall, which I you know, I'm not convinced
28:46
Speaker 1: that it won't. I feel like in the future there
28:48
Speaker 1: will be like really good preventative measures for certain diseases
28:52
Speaker 1: that we are just really commonplace now, and it would
28:55
Speaker 1: be nice to you know, be of your of sound
28:58
Speaker 1: mind when you die. But like dementia runs really bad
29:01
Speaker 1: in my family. So that's something I think about a lot.
29:03
Speaker 1: It'd be nice to live in a time when people
29:05
Speaker 1: look back and said, really that still happened to people,
29:08
Speaker 1: that's crazy. Yeah. Last general question is what's your personal
29:12
Speaker 1: answer to the Fermi paradox? Given the huge number of
29:16
Speaker 1: planets out there that seemed to have earthlike conditions, why
29:19
Speaker 1: isn't that we haven't seen aliens or been visited by
29:22
Speaker 1: aliens or observed aliens on another planet yet? I guess honestly,
29:26
Speaker 1: my answer is basically the answer that I gave in
29:28
Speaker 1: the book, although the answer in the book comes with
29:30
Speaker 1: a pretty huge aster risk that comes in the second book. Basically,
29:33
Speaker 1: I think that intelligent life is the is the extreme rarity.
29:36
Speaker 1: I think also people don't really take it to consideration
29:38
Speaker 1: how young the universes, and you know, just the sheer
29:42
Speaker 1: number of stars that had to like go through life
29:45
Speaker 1: cycles in order to get to the complex elements that
29:48
Speaker 1: comprise our solar system. Now, you know, like a lot
29:52
Speaker 1: of stars had to go supernova for us to get
29:54
Speaker 1: things like you know, platinum and you know, carbon, all
29:58
Speaker 1: sorts of fun things. So I think it is very
30:00
Speaker 1: likely considering that, you know, intelligent life only popped about
30:04
Speaker 1: on Earth as a you know, result of a cavalcade
30:07
Speaker 1: of mass extinctions and also kind of close to the
30:11
Speaker 1: end of the Earth's life cycle. You know, we're about
30:13
Speaker 1: eight of the way through, and what are the odds
30:15
Speaker 1: that would happen over and over, especially in a fairly
30:18
Speaker 1: young universe, you know, because I think we got like
30:21
Speaker 1: a few trillion years before heat death starts in earnest.
30:24
Speaker 1: So like, I think it's you know, I think it's
30:27
Speaker 1: a combination of the universe is still pretty young, and
30:30
Speaker 1: intelligent life is the filter. Like it's hard to it's
30:33
Speaker 1: hard to cross that threshold. I don't like, I don't
30:34
Speaker 1: I don't honestly buy the whole. Like, you know, we're
30:37
Speaker 1: going to kill ourselves argument and that's what that's where
30:40
Speaker 1: all the other aliens are because we have to work
30:43
Speaker 1: pretty damn hard to wipe ourselves into extinction. Well, I'm
30:46
Speaker 1: glad to hear you have faith in the survival of
30:47
Speaker 1: the species. I mean, I don't have faith in the
30:49
Speaker 1: survival civilization. I'm just saying, if we like we're like cockroaches,
30:54
Speaker 1: it would be really hard to wipe this out altogether. Alright,
30:58
Speaker 1: So that's a lot of fun, a lot more questions
31:01
Speaker 1: for our author. But first let's take a quick break. Okay,
31:16
Speaker 1: we're back and I'm talking to Lindsay Ellis, author of Axioms,
31:20
Speaker 1: and let's talk about your book, which I really enjoy.
