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The SF Universe of Max Barry · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, or hey, let's talk about aliens. It's a bit
0:11
Speaker 1: early in the morning for that, isn't it not on
0:14
Speaker 1: alien standard time? All right? What are we talking about?
0:17
Speaker 1: All right, here's the situation. Say you are the first
0:21
Speaker 1: human to meet the aliens. Then we're in trouble already.
0:24
Speaker 1: Daniel from the ambassador for the entire human race. All right,
0:28
Speaker 1: so you're about to meet the aliens. Here's my question.
0:31
Speaker 1: What percentage of you is excited and what percentage of
0:34
Speaker 1: you is terrified for your life? Oh? Man, I would
0:38
Speaker 1: say it's pretty even. It's about a hundred percent excitement terrified.
0:43
Speaker 1: That sounds are right on to me. Hi important. I'm
1:02
Speaker 1: a cartoonists and the creator of PhD comments. I'm Daniel.
1:05
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist, and I definitely don't want to
1:08
Speaker 1: be ambassador for planet Earth. Welcome to our podcast, Daniel
1:11
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of Our Heart
1:14
Speaker 1: Radio in which we send our minds, not our bodies,
1:17
Speaker 1: out into the universe to explore the far reaches of space.
1:20
Speaker 1: Talk about all the crazy stuff that's out there. We
1:23
Speaker 1: break down black holes, we crack open neutron stars, we
1:26
Speaker 1: talk about the tiny particles that make up everything, and
1:29
Speaker 1: we explain all of it to you. That's right. We
1:31
Speaker 1: like to talk about all of the amazing things out
1:33
Speaker 1: there in the cosmos, everything that's actually happening right now
1:37
Speaker 1: as we speak. And we also like to talk about
1:40
Speaker 1: all the things that might be in this universe because
1:43
Speaker 1: a big part of exploring how the universe works is
1:45
Speaker 1: thinking about all the various scenarios for how it might work.
1:49
Speaker 1: And well, physicists like to be creative and imagine various scenarios,
1:53
Speaker 1: and we're new kinds of particles. There's another community of
1:55
Speaker 1: folks out there whose entire job is being creative about
2:00
Speaker 1: speculative universes. Are you talking about cartoonists or I'm talking
2:03
Speaker 1: about our podcast listeners, those creative geniuses. Yeah, there's an
2:07
Speaker 1: amazing potential out there in the universe, and it's up
2:11
Speaker 1: to science fiction authors to kind of think about it
2:14
Speaker 1: and figure out what are the exciting possibilities of where
2:18
Speaker 1: the human race can go. Yeah. Sometimes I think of
2:20
Speaker 1: science fiction authors is like the most mature thinkers. They're
2:24
Speaker 1: on the edge imagining other universes and the way things
2:27
Speaker 1: might work. And sometimes I imagine that they've sort of
2:29
Speaker 1: like returned to childhood, you know, the way kids don't
2:32
Speaker 1: really understand the universe, and to them, the universe could
2:36
Speaker 1: be basically anything. They're not so like nailed down to
2:39
Speaker 1: the current orthodoxy and the current dogma for how the
2:41
Speaker 1: universe works. If you told them the universe is made
2:44
Speaker 1: of tiny, bouncing little oranges, they would be like, Wow,
2:47
Speaker 1: that's cool. Can I see one? Can I make a
2:49
Speaker 1: plot out of that? Can I get up? I get
2:52
Speaker 1: a serious out of that? I'm not sure if you
2:54
Speaker 1: just pray science fiction authors or maybe insulted there are
2:57
Speaker 1: scientific knowledge that you know. I think it's difficult to
3:00
Speaker 1: return that sort of like childlike openness and curiosity and
3:05
Speaker 1: creativity and imagining the way the universe could be. It's
3:09
Speaker 1: difficult to take yourself out of our current mindset and
3:12
Speaker 1: think about other ideas that you would have accepted, other
3:15
Speaker 1: ways the universe could be. So I'm totally impressed with
3:18
Speaker 1: science fiction authors who are able to do that and
3:20
Speaker 1: really imagine brand new, creative world. Do you feel like
3:24
Speaker 1: having a physics degree somehow makes you jaded about that
3:27
Speaker 1: about the possibilities out there? Like maybe it dampens you, know,
3:31
Speaker 1: your sense of what could be. I think it must
3:34
Speaker 1: a little bit. You know, there are these plots that
3:36
Speaker 1: show that no mathematicians or theoretical physicists have deep breakthroughs
3:40
Speaker 1: after the age of thirty, and that's just because they're
3:42
Speaker 1: like so far into the orthodoxy and the establishment that
3:45
Speaker 1: they're just like, you know, adding shingles to the theory
3:48
Speaker 1: rather than like laying entire new foundations. When there's a
3:51
Speaker 1: correlation with tenures in it's definitely a correlation with tenure
3:56
Speaker 1: and the number of naps i'd take in my office. Well,
3:59
Speaker 1: there you go. Both things are easy to fix if
4:02
Speaker 1: you want it. To be a pioneer in physics, I'm sorry,
4:06
Speaker 1: I do want to be a pioneer in physics. But also,
4:08
Speaker 1: naps are pretty nice. Can you be a napping pioneer? Like,
4:13
Speaker 1: can you take a nap on the ship that's out
4:15
Speaker 1: there exploring? That would be a deal. Yeah. I think
4:18
Speaker 1: the way I would explain it if my department chair
4:20
Speaker 1: walked in is that I was marinating on an idea
4:23
Speaker 1: and that I often wake up from naps with clever
4:26
Speaker 1: new ideas for research for brands. And you say you
4:29
Speaker 1: lost your childlike propensity for making up stories, Daniel, that's right,
4:33
Speaker 1: that's definitely fiction. But anyways, um, yeah, we like to
4:37
Speaker 1: talk about science fiction authors and they're amazing ideas and
4:41
Speaker 1: the amazing stories that they've been together using some of
4:44
Speaker 1: the interesting science ideas. And so today we'll be talking
4:47
Speaker 1: to another big science fiction author about their science and
4:51
Speaker 1: their fiction. That's right. I love these episodes. What we
4:54
Speaker 1: talked to science fiction authors. We ask them how they
4:57
Speaker 1: built their universe, how the science works in their universe.
5:00
Speaker 1: This is not your typical literary science fiction podcast. We're
5:04
Speaker 1: asking science questions to science fiction authors. So today on
5:08
Speaker 1: the program, we'll be talking about the science fiction universe
5:16
Speaker 1: of Max Barry. This is an Australian author, right, Daniel.
5:20
Speaker 1: That's right. He's an Australian author, and so when you
5:22
Speaker 1: read his book, you have to read all the characters
5:24
Speaker 1: as having an Australian accent in your mind. It's very important.
5:28
Speaker 1: What do you mean Australians have an accent? I thought
5:31
Speaker 1: we had the accent. We do. Actually, when I first
5:34
Speaker 1: read his books, I didn't know he's Australian, and then
5:36
Speaker 1: when I interviewed him it was pretty obvious. And then
5:39
Speaker 1: I'm reading another one of his books now and I
5:41
Speaker 1: can't get his Australian accent out of my mind. So
5:44
Speaker 1: like even all the narration I read in his voice
5:47
Speaker 1: in my mom are the characters in Australia or or
5:50
Speaker 1: are they Australian or does it take place uh, you know,
5:53
Speaker 1: not even in this planet. Well, he's written lots of
5:56
Speaker 1: different books. He writes speculative fiction. He wrote a book
5:59
Speaker 1: called Lexicon about five years ago, which is really wonderful
6:02
Speaker 1: and fantastical and I totally encourage everybody to read it,
6:05
Speaker 1: and there are scenes there in Australia. The book we're
6:08
Speaker 1: talking about today takes place mostly in deep space, which
6:11
Speaker 1: is not Australia as far as I understand. But no,
6:14
Speaker 1: he's not just an Australian writer. He's a writer who
6:16
Speaker 1: happens to be Australian. Yeah, so today we'll be talking
6:19
Speaker 1: about his book Prominence, which takes place in space. Yeah,
6:22
Speaker 1: that's right. It takes place mostly in space, and it's
6:24
Speaker 1: a sweeping space opera that happens all over the universe
6:27
Speaker 1: and their grand battle between aliens and humans. It's a
6:30
Speaker 1: bit of a departure for him. He writes speculative fiction,
6:34
Speaker 1: so you know, like in alternative universes, but not always
6:37
Speaker 1: science fiction. You know, speculative fiction is like the rules
6:40
Speaker 1: of the universe are different, but it's not always technology
6:43
Speaker 1: related or space related or something like that, but it's
6:46
Speaker 1: in the same sort of category of stuff. I really
6:49
Speaker 1: enjoy because it's a different universe where you have to
6:51
Speaker 1: be a detective and like figure out what are the
6:54
Speaker 1: rules of this universe. And for me, that's the fun
6:56
Speaker 1: of being a physicist, that we're being detectives about this universe.