31:23
Speaker 1: Congratulations on it than you. Your story really talks a
31:26
Speaker 1: lot about sort of species conflict and difficulties and dangers
31:30
Speaker 1: of communication and contact between different species. So tell me
31:34
Speaker 1: what drew you to these themes. What made you decide
31:36
Speaker 1: to make this the focus of your book. Well, I
31:39
Speaker 1: think the thing about first contact fiction in general is
31:42
Speaker 1: it always is about some form of other you know
31:45
Speaker 1: capital Oh, basically, it's it's always kind of dealing with
31:50
Speaker 1: a sort of anxiety slash curiosity about something that you yourself,
31:55
Speaker 1: as a reader or as an author, or as a
31:57
Speaker 1: culture might feel kind of is connected from. And that's why,
32:02
Speaker 1: like invasion fiction is really common and you kind of
32:05
Speaker 1: have like H. G. Wells, War of the World's is
32:07
Speaker 1: a really good example of something that is both aware
32:10
Speaker 1: of the destruction that his culture is reeking, but also
32:13
Speaker 1: really anxious about the idea of being invaded. You know,
32:17
Speaker 1: this coming on the heels of the franc Oppression War
32:20
Speaker 1: and right for World War One. But I think, to me,
32:23
Speaker 1: because some people kind of like the sort of military
32:25
Speaker 1: science fiction thing where just like good versus evil, the
32:28
Speaker 1: tension comes from how do we defeat the bad invading thing?
32:31
Speaker 1: I just find narratives that are about trying to understand
32:36
Speaker 1: something strange and foreign more interesting, Like, just as a reader,
32:40
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I think those those kind of
32:42
Speaker 1: narratives are more satisfying. I think, you know, that's why
32:44
Speaker 1: people really liked to Rival, because like the entire book
32:47
Speaker 1: is not just about figuring out their language, but it's
32:49
Speaker 1: also figuring out what their deal is, you know, like
32:51
Speaker 1: what do they want? And those kinds of narratives to me,
32:54
Speaker 1: are just a lot more interesting than the you know,
32:57
Speaker 1: invasion narratives. But I enjoy invasion narratives to Like. I
33:00
Speaker 1: don't know if you follow me on Twitter or my
33:02
Speaker 1: YouTube channel, but like I tweet about Independence Day constantly
33:06
Speaker 1: because an Independence Day is one of my favorite movies.
33:09
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's like I I I love certain invasion narratives.
33:13
Speaker 1: I just don't think i'd ever write one, or well,
33:15
Speaker 1: at least not a conventional one. In the book. It
33:17
Speaker 1: seems like you're a little bit ambivalent about whether communication
33:20
Speaker 1: is something to aspire to, like we could understand these aliens,
33:24
Speaker 1: or whether it just sort of brings on danger. And
33:26
Speaker 1: so I wanted to ask you, in your universe, some
33:29
Speaker 1: of the folks see aliens as threats, you know, sort
33:32
Speaker 1: of despite the near infinite set of resources out there
33:35
Speaker 1: in the universe. So do you think that we pose
33:38
Speaker 1: like a threat to alien civilization or our aliens only
33:42
Speaker 1: in danger if we see them as a threat, you know,
33:44
Speaker 1: why can't we just all share the vast amounts of
33:47
Speaker 1: platinum and water in the universe, you mean hypothetically or
33:51
Speaker 1: in in the book, in reality, like in our universe. Well,
33:54
Speaker 1: I think that really depends on like the situation, because
33:58
Speaker 1: like I see people making like these really kind of
34:00
Speaker 1: wild speculation, like, well, have really aliens really showed up?
34:04
Speaker 1: This is definitely what would happen, And it's like, you
34:06
Speaker 1: don't know, you don't know, you don't know that. So
34:10
Speaker 1: I think people kind of get in their heads a
34:12
Speaker 1: little too much about what is logical whenever when when
34:15
Speaker 1: the reality is like if aliens showed up, they're becoming
34:18
Speaker 1: with their own set of reasons and politics and culture
34:22
Speaker 1: and rationality, and we have no idea what that would be.
34:26
Speaker 1: I think in general, the idea that aliens would come
34:29
Speaker 1: for our resources is kind of silly unless that resource
34:32
Speaker 1: is specific to life on Earth, because obviously, like elements
34:36
Speaker 1: are you know, really common, like water is everywhere, you know,
34:39
Speaker 1: things that are common on Earth are common everywhere. You know.
34:41
Speaker 1: It's just like there are any number of reasons why
34:44
Speaker 1: they could show up and possibly be hostile or possibly
34:48
Speaker 1: you know, be not hostile. And I think that that's
34:51
Speaker 1: sort of like why it's kind of hard to make
34:53
Speaker 1: real speculation of like why can't we just get along?
34:55
Speaker 1: Is like, but we don't know what their deal is.
34:57
Speaker 1: We don't know what their politics are, and we don't
34:59
Speaker 1: know what our politics would be when they showed up.
35:03
Speaker 1: You know. I think it's interesting to say, like, well,
35:06
Speaker 1: what would have happened if they showed up like in
35:09
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, like at the high, like the most dangerous
35:13
Speaker 1: height of the Cold War, as opposed to like when
35:17
Speaker 1: not a lot's going on, you know, and everyone's pretty chill,
35:21
Speaker 1: and you know, there's not any you know, rise and
35:24
Speaker 1: fascism yet that we would see in the two thousands.
35:26
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's just like it's it's a sort
35:28
Speaker 1: of conflation of scenarios. But I think the main thing,
35:31
Speaker 1: as far as human nature goes is we are very
35:34
Speaker 1: fearful and we humans have a very deep rooted instinctive
35:38
Speaker 1: in group out group mentality, and that I think would
35:41
Speaker 1: be the hardest thing for us to overcome. So I
35:44
Speaker 1: hear that you're saying that these aliens are essentially by
35:47
Speaker 1: definition alien and maybe impossible to understand their motives and
35:51
Speaker 1: to communicate with them in reality like in our universe
35:55
Speaker 1: in the book, it feels to me like maybe you
35:57
Speaker 1: wrote it sort of as a bridge. You're like, I'm
35:59
Speaker 1: bringing aliens to them a little bit more understandable because
36:02
Speaker 1: true alien is it sort of hard to relate to
36:04
Speaker 1: that true? Was their a gap there between what you
36:06
Speaker 1: think is actually happening in our universe and what you
36:08
Speaker 1: wrote about in the book. Absolutely, yeah, because that's sort
36:11
Speaker 1: of like a narrative function, like what does the story
36:13
Speaker 1: you want to write? And I think the thing about
36:15
Speaker 1: a rival is the aliens aren't really characters like they
36:19
Speaker 1: don't really have personalities, and like I did want to
36:22
Speaker 1: have aliens with personalities and like you know, motivations and
36:26
Speaker 1: relationships and stuff like that. So it's like it had
36:29
Speaker 1: to kind of figure out where the line was to
36:31
Speaker 1: her is like, you know, looks alien and feels alien,
36:35
Speaker 1: but is still understandable. And that's part of why the
36:39
Speaker 1: actual work of decoding human language happens before the narrative
36:44
Speaker 1: even starts, because like that just I didn't want to
36:48
Speaker 1: tell the story of how we learned the language, Like
36:50
Speaker 1: that just wasn't the book I wanted to write. So yeah,
36:53
Speaker 1: I think that like the understandable nous of of the
36:58
Speaker 1: aliens am persated particular, it was a narrative function, but
37:02
Speaker 1: it was also just kind of like the story I
37:03
Speaker 1: wanted to write. I wanted the narrative to be like
37:06
Speaker 1: the center on the relationship between these two. Yeah, it's
37:09
Speaker 1: not that exciting the story. If the aliens show up
37:11
Speaker 1: and we just never figure out how to communicate with them,
37:14
Speaker 1: it's just like a big shrug for a thousand years, right, Yeah.
37:17
Speaker 1: Or or it'll be like an Endor's game scenario where
37:19
Speaker 1: it's like we fight and then they just kind of
37:21
Speaker 1: stop one day and everyone's like, well, they'll be back,
37:24
Speaker 1: you know, and not actually know why they stopped fighting.