7:00
Speaker 1: And so it's fun to play around in somebody else's
7:02
Speaker 1: invented universe. Well, I wonder, Daniel, what makes something a
7:06
Speaker 1: space opera and not like a space musical. They have
7:09
Speaker 1: to be Viking hats, and they have to be really
7:11
Speaker 1: really high notes and it has to go on for
7:13
Speaker 1: hours and then it's an all see. But then in
7:15
Speaker 1: space nobody can hear you. Then, so they was doing
7:18
Speaker 1: the thing. Well, maybe that's good. Based on all the
7:21
Speaker 1: operas I've attended, I wish they were in space. No.
7:24
Speaker 1: I think a space opera is just, you know, something
7:25
Speaker 1: with a grand scale. It takes place in multiple solar
7:29
Speaker 1: systems or galaxies, are preferably over hundreds or thousands of years,
7:33
Speaker 1: so it's operatic sort of in the scale of the story.
7:35
Speaker 1: You're telling the drama. I guess you have the drama.
7:37
Speaker 1: All right, well, this book sounds interesting. Let's talk about
7:40
Speaker 1: what the book is about. I guess first of all,
7:42
Speaker 1: how did you hear about it? I heard about this
7:43
Speaker 1: book because I read his other book, Lexicon, and really
7:46
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. No idea how I came across that one
7:48
Speaker 1: and recommended to me by somebody who recommended something else
7:51
Speaker 1: to me. Maybe so then I just picked up this
7:53
Speaker 1: next book that he had just come out with, and
7:55
Speaker 1: I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it was all
7:57
Speaker 1: about aliens and human alien warfare and zooming around the
8:01
Speaker 1: galaxy and all sorts of crazy stuff. I'm hooked Aliens opera?
8:07
Speaker 1: Did they have accents at all? I wonder if, like
8:09
Speaker 1: humans went out into space, they would develop a different accent.
8:12
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, haven't you seen the Expanse. They have a
8:14
Speaker 1: whole interesting accident for the belters, and like a little
8:18
Speaker 1: dialect of English. It's really well done. I imagine they would.
8:20
Speaker 1: You know, any geographically separated population is going to drift
8:24
Speaker 1: off linguistically, so I imagine they would interesting. All right, Well,
8:28
Speaker 1: let's talk about the book. What's the book about? You said, aliens?
8:31
Speaker 1: It's aliens good aliens are bad alien? Well, you start
8:34
Speaker 1: off and you don't know, right. All we know is
8:36
Speaker 1: that there's this moment of first contact. We're gonna meet
8:39
Speaker 1: the aliens. They found this weird rock essentially accelerating through
8:43
Speaker 1: the Solar system, and it turns out it's an alien
8:46
Speaker 1: spaceship and they go out and they meet it, and
8:49
Speaker 1: there's this exciting scene where the aliens like come through
8:52
Speaker 1: the hatch and you don't know as the reader, and
8:54
Speaker 1: you can tell that the characters in the scene they
8:57
Speaker 1: don't know, like are we about to die or we
9:00
Speaker 1: about to meet friendly aliens? They're gonna unlock the secrets
9:03
Speaker 1: of the universe. So it's a the moment of great
9:05
Speaker 1: tension that really underpins a lot of what happens in
9:08
Speaker 1: the book. Really, there was no texting contact or phone
9:12
Speaker 1: call before meeting in person. No, and you know how
9:15
Speaker 1: you know how to communicate with these aliens. You don't
9:18
Speaker 1: have like electronic signals in common. I mean it's hard
9:21
Speaker 1: enough to get another human being on Skype or Zoom
9:24
Speaker 1: to get that to work. You know, getting your audio
9:26
Speaker 1: to work on a Zoom call is hard enough, so
9:28
Speaker 1: getting to chat with an alien before you meet with
9:31
Speaker 1: them in person is pretty tricky. So the aliens sort
9:34
Speaker 1: of climb aboard a human ship and what you discovered
9:37
Speaker 1: this is not really a spoiler because it happens very
9:38
Speaker 1: early on in the book, is that the aliens are
9:41
Speaker 1: not friendly, not at all. Oh man, what do they do?
9:44
Speaker 1: They come in, guns a blazing or brandishing their claws. Yeah,
9:47
Speaker 1: they come in, and it turns out they can do
9:48
Speaker 1: something crazy, which is they can spit many black holes.
9:52
Speaker 1: They can spit black holes. What they spit these little
9:56
Speaker 1: black holes which passed through you and basically just like
9:59
Speaker 1: tear you shreds. And that's not a very friendly thing
10:02
Speaker 1: to do. And so the humans are basically torn apart
10:06
Speaker 1: in the very first moment of contact, and that sets
10:08
Speaker 1: the tone for the human alien interaction in the rest
10:12
Speaker 1: of the book. Oh man, Well, there's a lot of
10:15
Speaker 1: signs that are to talk about. But but then what
10:17
Speaker 1: happens then the then the book is sort of about
10:19
Speaker 1: what a war or cleaning up after this mess? Yes,
10:23
Speaker 1: so then it launches a massive planetary war, and the
10:26
Speaker 1: rest of the book is essentially an exploration for what
10:29
Speaker 1: that war is like. And how it plays out, you know,
10:32
Speaker 1: how does humanity respond to that? What kind of weapons
10:34
Speaker 1: do we build to try to defend ourselves to try
10:37
Speaker 1: to take it to the aliens? What has to happen
10:39
Speaker 1: for that to work? And then what's it like for
10:42
Speaker 1: those humans on board? And it's pretty fascinating because he
10:45
Speaker 1: develops this technology, this almost self driving ship and these
10:50
Speaker 1: massive warships that are so complicated they have to be
10:53
Speaker 1: essentially driven by AI. Man, oh wait, so there's robots
10:57
Speaker 1: to involved. Yeah, well, the whole ship is like a
10:59
Speaker 1: robe odd and it's making decisions. The humans are on board,
11:03
Speaker 1: but they're not really in charge. They're just sort of
11:06
Speaker 1: like there. And it's not clear in the very beginning,
11:09
Speaker 1: like well why are the humans even on the ship?
11:11
Speaker 1: But what is the nature of this AI? And one
11:13
Speaker 1: of the things I really like about this book is
11:15
Speaker 1: that there's not a lot of just like explainer, You've
11:17
Speaker 1: got to figure stuff out for yourself, which leaves mysteries.
11:20
Speaker 1: Why are the aliens attacking us? Like why are they
11:22
Speaker 1: still grumpy? Are the interested in having a conversation? Or
11:26
Speaker 1: like what is the AI on this ship? What is
11:28
Speaker 1: it doing? Why is it making these decisions? Why are
11:30
Speaker 1: the humans even on the ship. It's pretty fascinating. Wait,
11:33
Speaker 1: there's nobody like in charge of the ship, Like the
11:36
Speaker 1: humans are just passengers. Yeah, the ship is in charge
11:38
Speaker 1: of the ship. I mean, the humans have rules they
11:40
Speaker 1: have to like do this and do that, but it
11:42
Speaker 1: becomes pretty clear that they're not actually necessary. And I
11:46
Speaker 1: think he's put the humans on board mostly to sell
11:49
Speaker 1: the war back to people on Earth. So the humans
11:52
Speaker 1: are they're like basically take pictures and like turn out
11:55
Speaker 1: Instagram stories so that the folks back on Earth feel
12:00
Speaker 1: invested in the war. Otherwise, the war is just sort
12:02
Speaker 1: of like our AI versus these weird inscrutable aliens. Uh. Well,
12:09
Speaker 1: I'm all in favor of putting Instagram influencers on a
12:12
Speaker 1: spaceship and shooting the above to fight aliens. That's I
12:15
Speaker 1: think that would certainly improve our society. Here are you
12:18
Speaker 1: saying you want to send Kim Kardashian out to aliens?
12:24
Speaker 1: I won't deny that I do. Or maybe she is
12:27
Speaker 1: an alien That would actually explain a lot, or a robot, Yeah,
12:30
Speaker 1: that would explain a lot. Yeah, So so humans are
12:34
Speaker 1: just walking around the spaceship doing tasks. Now, is this
12:36
Speaker 1: word that Game among Us came from like it's one
12:39
Speaker 1: of them an impostor None of them are impostors. They're
12:42
Speaker 1: all real people. But the story goes pretty deep into
12:45
Speaker 1: like what it's like to be them, what it's like
12:47
Speaker 1: to be on a tin can for six months far
12:50
Speaker 1: away from humanity, and to be on this ship where
12:52
Speaker 1: you might not even really be necessary, and also to
12:55
Speaker 1: be fighting these aliens and like what do they want
12:58
Speaker 1: and why are they attacking us? And it goes pretty
13:00
Speaker 1: deep into that and what it means to be fighting
13:03
Speaker 1: a war when the humans are not even the ones
13:05
Speaker 1: making the decisions about who to kill and where to
13:07
Speaker 1: go right as it may happen here on earth, Like
13:10
Speaker 1: if you let AI, you know, drive the drones and stuff. Yeah,
13:13
Speaker 1: he's very clearly making a point about AI in weapons
13:17
Speaker 1: and AI and warfare. You know, is it a good
13:20
Speaker 1: idea to how the AI be doing these things because
13:22
Speaker 1: it's more efficient. It's obviously better than the humans at
13:25
Speaker 1: zapping the aliens. On the other hand, like you know,
13:28
Speaker 1: who knows what it's doing and why why is it
13:30
Speaker 1: making these decisions? Does it really have our interests at
13:33
Speaker 1: heart or the massive corporations that have funded it, do
13:36
Speaker 1: they have interests which don't exactly support what the public wants. Yeah,
13:41
Speaker 1: and do we get to find out later what the
13:43
Speaker 1: aliens want? Or is that a spoiler alert? We come
13:46
Speaker 1: close to there's sort of a moment of contact where
13:49
Speaker 1: one of the characters gets to talk to one of
13:51
Speaker 1: the aliens and sort of starts to maybe understand what
13:54
Speaker 1: they're doing and what they want. And I think the
13:57
Speaker 1: way that Barry has pitched it is that it's essentially
13:59
Speaker 1: a confrontation between two forms of life. And the way
14:04
Speaker 1: he looks at it, life is conflict. That everything on
14:07
Speaker 1: Earth is constantly competing for resources. I mean two forms
14:10
Speaker 1: of life that occupies sort of the same niche come
14:13
Speaker 1: into contact, they will instantly be in conflict. They're sort
14:16
Speaker 1: of like driven by their genes. So he sees like
14:20
Speaker 1: humans as just like the implementation of our d NA
14:24
Speaker 1: fighting to preserve and propagate our DNA, and the imagines
14:28
Speaker 1: the aliens are just doing the same thing. Whatever they
14:31
Speaker 1: use for code has created these bodies in order to
14:34
Speaker 1: propagate and reproduce that code. I see. And then when
14:38
Speaker 1: does Will Smith come in? Does he come in on
14:42
Speaker 1: a spaceship riding a horse? Well, let's get into the
14:45
Speaker 1: science of it. Sounds like there's some pretty interesting science
14:48
Speaker 1: going on here AI for warfare and spitting many black
14:53
Speaker 1: holes as as a bullet. So let's get into that.
14:55
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. Alright. We're talking
15:08
Speaker 1: about the book Providence by the author Max Barry, who
15:13
Speaker 1: writes speculative fiction and science fiction and has written book
15:17
Speaker 1: about aliens coming to start some some beef humans. That's right,
15:23
Speaker 1: it's not the sort of like interplanetary physics confidence that
15:26
Speaker 1: I'm hoping for. If we do meet the alien you
15:29
Speaker 1: probably I wonder if you guys pit black holes at
15:32
Speaker 1: your confidence a little bit? Probably? Right, Hey, if somebody
15:36
Speaker 1: could show up and make black holes at a conference,
15:37
Speaker 1: they would be very popular. Make me one. I want
15:40
Speaker 1: to study one. Depends on which direction he's he or
15:43
Speaker 1: she is skidding these black holes. I'd like one so
15:45
Speaker 1: I could power my black hole starship with it, right right, right,
15:49
Speaker 1: all right, let's talk about the science of this book,
15:51
Speaker 1: which sounds pretty interesting. So I guess, first of all,
15:55
Speaker 1: we're fighting this war with the aliens here in our
15:58
Speaker 1: solar system, or does it spread out into the galaxy.
16:00
Speaker 1: It spreads out in the galaxy. We build these huge
16:03
Speaker 1: ships are called Providence class ships. That's where the book
16:06
Speaker 1: gets its name, and they go out, they do these
16:08
Speaker 1: hard skips, these faster than light travel out to find
16:12
Speaker 1: the aliens to hunt them down. Humanity has taken the
16:15
Speaker 1: first beating in the first contact, but now it's on
16:18
Speaker 1: the aggression. It wants to go out and to eradicate
16:20
Speaker 1: these aliens. And you know, it's interesting it it poses
16:24
Speaker 1: us as in conflict with these aliens. And as I
16:27
Speaker 1: was reading it, I was wondering, like, why do we
16:30
Speaker 1: have to eradicate those aliens? Or why those aliens want
16:33
Speaker 1: to kill us? Like why would aliens even want to
16:35
Speaker 1: kill them? And that's kind of part of the book,
16:37
Speaker 1: I imagine, right, like you not knowing and you figuring
16:40
Speaker 1: that out. Yeah, And also it's sort of an extension
16:42
Speaker 1: of this question. It's natural for forms of life on
16:45
Speaker 1: Earth to be in conflict because there are limited resources.
16:48
Speaker 1: But then when you go out into space, like man,
16:50
Speaker 1: there's plenty of room for everybody, and there are zillions
16:53
Speaker 1: of planets and huge blobs of ice or any kind
16:56
Speaker 1: of mineral you want. Do we really need to be
16:58
Speaker 1: in complex? Isn't the alexy big enough for two civilizations?
17:03
Speaker 1: But maybe we're just sort of like trapped into the
17:05
Speaker 1: modes of survival that we've developed on a planet where
17:07
Speaker 1: we're constantly in conflict and anybody who attacks us must
17:10
Speaker 1: be eradicated. And so it's an interesting question of like
17:13
Speaker 1: whether that really applies to a space civilization. I see,
17:17
Speaker 1: so they came to us we were happily sitting around
17:21
Speaker 1: in our planet, or did we already have like a
17:23
Speaker 1: multi planet civilization Now we're basically just living on Earth.
17:27
Speaker 1: We had a few spaceships, it was early days in
17:29
Speaker 1: space faring, sort of the way we are now, but
17:32
Speaker 1: we hadn't really like established a lot of colonies. But
17:35
Speaker 1: then this really fires up the space military industrial complex
17:39
Speaker 1: and we develop a whole new class of warships which
17:42
Speaker 1: gobble up huge fractions of our economy. All of a sudden,
17:45
Speaker 1: we developed AI and faster than light travels. Yeah. Absolutely,
17:49
Speaker 1: You know, when we are facing an existential threat, the
17:52
Speaker 1: scientists can do some amazing stuff. They cut out their
17:55
Speaker 1: naps and they really get to work. Man. But it
17:57
Speaker 1: makes me wonder, like if aliens you come, would they
18:01
Speaker 1: just sort of follow a biological drive to meet and
18:04
Speaker 1: exterminate any competition, or is it possible for us to
18:08
Speaker 1: sort of mentally and socially evolved to a point where
18:11
Speaker 1: we're like, hey, it's playing a room in the galaxy.
18:13
Speaker 1: Let's just have a nice coffee, right, Like, it's not
18:15
Speaker 1: clear to me that if we meet aliens they will
18:18
Speaker 1: naturally want to attack us. I imagine that a US
18:22
Speaker 1: we want to build a wall. Yeah, it would probably
18:26
Speaker 1: be partisan in the end. You know, are the aliens
18:29
Speaker 1: Democrats or Republicans? Right? I guess maybe pro human or
18:32
Speaker 1: anti alien? But I think there is something that he
18:34
Speaker 1: gets right, which is that aliens, if they do come,
18:37
Speaker 1: will be very alien. You know, I imagine some sort
18:40
Speaker 1: of like interplanetary physics conversation, but that's really very unrealistic.