37:28
Speaker 1: So in your book there's a lot of linguistic theory
37:30
Speaker 1: and discussion of the structure of the alien language. Do
37:33
Speaker 1: you think that in reality linguists would be like on
37:35
Speaker 1: the front lines of real life alien contact. No, No,
37:39
Speaker 1: absolutely not. I think the thing people tend to forget
37:41
Speaker 1: about linguistics is it is a very tune to not
37:47
Speaker 1: just human syntax, but also the human mouth and sounds
37:51
Speaker 1: that we make, and like the full half of linguistics
37:54
Speaker 1: is just about the sounds, the phonemes, but also at
37:57
Speaker 1: the same time, there's just so much about like language
37:59
Speaker 1: acquisition and that we haven't figured out yet. And the
38:03
Speaker 1: thing is, like, I think the easiest way, like there's
38:06
Speaker 1: a Chomskyan way to understand language acquisition, which was the
38:10
Speaker 1: one I ascribed to or at least in the in
38:12
Speaker 1: the in the context of the book, which is why
38:13
Speaker 1: in the book, human language is almost kind of described
38:16
Speaker 1: as algorithmic and basically, if you kind of figure out
38:19
Speaker 1: the algorithm, you can decode any human language with enough context.
38:23
Speaker 1: I wish I had that algorithm. Basically, the idea of
38:27
Speaker 1: being if the human brain is the hardware, language is
38:30
Speaker 1: the software. So if you don't have that hardware, then
38:34
Speaker 1: the software is completely meaningless. And this I think would
38:38
Speaker 1: work in reverse too. I think, you know, I'm not
38:41
Speaker 1: saying linguist would be completely useless, but I think like
38:44
Speaker 1: the study of human linguistics probably is not going to
38:47
Speaker 1: apply to a hypothetical alien language. I think that the
38:51
Speaker 1: most useful thing in that context would probably be like,
38:53
Speaker 1: you know, pattern recognition software, that sort of thing, because
38:57
Speaker 1: you know, it's like if you look at people trying
38:59
Speaker 1: to figure a dolphin language, they're not human linguists, you know,
39:03
Speaker 1: So that that that is why I think linguists wouldn't
39:05
Speaker 1: be terribly useful in this scenario. Isn't any human attempt
39:09
Speaker 1: to understand the alien language going to be constrained in
39:11
Speaker 1: the same way like we could argue that mathematics is universal,
39:15
Speaker 1: but we don't actually know that. It could just be
39:16
Speaker 1: like a product of the way that our hardware work
39:19
Speaker 1: and really no sense to alien mathematicians. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
39:23
Speaker 1: It's hard to say because it's just like you're you're
39:24
Speaker 1: dealing with like incredible speculatives with also fundamentally like a
39:28
Speaker 1: line of thinking that you yourself are not capable of,
39:31
Speaker 1: which was kind of a weird thing with me, because
39:33
Speaker 1: it's one thing like where it's a book and you
39:35
Speaker 1: have to describe the sounds being made. You don't have
39:38
Speaker 1: like the fun luxury of like you know, a sound
39:41
Speaker 1: department making up sounds. But also like the you know,
39:44
Speaker 1: the alien language and how it operates as opposed to
39:47
Speaker 1: human language, like there would be overlaps, like it's a
39:50
Speaker 1: spoken language, like so it's not like through colors or
39:53
Speaker 1: smells or whatever. So it's like an oral spoken language,
39:57
Speaker 1: you know, and so therefore it uses phone names, it
39:59
Speaker 1: uses sounds, but like the similarities kind of in there,
40:02
Speaker 1: like they don't really have words, they don't. It's it's
40:04
Speaker 1: more like a sort of cluster of phonemes that create
40:07
Speaker 1: a lump of meaning and you know, describing that in
40:11
Speaker 1: a way that you understand what it is. But at
40:13
Speaker 1: the same time you can't speak it and you can't