18:44
Speaker 1: It's very likely that if they come, we won't understand
18:47
Speaker 1: what they're doing or why they're doing it, and be
18:49
Speaker 1: very hard to sort of drill down to understand their motivations.
18:53
Speaker 1: It can be hard to understand other people, even other
18:55
Speaker 1: people you've known for a long time. So the idea
18:58
Speaker 1: of like understanding the motivations and the drives of a
19:01
Speaker 1: completely alien, intelligent species seems pretty far out of our reach.
19:05
Speaker 1: So I think it's very likely that if aliens do come,
19:08
Speaker 1: they will be inscrutable in their motives, and you really
19:10
Speaker 1: do get a good sense of that in this book.
19:12
Speaker 1: You're like, never really understand why the aliens are doing
19:15
Speaker 1: what they're doing, and nobody spends any time trying to
19:18
Speaker 1: figure this out. Worthy sociologists and the cultural anthropologists or
19:22
Speaker 1: alien trologists, Yeah, there are, and you hear internal debate
19:25
Speaker 1: and some of the characters like, why are we trying
19:27
Speaker 1: to essentially commit genocide against this intelligent species? Is that
19:32
Speaker 1: the right thing to do? You know? But then again,
19:34
Speaker 1: you're on this massive ship and that's the job of
19:36
Speaker 1: the ship, and you're following orders, and so there's some
19:40
Speaker 1: discussion about that, and you know, I think Barry races
19:42
Speaker 1: some questions about whether that's the appropriate response. But in
19:46
Speaker 1: the end, if it's kill or be killed, you know,
19:48
Speaker 1: then humanity steps up and tries to do the killing.
19:50
Speaker 1: All right. There's some science in the book Providence by
19:53
Speaker 1: Max Barry, and some of it has to do with
19:56
Speaker 1: spitting black holes. But there's also something called a violent
19:59
Speaker 1: zone what what set? At some point in the book,
20:01
Speaker 1: they lose contact with Earth because the ship goes into
20:04
Speaker 1: the violid zone. The violet zone is a place where
20:07
Speaker 1: you're just out of touch with Earth and there's no
20:10
Speaker 1: communication possible. And I think he's done this to sort
20:12
Speaker 1: of isolate the characters so they can't be supported and
20:15
Speaker 1: instructed by, you know, smart folks back on Earth, and
20:18
Speaker 1: it sort of felt like they're alone. They're there with
20:21
Speaker 1: the AI, and at some point of course things break down.
20:24
Speaker 1: The AI isn't doing what it's supposed to do, and
20:25
Speaker 1: they're wondering like, how should we solve this problem? And
20:28
Speaker 1: the characters come into conflict with each other. A lot
20:31
Speaker 1: of interesting developments. I don't want to spoil for the
20:32
Speaker 1: future readers. It's more of a plot device. You think
20:35
Speaker 1: that any kind of meaningful science statement. Absolutely, And as
20:39
Speaker 1: you hear my conversation with Max, he's very clear that
20:42
Speaker 1: he wanted this part of the plot, and he was like,
20:45
Speaker 1: I don't really care about the science of how this happens,
20:47
Speaker 1: so I'll just make something up. He totally owned it, right, right.
20:52
Speaker 1: I wonder how often physicist sated, well, I just needed
20:56
Speaker 1: something to make the equation balance, so I just made
20:58
Speaker 1: up this thing called the Higgs that is essentially theoretical physics. Yes, absolutely,
21:03
Speaker 1: they're unconstrained by reality. They just invent new ideas to
21:07
Speaker 1: fit what they need, and then we have to go
21:08
Speaker 1: out and check like, well, that's cool idea, but is
21:11
Speaker 1: it real? So absolutely, theoretical physicists are always creating stuff
21:16
Speaker 1: that suits their plot devices, all right. So the other
21:19
Speaker 1: piece of science here is that the aliens somehow spit
21:23
Speaker 1: black holes and they use them as bullets. Like that's
21:26
Speaker 1: how they kill you. They shoot black holes at you. Yeah,
21:28
Speaker 1: and they can shoot them at your ship and you know,
21:31
Speaker 1: puncture your ship. And these little black holes they're not
21:33
Speaker 1: just like bullets. They do pass through stuff and tear
21:35
Speaker 1: stuff up, but they also have intensive gravitational fields and
21:39
Speaker 1: so they know disorganized the ship and they pull stuff
21:42
Speaker 1: into them, So they're pretty powerful. It's pretty cool idea
21:45
Speaker 1: for a little weapon. It sounds like a bad idea,
21:49
Speaker 1: like like if you shoot it, wouldn't you get sucked
21:52
Speaker 1: into it too? Yeah, you have to shoot it away
21:54
Speaker 1: from you at some velocity. It's not the kind of
21:56
Speaker 1: thing you can really think about too deeply scientifically because
21:59
Speaker 1: it doesn't really hold water. What do you mean, Like,
22:01
Speaker 1: how do you make a black hole inside you without
22:04
Speaker 1: having all that mass and energy already inside you? You
22:08
Speaker 1: need to be incredibly massive or have incredible energy stores
22:12
Speaker 1: to create the kind of energy density you need to
22:14
Speaker 1: make a black hole. Right. Yeah, it's like making a
22:17
Speaker 1: plot in which people shoot bullets. Where did the bullets
22:20
Speaker 1: come from in the metal for them? Yeah, exactly, but
22:22
Speaker 1: here the bullets, you know, have to have like incredible
22:25
Speaker 1: amounts of mass. You could make a black hole. And
22:27
Speaker 1: you can make a black hole really really small. There's
22:29
Speaker 1: no theoretical lower limit there. But the problem is to
22:33
Speaker 1: have a black hole that's effective, you know, that has
22:35
Speaker 1: like powerful gravity, like the strength of Earth's gravity, right,
22:39
Speaker 1: even which is not that powerful but pretty effective. You
22:43
Speaker 1: need to create these black holes to have significant mass.
22:46
Speaker 1: So I did the calculation, and like, for you to
22:48
Speaker 1: have the power of Earth's gravity and be one meter
22:52
Speaker 1: away from a black hole, that black hole would have
22:55
Speaker 1: to have the mass of a hundred and fifty billion kilograms.
22:59
Speaker 1: So you have to compact a hundred and fifty billion
23:02
Speaker 1: ms of mass into a tiny dot in order to
23:05
Speaker 1: have the same power of Earth's gravity just a meter
23:07
Speaker 1: away from the black hole. Wow, that would be a lot.
23:10
Speaker 1: And these aliens can like shoot it like a machine
23:12
Speaker 1: gun or is it like a more like a death
23:15
Speaker 1: Star kind of takes a while for the engineers to
23:17
Speaker 1: pull the levers and they can shoot them out. It's
23:19
Speaker 1: not like a machine gun. But I don't know how
23:21
Speaker 1: many they have inside them, But it's not like it
23:24
Speaker 1: takes ten minutes to warm up, you know, in the
23:26
Speaker 1: moment of first contact they open the last they come inside,
23:28
Speaker 1: and then they just sort of like start black holing people.
23:31
Speaker 1: What and so, okay, so you shoot a black hole?
23:33
Speaker 1: And how big are these black holes? They're tiny, you know,
23:35
Speaker 1: they're infinite testimal essentially, they're you know, less than a
23:38
Speaker 1: millimeter across, less than amily, but they have about the
23:41
Speaker 1: mass of a planet. Well, he doesn't specify the mass
23:43
Speaker 1: of these things, but I did that little calculation, and
23:46
Speaker 1: in order to have the same gravity as a planet,
23:48
Speaker 1: then they would have to be like a hundred and
23:50
Speaker 1: fifty billion kilograms in mass. And so it doesn't seem
23:54
Speaker 1: to me at all feasible that these aliens that are
23:56
Speaker 1: walking around are holding a hundred fifty billion kilograms of
24:00
Speaker 1: mass inside them, all right, because if it's inside them before,
24:03
Speaker 1: they would also be pretty heavy, exactly exactly. And the
24:08
Speaker 1: thing about these black holes is that they come out
24:10
Speaker 1: and they don't just pass through you, but they gravitationally
24:13
Speaker 1: attract you. So they have to be massive enough to
24:15
Speaker 1: have that gravity. And you know, if it's just like
24:17
Speaker 1: a one millimeter blob that has you know, the same
24:20
Speaker 1: amount of stuff as one millimeter sized rock, there's no
24:23
Speaker 1: gravity there. Like the gravity there is so negligible you
24:25
Speaker 1: would never feel it. So you have to make it
24:27
Speaker 1: so compact and so dense that it's essentially physically impossible
24:32
Speaker 1: for an alien of human skill to have that much
24:35
Speaker 1: energy or stuff inside them to make that black hole.
24:37
Speaker 1: So then you shoot the black hole and like fast
24:40
Speaker 1: or is it like floating out away from me? Yeah,
24:42
Speaker 1: it's pretty quick. I mean it's not like light speed
24:44
Speaker 1: or anything. But it's also not a bullet speed. But
24:47
Speaker 1: it just sort of like drifts forward and passes through
24:49
Speaker 1: stuff and it does a lot of damage. Now, would
24:52
Speaker 1: a black hole like that last very long or does
24:54
Speaker 1: it evaporate or does it keep going forever? And then
24:58
Speaker 1: basically you created a black hole only in the universe. Oh,
25:01
Speaker 1: that's a great question. The black holes do evaporate. We
25:04
Speaker 1: think this is something called Hawking radiation, where a black
25:07
Speaker 1: hole can give energy to quantum particles just outside of
25:11
Speaker 1: it and lose some of its energy in doing so.
25:13
Speaker 1: And if those particles then drift away, the black holes
25:16
Speaker 1: effectively lost some of its mass. So this is black
25:19
Speaker 1: hole evaporation. And it actually happens much more rapidly for
25:23
Speaker 1: small black holes than for big black holes. So for
25:26
Speaker 1: small black holes like these, they do evaporate, but these
25:29
Speaker 1: would last a long time, Like a black hole the
25:32
Speaker 1: size of the Empire State Building, for example, that would
25:35
Speaker 1: last several years. And this is a hundred and forties
25:37
Speaker 1: seven billion kilograms, so substantially bigger than the Empire State Building.
25:42
Speaker 1: So these should last several years. Yeah, all right, Well,
25:46
Speaker 1: and you talked to Max Berry, right, Daniel. You zoomed
25:49
Speaker 1: or skyped him, reached out to Max, and he was
25:52
Speaker 1: very happy to talk to us about the signs of
25:54
Speaker 1: his novel. Cool, And did you tell him that it
25:56
Speaker 1: was totally implausible? I let him know we'd be talking
26:01
Speaker 1: about the science of his novel, and he said that
26:03
Speaker 1: sounds like something I'd be totally out of my depth. Four,
26:06
Speaker 1: But I'm totally up for it. He's I just don't
26:10
Speaker 1: shoot any black holes in me. No, he was a
26:13
Speaker 1: great sport. Cool. All right, Well, here is Daniel's interview
26:17
Speaker 1: with science fiction author Max Barry, reader of the book Providence. Okay,
26:28
Speaker 1: then it's my pleasure to introduce to the podcast Max Barry,
26:32
Speaker 1: author of Providence. Max, say hello to our listeners. Yeah,
26:35
Speaker 1: hello listeners. Thank you for having me, and thanks very
26:37
Speaker 1: much for being on the program. Tell us a little
26:40
Speaker 1: bit about how you got into science fiction writing. It
26:43
Speaker 1: seems like a small departure from some of your earlier novels,
26:45
Speaker 1: like a Lexicon or Company. Yeah. Look, it's funny because
26:48
Speaker 1: my first ever novel was, Um, it's called Syrup, and
26:51
Speaker 1: it's a satire basically a comedy about a guy who
26:55
Speaker 1: works in the marketing industry, and it doesn't really have
26:57
Speaker 1: anything to do with science fiction at all, except for
27:01
Speaker 1: the fact I guess that the characters make a science
27:03
Speaker 1: fiction movie at some point during the book. And then
27:06
Speaker 1: the second one was Jennifer Government, which is probably the
27:08
Speaker 1: book I'm best known for, and that is science fiction
27:11
Speaker 1: without the aliens and spaceships and futuristic technologies. Right, So
27:15
Speaker 1: it's it's an alternate present kind of science fiction novel
27:17
Speaker 1: where you know, the social structures are different. Um, It's
27:21
Speaker 1: set in a ultra capitalist society where Australia is a
27:24
Speaker 1: part of the United States and there's basically no government
27:27
Speaker 1: and everything is run by the free market, so it's
27:30
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's a science fiction of ideas rather than
27:32
Speaker 1: of objects or things. So anyway, I was invited along
27:36
Speaker 1: to a science fiction con um here in my hometown
27:39
Speaker 1: of Melbourne, Australia, not too long after that was published,
27:43
Speaker 1: and I felt like a bit of a fraud because
27:45
Speaker 1: I had these two books and only one was even
27:47
Speaker 1: sci fi, and I'm there on panels with all these
27:49
Speaker 1: actual science fiction writers who have produced their thirteenth novel
27:53
Speaker 1: in you know, the Ring Arc cycle, and um, the
27:58
Speaker 1: guy said no, no, it's it's fine because you know
28:00
Speaker 1: this Jennifer Government. And then with Syrup, you know, even
28:03
Speaker 1: though it's not science fiction, it feels like it was
28:05
Speaker 1: written by a sci fi fan. And I was really
28:07
Speaker 1: pleased to hear that, because yeah, I have been a
28:09
Speaker 1: sci fi fan my whole life. It was basically all
28:13
Speaker 1: I read in my teen years. That and horror. I
28:16
Speaker 1: was really into that, into sci fi and horror with
28:19
Speaker 1: a bit of fantasy, probably when I was younger. But yeah,
28:21
Speaker 1: I have this this real background in a lot of
28:24
Speaker 1: classic sci fi especially the sort of Isaac Asimov and
28:27
Speaker 1: Arthur C. Clark and Larry Niven. All these sort of
28:30
Speaker 1: Golden age sci fi novels were part of my diet
28:33
Speaker 1: growing up. So yeah, I just I've just always been
28:36
Speaker 1: into that and it sort of leaks through in my books,
28:39
Speaker 1: even when I don't really set out to write a
28:40
Speaker 1: sci fi novel. So help us orient you a little
28:43
Speaker 1: bit in the sort of space of science fiction writers
28:46
Speaker 1: and answer a few questions about the science fiction genre.
28:48
Speaker 1: Are you of the opinion that a Star Trek transporter
28:51
Speaker 1: will actually kill you and then clone you on the
28:54
Speaker 1: other side, or does it literally transport your atoms from
28:58
Speaker 1: one place to another? Yeah, I mean it's gotta it's
29:00
Speaker 1: got to transport information, right, There'll be no sense in
29:03
Speaker 1: transporting atoms. And it would be kind of meaningless too,
29:06
Speaker 1: wouldn't it, Because they're just atoms. It's not like they're
29:08
Speaker 1: imbued with the soul of you in your your molecules.
29:12
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it surely has to be murdering you
29:15
Speaker 1: and then rebuilding an identical you on the other side.
29:18
Speaker 1: So then would you be willing to get into a
29:20
Speaker 1: transporter or somebody built one? No, No, I wouldn't know.
29:23
Speaker 1: I mean that that's a death sentence, so it's terrific
29:26
Speaker 1: for my clone on the other side, but that that's
29:28
Speaker 1: a different person alright. So then what technology that you
29:32
Speaker 1: see in science fiction would you most like to see
29:35
Speaker 1: come reality? Um? Yeah, I mean to completely contract what
29:40
Speaker 1: I just said, Like, something that would actually take me
29:42
Speaker 1: to long distances would be fantastic. If I could get
29:46
Speaker 1: the teleportation without the murdering, that would be terrific. Yeah,
29:50
Speaker 1: I mean it's a thing. The fast distance of the
29:53
Speaker 1: universe is something I actually bumped up again against with
29:56
Speaker 1: with Providence because it is my like classics sci fi
30:00
Speaker 1: story where it's it's set on a spaceship, it involves
30:02
Speaker 1: aliens and all of these these sort of really traditional
30:08
Speaker 1: space opera elements um that I really loved as a kid.