40:16
Speaker 1: think it because you don't, you know, you're a human
40:17
Speaker 1: brain that understands human language. So then thinking about the
40:21
Speaker 1: bodies of the aliens, I thought there were a lot
40:23
Speaker 1: of really cool ideas in your story about how a
40:25
Speaker 1: species might like move beyond their biological origins. Do you
40:29
Speaker 1: think that's the future of humanity? Do you do you
40:31
Speaker 1: want to have a artificial body in the future? Oh? Man,
40:35
Speaker 1: that that's what I don't like to think about, because
40:37
Speaker 1: it's going to be class based. You know, it's gonna
40:39
Speaker 1: be you know, speaking of H. G. Wells, you know
40:42
Speaker 1: in the Time Machine, when the time traveler goes into
40:44
Speaker 1: the future, he's like, oh, weird, two different species and
40:50
Speaker 1: it turns out like one of them is the rich
40:51
Speaker 1: people and wrote them or the under class. So I
40:54
Speaker 1: think that's sort of the thing that scares me a
40:55
Speaker 1: little bit about, like genetic engineering and trans humanism is like,
40:59
Speaker 1: oh good, another way we can really put into sharp
41:05
Speaker 1: relief the class divide. So it's sort of one of
41:07
Speaker 1: those things that I do kind of think. I think
41:09
Speaker 1: it's inevitable, but I don't think it's inevitable in a
41:11
Speaker 1: good way. Right. Yeah, Well, down here in Orange County,
41:15
Speaker 1: I see a lot of folks with botox spaces, and
41:17
Speaker 1: I wonder if I really am the same species as
41:19
Speaker 1: some of the people around here. Anyway, next question I
41:22
Speaker 1: want to ask you is about the political question that
41:24
Speaker 1: you raised earlier about how we would respond. In your book,
41:28
Speaker 1: there's a lot of information about the aliens that's kept
41:30
Speaker 1: secret by the government. Is a key plot device you use.
41:34
Speaker 1: Do you think that's happening now that the government has
41:37
Speaker 1: secret information about aliens? Or do you think it would
41:40
Speaker 1: happen if aliens did visit? Uh? No, no, and no.
41:45
Speaker 1: I think because I kind of put like why I
41:47
Speaker 1: think they couldn't keep this a secret in the book,
41:50
Speaker 1: like like Nils, who's one of the like sort of
41:52
Speaker 1: this Chilian Assange character as a little polemic somewhere like
41:56
Speaker 1: halfway through the book where he talks about information sharing
41:58
Speaker 1: between agency is after nine eleven, made keeping a secret
42:03
Speaker 1: of this magnitude that involved this many people of like
42:05
Speaker 1: essentially impossible. But I think like whenever you see like
42:08
Speaker 1: the stuff that like the Pentagon released lately, people are like, oh,
42:11
Speaker 1: they proved its aliens, and it's like, no, you do
42:13
Speaker 1: understand that an unidentified flying object just means it's a
42:17
Speaker 1: flying object that that's unidentified, like they don't know what
42:20
Speaker 1: it is. So I I very leeriate that conspiratorial thinking
42:24
Speaker 1: where it's like you don't use evidence to come to
42:27
Speaker 1: a conclusion. You have a conclusion, and then use the
42:29
Speaker 1: thing as evidence and ignore anything else to the contrary.
42:33
Speaker 1: So I think it's it depends. I think, like in
42:36
Speaker 1: this case, they genuinely don't know what it is, so
42:39
Speaker 1: of course they kept a secret, and I think historically
42:42
Speaker 1: that would have been the case. But I think if
42:43
Speaker 1: they knew something definite, like, no, you can't keep that
42:45
Speaker 1: a secret. That's way too big and it would cause
42:47
Speaker 1: a scandal like that, because that's what happens in the book,
42:50
Speaker 1: is like, if they like were deliberately keeping this thing
42:52
Speaker 1: a secret for such a long time, it would just
42:54
Speaker 1: cause such a massive scandal when it inevitably gets out.