30:11
Speaker 1: But the thing, and I've tried to transport that into
30:13
Speaker 1: a really plausible world and to make the technology work
30:17
Speaker 1: like I think it really would, and the AI function
30:19
Speaker 1: like I think an A I would function. But the
30:22
Speaker 1: distance thing is a real problem at some point you,
30:25
Speaker 1: I think, when you're writing a book like this, unless
30:27
Speaker 1: you want to get into you unless you want to
30:29
Speaker 1: write a story about the technology of um faster than
30:32
Speaker 1: light space travel. You you have to hand wave at
30:34
Speaker 1: some point and say, in this universe there is faster
30:37
Speaker 1: than light travel. I'm not sure exactly how it works,
30:39
Speaker 1: but people can get from here to there in a
30:41
Speaker 1: short amount of time, like within a generation. Otherwise, you
30:44
Speaker 1: know you have no story to tell. So then, what
30:46
Speaker 1: is your personal answer to the Fermi paradox? If the
30:50
Speaker 1: universe is so likely to host life, where is everybody?
30:54
Speaker 1: The distances just too vast and the speed of light
30:56
Speaker 1: too slow? Right? I have to believe that there's something
30:59
Speaker 1: out there, I guess I tend to think that there
31:02
Speaker 1: must be something out there, but maybe it doesn't fit
31:04
Speaker 1: neatly within our pretty narrow ideas of what life is.
31:09
Speaker 1: Because we we tend to imagine everything experiencing the world
31:13
Speaker 1: the same way we do. We tend to think that
31:15
Speaker 1: unless something fits into our own idea of what a
31:18
Speaker 1: person thinks like or what a life form should look like,
31:21
Speaker 1: then it doesn't really count. And there's really no reason
31:24
Speaker 1: to believe that there isn't a vast range of other
31:26
Speaker 1: types of things out there that you know, it would
31:29
Speaker 1: shock the hell out of us if we actually encountered them.
31:31
Speaker 1: But wouldn't turn out to be you know, the kind
31:34
Speaker 1: of star Trek alien where it's like us, but with
31:36
Speaker 1: bumpy ridges on the forehead, or you know, a different,
31:39
Speaker 1: different shade color ear or something like that. So then
31:41
Speaker 1: let's turn into the topic of your novel, Providence, which
31:44
Speaker 1: I just read and thoroughly enjoyed. Two congratulations, aren't really wonderful,
31:48
Speaker 1: Thank you, exciting space opera. Would love to really fascinating
31:51
Speaker 1: themes in it. And something that I really liked about
31:54
Speaker 1: the novel was that you have the excitement of meeting aliens,
31:57
Speaker 1: but then basically everything goes wrong. Is that something that
32:00
Speaker 1: you were trying to capture in the book, something that
32:02
Speaker 1: you were trying to explore. Yeah, that that's certainly the
32:05
Speaker 1: concept that first got me thinking that it might be
32:07
Speaker 1: an interesting story to tell. I guess it sort of
32:10
Speaker 1: stemmed from the idea that when we used to go
32:13
Speaker 1: off to find wars, it used to be a very
32:16
Speaker 1: personal experience. Used to be, you know, a man with
32:19
Speaker 1: a gun or not even that in some cases up
32:22
Speaker 1: against another man with a weapon, and it has evolved
32:27
Speaker 1: because of technology to the point where it's nowadays it's
32:30
Speaker 1: a lot more like a person in a dark room
32:32
Speaker 1: with a screen guiding what's happening, and future wars maybe
32:36
Speaker 1: fought with humans well back from the front lines. And
32:39
Speaker 1: you know, this was really impressed upon me watching the
32:42
Speaker 1: Gulf Wars and the way that that warfare seemed to operate.
32:45
Speaker 1: Now where you have this sort of a symmetric warfare
32:49
Speaker 1: between a force that was quite technologically advanced and one
32:52
Speaker 1: that was less. So so yeah, it's and we and
32:55
Speaker 1: we we value life differently in that sort of situation.
32:58
Speaker 1: So the loss of a soldier nowadays is quite shocking
33:01
Speaker 1: compared to what it would have been, you know, in
33:03
Speaker 1: decades gone by. So yeah, I was thinking about how
33:07
Speaker 1: this might work. And the situation that interested me was
33:10
Speaker 1: the idea that you have, say, a crew on a
33:12
Speaker 1: battleship as we as happens in Providence. So there is
33:16
Speaker 1: an amazing warship that has sucked the resources of Earth
33:19
Speaker 1: dry to build and it's it's fantastic. It it's got
33:22
Speaker 1: these incredible weapons, it's run by this incredible AI. The
33:26
Speaker 1: functions of the actual for humans on board are pretty
33:29
Speaker 1: limited because you know, they can't do a whole lot
33:31
Speaker 1: compared to the capabilities of this battleship. The interesting thing there,
33:35
Speaker 1: of course, is that, Okay, so what happens when things
33:37
Speaker 1: start to go wrong and these people who were maybe
33:41
Speaker 1: there to basically to look good for the humans back
33:45
Speaker 1: on Earth who are trying to fund this war effort
33:47
Speaker 1: now actually have to do their jobs. But do you
33:49
Speaker 1: think it's sort of inevitable that if we meet an
33:52
Speaker 1: alien race that we will not understand them and essentially
33:56
Speaker 1: be launched into war just because it's impossible to sympathize,
34:00
Speaker 1: were too communicate or to understand each other if, as
34:02
Speaker 1: you say, an alien race is very likely to be
34:05
Speaker 1: extremely alien, right, Okay, I think there's a couple of
34:08
Speaker 1: things there. First of all, I think any encounter with
34:10
Speaker 1: an alien race is going to be super disappointing from
34:13
Speaker 1: our point of view, just because we you know, we're
34:15
Speaker 1: expecting something like us, and it will be something that
34:18
Speaker 1: is so different that we will think like, it won't
34:20
Speaker 1: be cool in any of the metrics that we rate
34:23
Speaker 1: as humans. Has been has been interesting, So you know,
34:27
Speaker 1: it will be a type of life form that does things.
34:30
Speaker 1: Maybe it grows by consuming a particular element um and
34:33
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem intelligent at all to us, but it's
34:36
Speaker 1: extremely successful in terms of you know what it's doing
34:38
Speaker 1: to survive and multiply. The second part is, and this
34:42
Speaker 1: is a big theme of the book, the idea that
34:44
Speaker 1: there is is conflict between life forms at every level.
34:49
Speaker 1: And there is a conflict between I guess most obviously
34:53
Speaker 1: we're in our own species humans fight each other, but
34:56
Speaker 1: there is also conflict between the genes that make up
35:00
Speaker 1: our DNA were there's been a battle for territory on
35:04
Speaker 1: our on our DNA that goes back however long. And
35:09
Speaker 1: this is a battle that we're completely unaware of, except
35:13
Speaker 1: it does really guide a lot of our behavior. We
35:16
Speaker 1: do care for families and raise them and protect our
35:19
Speaker 1: kin and try to defeat the others who have different
35:22
Speaker 1: DNA and all that's kind of guided by these instructions
35:26
Speaker 1: that we are only vaguely aware of. But we're basically
35:29
Speaker 1: programmed in a way. We're programs, but we have free
35:32
Speaker 1: will at the same time, which is another interesting concept.
35:35
Speaker 1: So yeah, the idea that there is this inherent conflict
35:38
Speaker 1: between all living things and that the universe is at
35:42
Speaker 1: some level this pretty bleak battleground where nothing matters except survival.
35:48
Speaker 1: I thought that was an interesting foundation for the story.
35:51
Speaker 1: And on top of that, you have these these characters,
35:55
Speaker 1: is for in particular, who spend most of the book
35:57
Speaker 1: just the four of them, and they their people. So
36:01
Speaker 1: we we go into this universe, this cold, uncaring universe
36:05
Speaker 1: of physics and logic, and we actually bring stories to it,
36:10
Speaker 1: and we bring value, and we create these really warm emotions,
36:15
Speaker 1: and yeah, I guess value is the best way to
36:18
Speaker 1: put it. We we sort of create things that have
36:19
Speaker 1: nothing just buy our perceptions of what we care about.
36:22
Speaker 1: So I think it's just a lovely contrast where you
36:25
Speaker 1: can have the pretty practical, brutal reality of the universe
36:29
Speaker 1: on one hand, and then you have a more personal
36:32
Speaker 1: set of personal journeys going through it. I don't disagree
36:34
Speaker 1: with you, but I don't think that answer is going
36:36
Speaker 1: to get you nominated to be among our contingent to
36:38
Speaker 1: go meet the aliens if we ever do meet them, Right, Yeah, No,
36:42
Speaker 1: I don't think i'd like to hear either, like I'd
36:43
Speaker 1: love to see it, but maybe from a distance, a
36:45
Speaker 1: safe distance. I'm actually more concerned about what we're going
36:48
Speaker 1: to do to ourselves with AI than what aliens are
36:50
Speaker 1: going to do to us. All Right, we have lots
36:52
Speaker 1: more to talk about But first, let's take a quick break,
37:08
Speaker 1: and we're back and I'm talking to Max Barry, author
37:10
Speaker 1: of the science fiction novel Providence. Well, something I thought
37:14
Speaker 1: was fascinating in the book was that moment of first contact.
37:17
Speaker 1: There's hope, the humans are not necessarily just pulling out
37:20
Speaker 1: their weapons and blasting. They're wondering what these like, are
37:23
Speaker 1: they going to be friendly? And then they sort of
37:25
Speaker 1: met with this immediate assault of this this deadly attack.
37:29
Speaker 1: And something that drove me through the book was wondering,
37:32
Speaker 1: why are these aliens trying to kill us? And I
37:34
Speaker 1: hear what you're saying that life is in conflict always,
37:37
Speaker 1: But isn't that sort of on a planetary scale where
37:39
Speaker 1: we're competing for resources, we're sort of trapped in makes
37:42
Speaker 1: me wonder, like this alien species, why don't they just
37:45
Speaker 1: go somewhere else and find some empty planet. Is it
37:48
Speaker 1: really necessary do you think for life forms to battle
37:51
Speaker 1: it out on the scale of galaxies or the universe
37:54
Speaker 1: where things are just so vast and so separated and
37:57
Speaker 1: so rich. Yeah, that's that's a great question. I think, No,
38:00
Speaker 1: there's not a need. There is a kind of bias
38:03
Speaker 1: towards conflict. There is maybe the best way to work.
38:06
Speaker 1: It doesn't it doesn't have to be resolved by conflict,
38:08
Speaker 1: and with this story, it begins in a fairly traditional way,
38:13
Speaker 1: I guess, where there is basically a war between humans
38:15
Speaker 1: and aliens, and the aliens seem hostile and aggressive just
38:18
Speaker 1: because they are. And throughout the book that question gets
38:23
Speaker 1: explored a little bit and the different characters have different
38:26
Speaker 1: opinions about it as well. So for one of them,
38:29
Speaker 1: for Jackson, for example, it doesn't really matter why why
38:32
Speaker 1: the aliens behave the way they do, or why they're aggressive,
38:35
Speaker 1: or what their aims are. It's just the fact that
38:37
Speaker 1: they attacked us. We need to wipe them out in
38:40
Speaker 1: the story. For others, they can try to imagine what
38:44
Speaker 1: the motivations of So the alien race is called the salamanders,
38:49
Speaker 1: what the salamanders are actually you know, thinking, and what
38:52
Speaker 1: motivates them and try to to tease out, you know,
38:56
Speaker 1: how did this conflict happen? Doesn't even need to happen.
38:59
Speaker 1: Do we need to be at all with this race
39:00
Speaker 1: or not? So, yeah, it is a question that gets
39:04
Speaker 1: explored a little bit, and you know, without giving away
39:06
Speaker 1: the answer to it, I hope that it's it's resolved
39:10
Speaker 1: in a satisfying way. Um, but an unusual way too.
39:13
Speaker 1: I hope my answer to that question is is a
39:15
Speaker 1: pretty practical one um and a pretty unsentimental one um.
39:19
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's it felt true to me. I
39:22
Speaker 1: thought it was really well done. The way you have
39:24
Speaker 1: sort of this unthinking or or understandable alien war that
39:29
Speaker 1: you're fighting, or this ununderstandable enemy you're fighting, and then
39:32
Speaker 1: the humans have to build essentially an ununderstandable, undecipherable attack
39:37
Speaker 1: AI to fight that war for them, until you end
39:39
Speaker 1: up with this two sides neither would you understand even
39:42
Speaker 1: if you're on one of them. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.
39:44
Speaker 1: And when I was tackling the idea of a story,
39:47
Speaker 1: it's a war story. Essentially, the question is how do
39:50
Speaker 1: you do that? Because war is too big to understand.
39:53
Speaker 1: You can this, it happens on many different levels. At
39:56
Speaker 1: the top level, you can sort of understand maybe whether
39:59
Speaker 1: the big forces are moving in which side is ascendant.
40:04
Speaker 1: But you know, that's a really detached way of looking
40:07
Speaker 1: at war. The way that it really matters to people
40:09
Speaker 1: is what's happening to the individuals. You know, what's the
40:11
Speaker 1: individual's experience of war, but then their experience is only
40:15
Speaker 1: a tiny little slice of it. So I did hope
40:18
Speaker 1: that the feeling that you get from this book is
40:20
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of different levels of conflict
40:23
Speaker 1: going on at once, and some are moving faster than others,
40:26
Speaker 1: but there is a conflict that a very deep level.
40:30
Speaker 1: There is also the individuals who are soldiers in a war,
40:33
Speaker 1: who are fighting the most obvious form of it, but
40:37
Speaker 1: they are also really just tiny little players in in
40:40
Speaker 1: the larger conflict because they are you know, as you say,
40:44
Speaker 1: they're quite limited in what they can do, especially compared
40:47
Speaker 1: to the capabilities of the battleship run by the AI
40:51
Speaker 1: that they're inside. So yeah, and what is actually happening
40:55
Speaker 1: with the AI, of course, is another whole area of
40:58
Speaker 1: the book. And I love that you didn't just explain
41:00
Speaker 1: it to us that he left at a mystery. We
41:02
Speaker 1: have to try to decipher it ourselves. That's one of
41:03
Speaker 1: my funnest elements in well written novels. But let me
41:06
Speaker 1: ask you about the the science of this universe that
41:08
Speaker 1: you've built. And so you have a few elements in
41:11
Speaker 1: this universe you have fasten like travel, and you call
41:14
Speaker 1: them skips you have this region where no communication is possible,
41:18
Speaker 1: the violid zone. Did you have these ideas and then
41:22
Speaker 1: sort of build the story in the universe you created,
41:25
Speaker 1: or do you sort of like make up the physics
41:27
Speaker 1: as you went along in order to enable the story
41:29
Speaker 1: you wanted to tell. Yeah, probably closer to the second one. Whenever,
41:32
Speaker 1: whenever a writer approaches a story, they have to decide
41:36
Speaker 1: which parts of it are the most interesting to them.
41:38
Speaker 1: So for some writers it's you know, they're more into
41:42
Speaker 1: the actual technology, like the hardware and you know what
41:45
Speaker 1: it does and how it works. Others are more into
41:49
Speaker 1: you assume that this does exist and however it works.
41:51
Speaker 1: You know, we don't really mind so much, but let's
41:53
Speaker 1: look more at how it affects the choices people make,
41:56
Speaker 1: and how it affects their behavior, how it affects society. So,
42:00
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's hard to do everything at once,
42:02
Speaker 1: and at some point you've got to really decide where
42:04
Speaker 1: your focus is. So for me, it was it was
42:07
Speaker 1: the people. It was the characters, and you know, the
42:10
Speaker 1: particular experience that they go through, the hardware and the
42:14
Speaker 1: technology and the science of it. I'm a big fan
42:16
Speaker 1: and like I enjoy that stuff in the stuff I read,
42:19
Speaker 1: but not quite as much as I enjoy a novel
42:21
Speaker 1: with characters that I really fall in love with and
42:24
Speaker 1: and identify with that will carry me along in a story.
42:26
Speaker 1: So so yeah, that was my focus. So there the skips.
42:30
Speaker 1: The faster than light travel, as I sort of mentioned earlier,
42:33
Speaker 1: is is absolutely a you know, I did not want
42:36
Speaker 1: to go into how that was possible, because yeah, it
42:39
Speaker 1: becomes such a distraction unless your book is about that
42:42
Speaker 1: and it's about the technology, then yeah, it doesn't. It
42:45
Speaker 1: just slows everything down, so, you know, ironically, because I'm
42:49
Speaker 1: trying to speed things up so they can travel faster
42:53
Speaker 1: than light, just so they can remove themselves from the
42:56
Speaker 1: solar system without everybody growing old in the meantime. What
42:59
Speaker 1: was the other one that you meant and the other
43:01
Speaker 1: violet you have the yeah, yeah, well again it's just
43:04
Speaker 1: you know, mainly because the idea is that you get
43:07
Speaker 1: these four people on the battleship and then they are
43:10
Speaker 1: they have to figure out what to do when the
43:11
Speaker 1: technology begins to fail them, and you know, that is
43:15
Speaker 1: the core premiss of the books. So there has to
43:17
Speaker 1: be a way for that to happen. But there's a
43:19
Speaker 1: few other things about like exactly what the weapons are
43:22
Speaker 1: and how the defenses work, where you know, a reference
43:25
Speaker 1: a few things, But yeah, it is it's not a
43:28
Speaker 1: book that describes how the technology works down to the
43:32
Speaker 1: technical level. Like for me, it has to make sense.
43:35
Speaker 1: It has to be plausible enough, and at some point,
43:39
Speaker 1: you know, I assume you reach a certain qualification of
43:43
Speaker 1: reader where no matter what I do, it's not going
43:45
Speaker 1: to be quite good enough because the maths and the
43:47
Speaker 1: physics just don't quite add up. Although, like I my
43:51
Speaker 1: my next book, which is about parallel dimensions and involves
43:54
Speaker 1: a little bit of like multiverse thinking, I've turned out
43:57
Speaker 1: to be fantastic because there is such a why I
44:00
Speaker 1: disagreement among experts that it seems like almost anything really
44:04
Speaker 1: could be possible there. So I feel a bit more
44:05
Speaker 1: confident with that one. But with but with faster than
44:09
Speaker 1: light travel and stuff like that, it's a bit more limited.
44:11
Speaker 1: So yeah, the technology I think is, you know, it's stuff.
44:14
Speaker 1: I just love the sort of feeling that you have
44:17
Speaker 1: a character inside a world where they're surrounded by technology
44:20
Speaker 1: and it's like really appeals to me just on it
44:22
Speaker 1: like a primal level. That's the sort of in a
44:24
Speaker 1: geek inside me. But the idea of being on a
44:27
Speaker 1: battleship where you know everything around you is designed for
44:31
Speaker 1: a purpose and you know works in a certain way
44:34
Speaker 1: because there is a purpose to it. I just find like,
44:37
Speaker 1: I find that really cool, Like that appeals to me
44:39
Speaker 1: in the sense of being a kid, you know, thirteen
44:41
Speaker 1: years old at home just hoping a spaceship would land
44:44
Speaker 1: in my backyard one day and take me off to
44:46
Speaker 1: the stars. So so yeah, that that environment I like, Um,
44:49
Speaker 1: I enjoyed this little tidbit that the saldman who can
44:52
Speaker 1: spit these cork gluon pellets. Tell me about how you
44:56
Speaker 1: came up with that or where that comes from. Yeah,
44:58
Speaker 1: it came fairly late. Like the the enemy in the book,
45:01
Speaker 1: I hadn't really figured out until yeah, probably later than
45:05
Speaker 1: you would expect. I got the main plot and the characters,
45:09
Speaker 1: and which was the main thing for me, like who
45:11
Speaker 1: these people were, why they were there, and how they
45:13
Speaker 1: would interact. So it was after that that I decided, Okay,
45:18
Speaker 1: let's figure out who the enemy is and how they
45:20
Speaker 1: fight and so yeah, the idea of them being able
45:23
Speaker 1: to manipulate gravity essentially, and that they can spit these
45:27
Speaker 1: incredibly dense particles that act as many black holes in
45:30
Speaker 1: that if they pass close by you, then you experience
45:35
Speaker 1: very different forces on different parts of your body that
45:38
Speaker 1: tear it apart. So yeah, that was like just sort
45:42
Speaker 1: of a thing that I came up with fairly late,
45:45
Speaker 1: and it turns out to be reasonably memorable part of
45:48
Speaker 1: the book, I think for people who read it. But yeah,
45:51
Speaker 1: it wasn't my I didn't set out to write a
45:52
Speaker 1: story about black hole spitting aliens. That actually came kind
45:55
Speaker 1: of late. Well it made it pretty fun awesome. Well,
45:57
Speaker 1: thanks very much for answering all of our questions. Can
46:00
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit more about your next
46:01
Speaker 1: project when we can expect to see it out right? Well,
46:04
Speaker 1: I guess I can. And this is an exclusive because
46:06
Speaker 1: I've I've told nobody this. I only just heard yesterday
46:09
Speaker 1: from my publisher that it's okay to mention it, so
46:12
Speaker 1: I haven't even put it on my website yet. But yes,
46:14
Speaker 1: So the next book after Providence is The twenty two
46:18
Speaker 1: Murders of Madison may Um. It is about a serial
46:22
Speaker 1: killer who murders the same woman over and over in
46:25
Speaker 1: parallel worlds, and it is out July next year, and
46:30
Speaker 1: I'm really hoping that we can have a COVID nineteen
46:33
Speaker 1: vaccine before then so I can leave my own country
46:36
Speaker 1: and two rounds which I missed out on this time
46:39
Speaker 1: with providence, my book tour is supposed to happen on
46:42
Speaker 1: March thirty one this year, and the world shutdown before
46:45
Speaker 1: I could leave the country. So yeah, with luck, I'll
46:48
Speaker 1: get out there next year. Al Right, pretty fun conversation.
46:58
Speaker 1: You guys talked about a lot of things. Yeah, we're
47:00
Speaker 1: a really fun conversation. He's obviously a guy who's thought
47:02
Speaker 1: about this stuff pretty deeply and has lots of interests,
47:06
Speaker 1: and so we just sort of let the conversation take
47:08
Speaker 1: us where it went. But one of the things that
47:10
Speaker 1: he seems really interested in is this conflict between life
47:13
Speaker 1: forms and how that plays out across planetary boundaries. So
47:17
Speaker 1: that was a lot of fun. Yeah, it's interesting. He
47:19
Speaker 1: has such a pessimistic view about aliens, you know, like
47:24
Speaker 1: he said that aliens will be disappointing and unfriendly most likely. Yeah,
47:29
Speaker 1: well he's probably right. You know, our fantasies about aliens
47:32
Speaker 1: are just that fantasies, and most likely the universe won't
47:35
Speaker 1: provide friendly aliens with lots of insights into the nature
47:38
Speaker 1: of the universe and granting us technology. Most likely they'll
47:42
Speaker 1: be weird and they'll be frustrating and disappointing. But I
47:46
Speaker 1: think in the long run, you know, the longer arc
47:48
Speaker 1: of this human alien interaction will eventually be positive because
47:52
Speaker 1: we will learn from them what it's like to be
47:55
Speaker 1: an intelligent species that's not human. Right, Well, anything that
47:58
Speaker 1: causes us to send our influence us on a space
48:00
Speaker 1: ship far away sounds like a net positive freakingmanity, even
48:05
Speaker 1: if it costs trillions of dollars, That makes it worth it. Well,
48:08
Speaker 1: I don't know what would be worse, Daniel, What do
48:09
Speaker 1: you think would it be worth to meet aliens and
48:12
Speaker 1: find them disappointing and unfriendly, or to meet aliens and
48:16
Speaker 1: have them find us disappointing and open. What would be worse?
48:21
Speaker 1: That would be terrible. We're like desperate to hang out,
48:24
Speaker 1: and they just keep ignoring our texts. We're gonna ghosts
48:28
Speaker 1: like hello, oh never mind, see you never if they
48:33
Speaker 1: quickly discover that we have nothing to offer scientifically because
48:36
Speaker 1: they're so far ahead of us, and they just sort
48:38
Speaker 1: of leave us alone and ignore us forever, that would
48:41
Speaker 1: be torture to know their answers out there that people
48:44
Speaker 1: could give them to you and then did not have access,
48:47
Speaker 1: So that would be tortured. I imagine if they met
48:49
Speaker 1: us and they're like, oh, what a cute childlike fascination
48:52
Speaker 1: with physics they have. That is pat us on the
48:55
Speaker 1: head and the al right, well, if you're interested, the
48:58
Speaker 1: book is called Providence and the author is called Max Barry.
49:02
Speaker 1: Check out his book and other works that he's done.
49:04
Speaker 1: I highly recommend it, and he's a nice guy, so
49:07
Speaker 1: support his work. Great. Well, thanks for joining us. We
49:10
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that. See you next time. Thanks for listening,
49:20
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is
49:23
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Or more podcast from
49:26
Speaker 1: my heart Radio visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
49:30
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.