42:58
Speaker 1: So that that's my take on the whole government conspiracy thing. Well,
43:03
Speaker 1: I hope that's true. So the last question I have
43:05
Speaker 1: for you is about sort of constructing your universe. When
43:08
Speaker 1: you went out to write this novel. How important was
43:11
Speaker 1: it for you that the science of your universe be
43:13
Speaker 1: sort of the same as the science of our universe,
43:16
Speaker 1: That everything that happens there, you know, limitations on fast
43:18
Speaker 1: and light travel to be the same as the ones
43:21
Speaker 1: in our universe. Well, I guess the funny thing is,
43:23
Speaker 1: like I wanted to write something that wasn't technically in
43:27
Speaker 1: contradiction to certain theories. I guess is the thing because
43:34
Speaker 1: as I'm sure you know, you know, we haven't figured
43:37
Speaker 1: out the theory of everything yet, and there's just like
43:40
Speaker 1: a lot we don't know about, like the physics of
43:42
Speaker 1: the universe, And so I guess my thing was I
43:45
Speaker 1: actually I had a nuclear physicist is a German guy
43:48
Speaker 1: named Wolfgang, and he lives in Frankfort, or he did.
43:51
Speaker 1: Whenever I talked to him about this, I was thinking, like,
43:53
Speaker 1: you know, whenever I figured out, like, well, what are
43:55
Speaker 1: the laws of physics of this universe? Do I pick
43:58
Speaker 1: one of the any potential theory of everything theories? Or
44:02
Speaker 1: do I just make one up? And uh? I asked him.
44:05
Speaker 1: I was like, what do you think is the right one?
44:07
Speaker 1: And he's like, I like quantum loop gravity, Okay, well
44:10
Speaker 1: when do you think ballpark? When do you think we're
44:13
Speaker 1: gonna nail it down? And he's like, I don't know
44:14
Speaker 1: two hundred three hundred years and like cool, So it
44:16
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. So basically I I did. I went with
44:21
Speaker 1: a version of string theory, and so I try to
44:24
Speaker 1: keep everything under the umbrella of things that would be
44:27
Speaker 1: theoretically possible. Let me put it that way. If this
44:30
Speaker 1: version of stringth theory is true, which we're probably not
44:33
Speaker 1: going to figure out in our lifetimes anyway. Unfortunately, there
44:36
Speaker 1: are ten to the five string theories which could be true. Yeah,
44:41
Speaker 1: and then the funny thing is like, since it's aliens,
44:43
Speaker 1: I don't need to say which one because they have
44:47
Speaker 1: a different name for it, see, and we don't know.
44:51
Speaker 1: So Yeah, it was something that I thought a lot about,
44:53
Speaker 1: but also like I kept intentionally vague because you know,
44:56
Speaker 1: it's like they wouldn't have the same terms for things
44:59
Speaker 1: that we do, so like some things would line up,
45:02
Speaker 1: like you know, I don't know gravity or light speed
45:04
Speaker 1: or stuff like that, but then other things, you know,
45:06
Speaker 1: they would have different terminology for it, like you know,
45:09
Speaker 1: dimensions or strings or stuff like that. Yeah, I guess
45:11
Speaker 1: it was just like I wanted to keep it vague,
45:13
Speaker 1: but also like technically theoretically possible, you know, like with
45:19
Speaker 1: the idea of like telekinesis and stuff like that, and
45:21
Speaker 1: you know this basically just being a sophisticated form of
45:25
Speaker 1: manipulating electromagnetic fields and you know, condensing electrons and stuff
45:29
Speaker 1: like that, They're like, well, Okay, sure, you know that
45:31
Speaker 1: would take a lot of energy, so they just have
45:33
Speaker 1: a lot of energy. Boom done. Like so yeah, awesome.
45:38
Speaker 1: Well I thought that was really fun and I was
45:40
Speaker 1: really appreciated that you sort of picked this out of
45:43
Speaker 1: rules and stuck to them. To me, that's a critical
45:45
Speaker 1: element of science fiction. Thank you thinking about it for
45:49
Speaker 1: a long time. I appreciate it. Thanks very much for
45:52
Speaker 1: coming on and telling us all about your book. Why
45:54
Speaker 1: don't you tell our listeners about upcoming projects or things
45:57
Speaker 1: you have coming out soon? Right? Well, Sequel to X
45:59
Speaker 1: Seems comes out in October. It is done, so it's
46:02
Speaker 1: in production as they call it at the publisher, And
46:05
Speaker 1: that one I think will probably be more relevant to
46:09
Speaker 1: the discussion of this podcast because it deals a lot
46:12
Speaker 1: more into like the science of the universe and uh
46:15
Speaker 1: like actually addresses the Fermi paradox and the origin of
46:19
Speaker 1: life and stuff like that. Again, like just it's a
46:22
Speaker 1: fictitious universe, but it's like, you know, it's fun to
46:24
Speaker 1: play with hypotheticals based on like, well, here is what
46:26
Speaker 1: we know, so how could it play out in other scenarios?
46:30
Speaker 1: And so that comes out in October. And other than that,
46:33
Speaker 1: I'm still doing long form stuff on YouTube that just
46:37
Speaker 1: comes out once every couple of months or so because
46:40
Speaker 1: videos are really really long. Got one coming out in
46:43
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks. J K rolling again. So yeah, great,
46:47
Speaker 1: Well looking forward to this equel to your book. I'll
46:49
Speaker 1: definitely pick it up. And thanks again for joining us
46:52
Speaker 1: and talking to us about all these crazy ideas. Thanks
46:54
Speaker 1: a lot for having me, and I hope you guys
46:57
Speaker 1: have a good rest of your plague. All Right, that
47:01
Speaker 1: was a pretty cool chat. I love her thoughts about
47:03
Speaker 1: alienness and how she had to make the aliens alien,
47:07
Speaker 1: but you also kind of want to make them relatable
47:10
Speaker 1: so that you, as a reader can identify with them. Yeah,
47:12
Speaker 1: it's a tricky line to balance. I totally respect that,
47:15
Speaker 1: and I like that she separated sort of the idea
47:17
Speaker 1: she put into her novel, which is, you know, important
47:19
Speaker 1: for telling a fun story, with her ideas about like
47:22
Speaker 1: how the universe actually works. So that's pretty cool. It
47:26
Speaker 1: sounds like she was a little conflicted, maybe like she
47:29
Speaker 1: thinks the universe might work this way, but for the
47:31
Speaker 1: writing of the novel she had to portray a certain way. Yeah,
47:34
Speaker 1: this is not like a scientific paper, right, this is
47:36
Speaker 1: not like her idea for how she thinks the universe
47:39
Speaker 1: actually is this is like, Hey, here'd be a cool
47:42
Speaker 1: universe in which I could tell a fun story that
47:44
Speaker 1: would be enjoyable to read, you know, which is not
47:47
Speaker 1: the kind of constraint I usually have in my science papers.
47:49
Speaker 1: You know, but do you do write science fiction? Daniel?
47:52
Speaker 1: Did this? Brey to write any science fiction stories or
47:55
Speaker 1: feature any more professors from UC Irvine. I'd love to
47:59
Speaker 1: see more of U. C. I appearing in culture somewhere.
48:02
Speaker 1: And I think it's inspirational that somebody had a cool
48:05
Speaker 1: idea and tried writing and then was successful and was
48:07
Speaker 1: able to break into the industry. I always think it's
48:09
Speaker 1: a healthy community when a novice can break in and
48:12
Speaker 1: do a good enough job that they could actually be successful.
48:15
Speaker 1: So that's awesome to hear. And I think that everybody
48:17
Speaker 1: out there who's aspiring to write a science fiction novel
48:20
Speaker 1: is encouraged by it. Cool. Well, if you are interested,
48:23
Speaker 1: please check out Lindsay Elisi's book Axioms and you can
48:26
Speaker 1: I'm sure to find it everywhere. I was a New
48:28
Speaker 1: York Times bestseller, and get to see her thoughts and
48:30
Speaker 1: her ideas and her stories about aliens coming to visit
48:33
Speaker 1: us and ignoring us. It was a lot of fun,
48:37
Speaker 1: and she has a sequel coming out later this year,
48:39
Speaker 1: which I'm confident will also be fun. All Right, well,
48:42
Speaker 1: please check out her work and we hope you enjoyed that.
48:46
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, see you next time. Thanks for listening,
48:56
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is
48:59
Speaker 1: a pre duction of I Heart Radio. For more podcast.
49:03
Speaker 1: For my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
49:05
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah,