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The science fiction universe of "Ancillary Justice" · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:00
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break, and when we get back,
0:02
Speaker 1: we'll find out how important scientific consistency is to readers
0:06
Speaker 1: of science fiction. Daniel, you read a lot of science fiction, right,
0:11
Speaker 1: I certainly do. Is there a phrase in a science
0:14
Speaker 1: fiction novel that, when you're reading it you just automatically cringe?
0:18
Speaker 1: Oh man, I have got quite a list that really
0:22
Speaker 1: has a physicist if you If you read this, it
0:25
Speaker 1: makes you a little bit scared. It makes me worried.
0:28
Speaker 1: You know that I'm not gonna be able to enjoy
0:29
Speaker 1: the novel if they don't treat it right. What are
0:31
Speaker 1: some of these phrases that make you afraid? Like the
0:34
Speaker 1: Higgs boson If somebody mentions the Higgs boson, Oh man,
0:37
Speaker 1: I tossed the book across the room almost every time
0:39
Speaker 1: I see automatically. How about quantum mechanics or the quantum realm?
0:45
Speaker 1: Oh boy, don't get me started on that other dimensions?
0:50
Speaker 1: That is definitely near the top of stuff that's handled
0:53
Speaker 1: badly in science fiction. What if I write a novel
0:55
Speaker 1: about a quantum Higgs Boson dimension, I'm not even cracking
0:59
Speaker 1: that book open. Hi'm or handmad. Cartoonists and the creator
1:18
Speaker 1: of PhD commics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist
1:22
Speaker 1: and I love reading science fiction, especially when it has
1:25
Speaker 1: actual science in it, but the fiction. No, it's awesome
1:29
Speaker 1: if you can have science and then build fiction around it.
1:32
Speaker 1: That's why it's called science fiction. Well, welcome to our podcast,
1:35
Speaker 1: which is a work of unfiction or unfiction. We strive
1:40
Speaker 1: at least to make this podcast about the real universe
1:43
Speaker 1: and not about fictional universities. Welcome to Daniel and Jorge
1:47
Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of our Heart Radio in
1:50
Speaker 1: which we usually take you on a tour of the
1:53
Speaker 1: real universe that we find ourselves in all the incredible,
1:56
Speaker 1: all the amazing, all the mind blowing things that exist
1:59
Speaker 1: out there in the real universe. And sometimes we like
2:02
Speaker 1: to talk about um sort of a crazy ideas that
2:06
Speaker 1: maybe physicists have or or you know, wishful thinking that
2:09
Speaker 1: physicists have about how the universe might work or what
2:13
Speaker 1: it what could be out there in the universe. That's right,
2:15
Speaker 1: aspirational universes. Maybe we live in this universe, Maybe we
2:19
Speaker 1: live in a universe where there are tiny strings librating
2:22
Speaker 1: at the smallest scale, or maybe we live in an
2:24
Speaker 1: infinite universe. The truth is we just don't really know,
2:27
Speaker 1: and so it's fun to consider a whole spectrum of
2:30
Speaker 1: possible What is it universe I Universes University. Yeah, yeah,
2:36
Speaker 1: you know. They call it now a speculative sign. It's science.
2:40
Speaker 1: We call it speculative science. This is not a speculative podcast.
2:44
Speaker 1: We uh, we don't just speculate. We go out and test,
2:47
Speaker 1: We do experiments. One day people will know the truth,
2:50
Speaker 1: the real answer to how the universe works. But until
2:52
Speaker 1: then we rely on clever people to imagine other possible universes.
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Speaker 1: And that exists sometimes in the mind. It is a
3:00
Speaker 1: theoretical physicists, but sometimes those ideas begin elsewhere. Because it
3:04
Speaker 1: is sort of fun to understand the universe as we
3:06
Speaker 1: know it and to see to know and to see
3:09
Speaker 1: what's out there. But it's also fun to think about
3:11
Speaker 1: what could be, or what might be or what um
3:14
Speaker 1: you maybe know it's impossible, but it's fun to think
3:16
Speaker 1: about the what would happen? How would what would the
3:19
Speaker 1: universe look like if a crazy idea was actually true? Yeah,
3:22
Speaker 1: and it's more than just like does the universe work
3:24
Speaker 1: this way or that way? It's also like, what do
3:27
Speaker 1: we do with the universe. If it does work this way,
3:29
Speaker 1: what kind of awesome tech can we develop? How can
3:32
Speaker 1: we change our lives and the way that we interact
3:36
Speaker 1: with and live in the universe given our mastery of
3:39
Speaker 1: the physical laws. Yeah, and so as you said, Daniel,
3:42
Speaker 1: it exists not only in the minds of physicists and philosophers,
3:45
Speaker 1: but authors and artists that are out there trying to
3:49
Speaker 1: think about these ideas and what would they mean for
3:51
Speaker 1: the human condition. That's right, and everybody's familiar with creativity
3:55
Speaker 1: in the minds of artists, but also, of course authors
3:58
Speaker 1: require creativity. They imagine an entire new universe, maybe with
4:02
Speaker 1: different physical laws, maybe with new technology, and that creativity
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Speaker 1: in some ways is parallel to the creativity that's going
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Speaker 1: on at the forefront of physics, and those ideas bleed in.
4:11
Speaker 1: Sometimes we get awesome ideas from reading science fiction and
4:15
Speaker 1: we think, oh, maybe the universe does work that way,
4:17
Speaker 1: or maybe we could build a ray gun. Do you think, Daniel,
4:21
Speaker 1: is a big overlap between science fiction readers and physicists
4:25
Speaker 1: or is it like overlap. I don't think every science
4:29
Speaker 1: fiction reader is a physicist, but I think everything is
4:33
Speaker 1: a science fiction reader that might be true. That's right.
4:36
Speaker 1: Not all nerds are physicists, but all physicists are. And
4:41
Speaker 1: I know of more than one sort of practicing professional
4:45
Speaker 1: physicist who then became a successful science fiction author. So
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Speaker 1: that is a pathway, Like Alistair Reynolds, for example, he
4:52
Speaker 1: was an astrophysicist in Europe before he started writing. And
4:56
Speaker 1: there's one here in my department, Greg Benford's actually kind
4:58
Speaker 1: of famous. He's a professor in my department. For you guys,
5:02
Speaker 1: is it sort of fun to not be shackled by
5:05
Speaker 1: the laws of physics and just be able to kind
5:06
Speaker 1: of spin stories and not have to worry about being
5:10
Speaker 1: completely scientific. Well, you know a lot of theoretical physicists
5:14
Speaker 1: already don't feel shackled by the laws of physics because
5:16
Speaker 1: they propose things we can never test, like the laws
5:20
Speaker 1: of physics they're authoring them. Yeah, but I think that
5:25
Speaker 1: there's a creativity that's required in physics, and it's a
5:28
Speaker 1: similar creativity that's required in writing science fiction to imagine
5:32
Speaker 1: the way the universe might work. And so yeah, sort
5:35
Speaker 1: of stretches a different muscle. Um. But also, I think
5:38
Speaker 1: we're just all fanboys and fan girls because we read
5:40
Speaker 1: so much science fiction. It's fun to think about writing
5:43
Speaker 1: some right, because I imagine it's a lot of fun
5:45
Speaker 1: to explore other universes, you know, not just the one
5:48
Speaker 1: we live in, but to imagine new universes. Absolutely. And
5:52
Speaker 1: so today on the podcast, it will it's the first
5:55
Speaker 1: of a new kind of episode that we're going to
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Speaker 1: try out in which we talk about famous science fiction
6:02
Speaker 1: authors and famous science fiction novels that are out there,
6:05
Speaker 1: and we actually are going to be talking to each
6:08
Speaker 1: of the authors. That's right. I reached out to some
6:11
Speaker 1: famous science fiction authors and gasp, imagine they actually wrote
6:14
Speaker 1: back to us. And so we have the honor and
6:16
Speaker 1: privilege to talk to some of the brightest minds in
6:19
Speaker 1: science fiction and to explore how they build their science
6:23
Speaker 1: fiction universes. How much physics goes into it? Yeah, because
6:26
Speaker 1: that's a big question I think a lot of people
6:27
Speaker 1: might have, which is um. You know, when you read
6:29
Speaker 1: one of these science fiction novels, you you sort of
6:31
Speaker 1: wonder how much of this is true and how much
6:33
Speaker 1: of this is just totally made up? I know, how
6:36
Speaker 1: much of this is They just say quantum mechanics when
6:39
Speaker 1: they don't know what to write. The quantum realm yeah,
6:44
Speaker 1: I read a lot of science fiction. And you can
6:46
Speaker 1: tell when the author has consulted a scientist, and you
6:49
Speaker 1: can tell when the author has not as as consulted
6:52
Speaker 1: Wikipedia or not even you know, relied on the readers
6:58
Speaker 1: to like not really know what these words mean and
7:00
Speaker 1: sort of accept them as a word salad that says
7:03
Speaker 1: plot hole fixed here. And so, yeah, you're a big
7:07
Speaker 1: science fiction fan, right, Daniel? You read a ton of
7:09
Speaker 1: science fiction? Do I read a couple of novels a week? Well? Wow,
7:13
Speaker 1: I read a couple as a kid, mostly eyes like asama. Um.
7:19
Speaker 1: But yeah, I read I think almost every I sid
7:21
Speaker 1: asthma of work that's out there. Why did you stop?
7:24
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I think I got into a fantasy
7:26
Speaker 1: for a while, and then I started reading other things
7:29
Speaker 1: in comics. Well, I guess I never grew up, and
7:31
Speaker 1: I'm still reading science fiction. And in fact, now on
7:34
Speaker 1: our website you can find a list of science fiction
7:37
Speaker 1: novels that I have enjoyed. Um. I only put novels
7:40
Speaker 1: on there that I liked. I don't pan anybody's work
7:42
Speaker 1: because I know that every novel that's out there is
7:45
Speaker 1: somebody's life and heart and soul. Went into that book,
7:48
Speaker 1: so I'm not gonna say negative things about them. So
7:50
Speaker 1: you can go on our website and under about you
7:52
Speaker 1: can find a list of novels that I recommend. Yeah,
7:55
Speaker 1: and so this is the first in our series. And
7:57
Speaker 1: so today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question
8:05
Speaker 1: it's science fiction scientific The core question we're asking is,
8:10
Speaker 1: you know, how important is it that science in a
8:12
Speaker 1: science fiction story be logical and self consistent and or
8:17
Speaker 1: is it a sort of okay because it's science fiction
8:19
Speaker 1: to be sort of hand wavy. Yeah, And it's not
8:22
Speaker 1: a question that has a universal answer. You will find
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Speaker 1: people out there, like particle physicists who want the science
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Speaker 1: to be real or to be logical, or at least
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Speaker 1: to be self consistent, especially when it's a crucial element
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Speaker 1: in the story. And I think you'll find other people
8:35
Speaker 1: out there that just wants stuff to blow up and
8:38
Speaker 1: zoom across the screen. Page Smith in a spaceship, Yeah,
8:44
Speaker 1: send Bruce Willis out there, doesn't really matter if his
8:46
Speaker 1: mission makes sense. Um. And so you'll hear a spectrum
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Speaker 1: of answers, I think, and it's totally valid to have
8:51
Speaker 1: a spectrum of opinions. Let's take a quick break, and
8:54
Speaker 1: when we get back, we'll find out how important scientific
8:57
Speaker 1: consistency is to readers of science fiction as usual. I
9:13
Speaker 1: was curious what people have thought about this question, so
9:16
Speaker 1: I walked around campus and I asked people how important
9:19
Speaker 1: it was to them that the science and the story
9:22
Speaker 1: be logic, will be self consistent. Here's what people had
9:25
Speaker 1: to say. I think it should make sense, but sometimes
9:29
Speaker 1: I will not always notice, and other times it's not
9:31
Speaker 1: as sleep as they deal. I think it's okay if
9:33
Speaker 1: it's a bit like not real, yeah, because it's pi'
9:38
Speaker 1: not based on a true like actual story or and
9:42
Speaker 1: if it's trying to be like legitimate, then yeah. But
9:45
Speaker 1: if it's like a science fiction, I guess it's a
9:46
Speaker 1: little bit okay. For Tunoby, it's okay. If it's hand wavy.
9:50
Speaker 1: It should be consistent within the story, but not necessarily
9:53
Speaker 1: with reality. It probably should be a little consistent so
9:56
Speaker 1: it remains kind of realistic or factual. Is it okay
10:00
Speaker 1: if they just sort of say quantum mechanics sometimes and
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Speaker 1: and wave away some problems, yeah, that's okay. I would
10:07
Speaker 1: like it to be plausible and actually like realistic. I
10:14
Speaker 1: know that a lot of times that doesn't really work
10:17
Speaker 1: for the story. But I think as long as it's
10:20
Speaker 1: reasonably almost there, then it's fine with me. Um. Actually
10:25
Speaker 1: it does matter to me because I want to imagine
10:29
Speaker 1: a future work could happen, so I don't get my
10:32
Speaker 1: hopes up, so to speak. All right, cool, it must
10:35
Speaker 1: be logical or plaus bow All right. People seem pretty
10:38
Speaker 1: relaxed about the design has been real or not. That
10:41
Speaker 1: was a little bit infuriating. I was hoping more people
10:43
Speaker 1: would with me. He didn't interview in the physicist. I
10:48
Speaker 1: purposely didn't. People are like, I don't care about the
10:51
Speaker 1: physics of light sabers. I just think lightsabers are cool.
10:54
Speaker 1: Well that's true, you know, lightsabers are cool, whether or
10:57
Speaker 1: not you could ever actually make them. Um. But yeah,
11:00
Speaker 1: some people are like, yeah, whatever, I don't really care
11:02
Speaker 1: for his hand wavy. You know. It's like they expect
11:04
Speaker 1: to be fed spoonfuls of random science sounding words, you know,
11:07
Speaker 1: and there's a place for that. Like I enjoy Star Trek,
11:10
Speaker 1: even though the science on that show is ridunculous. You know. Yeah,
11:14
Speaker 1: they're like reverse the transponder on the polarization ion beam,
11:18
Speaker 1: a matic or something which you're like you can't make it,
11:22
Speaker 1: so that's impossible. Yeah, but they're being so ridiculous that
11:27
Speaker 1: it sounds like they're sort of trying to be ridiculous.
11:29
Speaker 1: They don't take themselves seriously, and so I guess part
11:32
Speaker 1: of it is just sort of what are you're aiming for? Yeah, well,
11:34
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of what you're saying earlier, which
11:36
Speaker 1: is that's kind of the point of science fiction, which
11:39
Speaker 1: is to just kind of tickle our imagination and to
11:41
Speaker 1: make us wonder about what's other, because you know, sometimes
11:45
Speaker 1: the science fiction stuff inspire scientists and engineers to make
11:48
Speaker 1: it real, to make it so, as Pricard would say,
11:51
Speaker 1: and then it becomes like a real thing. It certainly does,
11:54
Speaker 1: and it also sort of warns us of the dangers
11:56
Speaker 1: of technology. These days, we have a lot of dystopian
11:58
Speaker 1: science fiction with the robots of tape can over or
12:01
Speaker 1: everybody's online and getting deleted and stuff, and so it's
12:04
Speaker 1: helpful to sort of think through the consequences of technology.
12:07
Speaker 1: And to me, that's what science fiction is about. It's like,
12:11
Speaker 1: what stories could you tell in a universe where the
12:14
Speaker 1: rules are different, either the science is different, like the
12:16
Speaker 1: laws of physics have changed or you have new kinds
12:19
Speaker 1: of tech which change what it's like to be human,
12:21
Speaker 1: and then explore that, like what stories are there, what
12:24
Speaker 1: is it like to grow up in that world? What
12:25
Speaker 1: can you do or can't do that it's weird compared
12:29
Speaker 1: to the world you come from, Right, It's all like
12:31
Speaker 1: a big thought experiment, Right, could you guess what if
12:34
Speaker 1: this would happen? And it kind of tells you about
12:36
Speaker 1: how things are right now. Yeah, And that to me
12:39
Speaker 1: is why it's important to be consistent, because that's the
12:41
Speaker 1: whole experiment. Like, if you're trying to figure out what
12:44
Speaker 1: is it like to live in a world where you
12:46
Speaker 1: can teleport around the world to visit your brother in
12:50
Speaker 1: you know, Australia in two seconds, Well, then you've got
12:53
Speaker 1: to have some rules that's constrained that world so that
12:55
Speaker 1: you can explore what it's like. Because if you're actually
12:57
Speaker 1: living in that world, there are rules, right, and if
13:00
Speaker 1: you want to know what it's actually like to live
13:01
Speaker 1: in that world, when you gotta follow that world's rules.
13:04
Speaker 1: So if you're just making up rules all the time
13:06
Speaker 1: and they violate each other don't make any sense, then
13:09
Speaker 1: you're not really exploring that world. In my opinion. And
13:12
Speaker 1: if I had a secret brother in Australia, that would
13:14
Speaker 1: be the shocking part of that novel for me. That
13:18
Speaker 1: would be the huge reveal. Yeah, but the all right,
13:22
Speaker 1: so these are all super interesting questions, and Daniel thought
13:24
Speaker 1: that it would be great to kind of get into
13:26
Speaker 1: that with with a real science fiction author and a
13:28
Speaker 1: famous science fiction author. And so today on the program,
13:30
Speaker 1: we are going to play an interview with Ann Lecky,
13:33
Speaker 1: who is the author of a famous science fiction nolical
13:36
Speaker 1: ancillary Justice. That's right, I think she pronounced the ancillary
13:40
Speaker 1: injustice ancillary. Sorry. And this is not just any book.
13:43
Speaker 1: This is a book which won a series of awards.
13:46
Speaker 1: It's sort of famous in science fiction circles because it
13:49
Speaker 1: won all the major awards. That won the Hugo Award,
13:52
Speaker 1: won the Nebula Award, won a bunch of other awards.
13:55
Speaker 1: And that's that's pretty unusual. Um. And I think also
13:58
Speaker 1: he was her debut novel. Oh, this is the first
14:00
Speaker 1: novel she ever wrote, is the first novel she ever published.
14:03
Speaker 1: First time up in bat like hit a home run,
14:06
Speaker 1: the biggest home run anybody's ever hit. That's pretty awesome.
14:10
Speaker 1: It made quite a splash. Wow, and so it sounds
14:13
Speaker 1: like a super interesting books, Daniel, So before we play
14:15
Speaker 1: the interview, tell me a little bit about what the
14:17
Speaker 1: book has done, what the kind of the science inside
14:20
Speaker 1: of the science fiction novel is about. Yeah, So this
14:23
Speaker 1: book you would categorize as space opera because it takes
14:26
Speaker 1: place over vast scales and distances, and it's far in
14:30
Speaker 1: the future, and humanity has conquered a big fraction of
14:34
Speaker 1: the galaxy. So humans have spaceships and lots of solar
14:38
Speaker 1: systems and were spread out all over the galaxy. Wow,
14:41
Speaker 1: like the Milky Way. Yeah, like the Milky Way. Though
14:44
Speaker 1: it's never actually named, it could have been a galaxy
14:46
Speaker 1: far far far away, a long time ago. It could
14:50
Speaker 1: have been. But you know, the point is that we
14:52
Speaker 1: occupy several different solar systems. And the key new idea
14:56
Speaker 1: in this book, the key new element of technology that
14:59
Speaker 1: changes what it's like to be a person is that
15:01
Speaker 1: in her universe, they've developed technology to connect brains to
15:06
Speaker 1: each other, so like I can have a consciousness which
15:09
Speaker 1: is not just in my body, but I can also
15:11
Speaker 1: take over other bodies, so I can like spread my
15:14
Speaker 1: mind across like five different people. So you're here now,
15:18
Speaker 1: but suddenly, if you wanted to be the Daniel in
15:20
Speaker 1: Alpha Centaur, you could just flip a switch and suddenly
15:24
Speaker 1: you feel like you're there. No, I think you are
15:25
Speaker 1: simultaneously in all of them. So it's like you have
15:29
Speaker 1: five pairs of eyes and you're controlling five bodies. Me
15:32
Speaker 1: as a conscious entity, I'm experiencing what five people are
15:36
Speaker 1: experiencing at the same time. That's right. Yeah, you have
15:39
Speaker 1: five brains at your disposal and ten hands, and you know,
15:43
Speaker 1: fifty toes and all that stuff, and they're all human.
15:45
Speaker 1: Are are are we robots? What am I? Well? In
15:48
Speaker 1: the book, a lot of the characters are human and
15:50
Speaker 1: the and the ancillaries are the ones that are slaved
15:52
Speaker 1: to you. So if you have five ancillaries, that means
15:55
Speaker 1: it's you plus five other bodies. So you can take
15:57
Speaker 1: your human body and your human mind and experience, you know,
16:02
Speaker 1: control six different bodies at once. But you can also
16:06
Speaker 1: connect humans to AI. So, for example, there are these
16:09
Speaker 1: spaceships that have really intelligent AI in them, and they
16:13
Speaker 1: can also have humans that they control. So the mind
16:16
Speaker 1: of an AI can also exist across a ship and
16:19
Speaker 1: these bodies. So there's me, like me, the brain that
16:22
Speaker 1: the body that my brain was born in. But then
16:24
Speaker 1: I also have like puppets that I can control. Yes, yes,
16:28
Speaker 1: they're just like puppets. They're like biological puppets or robot puppets,
16:31
Speaker 1: their biological puppets. So you know, there's a lot of
16:33
Speaker 1: discussions of the of the morality of this in the
16:36
Speaker 1: book because basically, you go to war, you take prisoners,
16:39
Speaker 1: and then you just basically delete those personalities from the
16:42
Speaker 1: bodies and use them for yourself. It's like you're wiping
16:45
Speaker 1: a floppy disk or something. Oh, I see, so it's
16:47
Speaker 1: like another human body, but it's sort of like deactivated. Yeah,
16:52
Speaker 1: it's like you've written your consciousness onto their hardware. Yeah.
16:56
Speaker 1: So it's like, for example, if you deleted my personality
16:59
Speaker 1: and took me over, then they would just be Daniel
17:01
Speaker 1: and Jorge would just be Jorge in Daniel and Whore's
17:03
Speaker 1: bodies be Jorrie and Jorge Explain the Universe a new
17:07
Speaker 1: podcast from my Heart Radio. Huh okay, So this it
17:11
Speaker 1: imagines the future where this technology is possible that I
17:14
Speaker 1: can somehow wipe out the consciousness of a human and
17:17
Speaker 1: then reimposed I guess the consciousness of another person in
17:21
Speaker 1: it or an artificial intelligence, yeah, or an artificial intelligence.
17:24
Speaker 1: So you take prisoners in a war, and then you
17:26
Speaker 1: can make those prisoners be like soldiers of your AI
17:31
Speaker 1: powered ships, or you can take them for yourself and
17:34
Speaker 1: make them your own slaves. So you can exist in
17:36
Speaker 1: several places. So these people are sort of like zombies
17:39
Speaker 1: or like if I if you were to meet another Jorge,
17:42
Speaker 1: would would you feel like you're talking to Jorge or
17:44
Speaker 1: do you feel like you're talking to a robot? You
17:47
Speaker 1: would feel like you're talking to Jorge, because Jorge would
17:49
Speaker 1: be in several places. Yeah, And so you can do
17:51
Speaker 1: several things at once, and you can take like two
17:53
Speaker 1: of you to go shopping while one of you is
17:55
Speaker 1: staying home cooking, and everybody's sort of mentally connected to
17:58
Speaker 1: each other because you have one consciousness stretched across several bodies. So,
18:02
Speaker 1: and how is this technology made possible? Is it like
18:06
Speaker 1: we have Is it like implants or you know, biological
18:11
Speaker 1: or is it magic? It's not magic. She's tried to
18:13
Speaker 1: think it through technologically, and she's imagined that if you
18:16
Speaker 1: put implants into the brain, they can receive the signals
18:19
Speaker 1: necessary to control the body and send the signals necessary
18:23
Speaker 1: to sort of transmit the experience of that body. It's
18:26
Speaker 1: like having a brain walkie talkie, yeah, sort of, or
18:29
Speaker 1: like an internet of brains, right, instead of having a
18:32
Speaker 1: single brain in the body, you sort of become a
18:34
Speaker 1: larger virtual brain, I guess right away. My question is like,
18:37
Speaker 1: how do you deal with the delays? Because like to
18:39
Speaker 1: talk to our set spaceship and Jupiter, it takes like,
18:42
Speaker 1: you know, thirty minutes, doesn't it. Yes, And that is
18:44
Speaker 1: a key element of the novel that the leader of
18:47
Speaker 1: this empire, this lord of this empire, has become so
18:51
Speaker 1: spread out across hundreds or thousands of bodies that she
18:54
Speaker 1: can no longer sort of keep a single consciousness going.
18:57
Speaker 1: She's fractures into two and ends up with like her
19:01
Speaker 1: mind being split. And so one of the really awesome
19:04
Speaker 1: things about this book is that she's really thought through
19:06
Speaker 1: what this would be like and the consequences of it,
19:09
Speaker 1: And as in what I think the best science fiction
19:11
Speaker 1: does is she's found some sort of surprising or counterintuitive
19:15
Speaker 1: consequences of this technology if it was possible, interesting things
19:19
Speaker 1: that nobody had thought about happened in this novel. Yeah, exactly,
19:23
Speaker 1: And she really explores in depth and imagines what it
19:26
Speaker 1: be like, and also imagines how people would talk to
19:29
Speaker 1: each other and treat each other, and how you would
19:31
Speaker 1: talk to ancillaries and how you would talk to AI,
19:34
Speaker 1: and so that the interactions in this world feel real.
19:37
Speaker 1: I mean, they feel like somebody went out and lived
19:40
Speaker 1: this world and it's coming back to tell you stories
19:42
Speaker 1: about their experience. It feels like a real world. It's
19:45
Speaker 1: it's very well done storytelling interesting. But how did she
19:48
Speaker 1: deal with the time? Like, like, if you were talking
19:50
Speaker 1: to a Jorge and Jupiter that I'm controlling, wouldn't it
19:53
Speaker 1: just take thirty minutes between each response? You'd be like,
19:56
Speaker 1: hey Jorge, wait thirty minutes for me to get it,
19:59
Speaker 1: and and send the response back to that horror and see,
20:02
Speaker 1: hey Daniel, how's it going. Yeah, it would. And so
20:04
Speaker 1: essentially what you end up doing is like splitting off
20:07
Speaker 1: into sub versions. So you like send a bunch of
20:09
Speaker 1: yourselves off on a mission and you don't hear back
20:12
Speaker 1: from them for a while, and then they come back
20:13
Speaker 1: and you try to reintegrate what they've learned back into
20:17
Speaker 1: your central consciousness. But I sent them with my consciousness.
20:21
Speaker 1: It's like a copy thing I copy my consciousness. Well,
20:24
Speaker 1: it's sort of fractures, and there are moments of the
20:26
Speaker 1: novel where, for example, the communication breaks down because somebody
20:29
Speaker 1: develops technology that blocks the jams this kind of communication,
20:32
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, all of the bodies feel
20:34
Speaker 1: just like individuals, and they all they're not zombies. They
20:37
Speaker 1: all feel like they are the one that just all
20:40
Speaker 1: of a sudden, each one is isolated in its own body.
20:42
Speaker 1: It's like Dropbox. You gotta think it. You can sever
20:46
Speaker 1: the connection, you can rewrite all you want. It feels
20:48
Speaker 1: like you have the dropbox. That's the drop box, and
20:51
Speaker 1: then when you rethink, then everything has to settle. It's
20:54
Speaker 1: exactly like personality drop Box. Yeah. But something that's interesting
20:58
Speaker 1: is that she also allows people to go from solar
21:02
Speaker 1: system to solar system using these gates, which are basically
21:05
Speaker 1: like wormholes, for faster than light travel, because it's pretty
21:09
Speaker 1: hard to have an interstellar empire if it takes, you know,
21:12
Speaker 1: a thousand years to get from one side to the other.
21:15
Speaker 1: So she has this shortcut. You can get from solar
21:16
Speaker 1: system to solar system and a reasonable amount of time.
21:19
Speaker 1: But within a solar system, she really wanted to play
21:22
Speaker 1: with the sort of time lag element. It's the core
21:25
Speaker 1: part of her story. And so there's no faster than
21:28
Speaker 1: like communication or travel within the solar system. But then
21:31
Speaker 1: you have these gates to go from one solar system
21:33
Speaker 1: to the other. Oh, I see, and in which you
21:35
Speaker 1: can send information to you can send information to. Yeah,
21:39
Speaker 1: And so you'll hear about what I asked her in
21:41
Speaker 1: the interview. I asked her if she ever thought about
21:43
Speaker 1: using that faster than like communication technology between the ancillaries,
21:47
Speaker 1: like a pocket wormhole. Yeah, like a pocket wormhole for
21:50
Speaker 1: instantaneous updates across all of your people, Right, wouldn't you
21:53
Speaker 1: like wormhole powered jop box. Wouldn't that be awesome? I'm
21:58
Speaker 1: not sure that would help me be more productive, but
22:02
Speaker 1: it sounds like a good IDEA quantum drop box. That's
22:05
Speaker 1: what thanks boson quantum in other dimensions. All right, I
22:10
Speaker 1: have a few more questions for you about this technology
22:13
Speaker 1: and about this plot, and then we'll get into the
22:15
Speaker 1: interview with and Lecky. But first let's take a quick break,
22:30
Speaker 1: all right. Then we're talking about the universe, not the
22:33
Speaker 1: universe we live in, but the universe of Ancillary Justice,
22:36
Speaker 1: which is uh the debut novel by author and Lecky,
22:39
Speaker 1: which won all kinds of science fiction awards. And there's
22:41
Speaker 1: a super well known in the science fiction world, and
22:44
Speaker 1: you're teld me that it relies on this technology of
22:46
Speaker 1: like controlling other brains and faster than light travel through formals,
22:52
Speaker 1: that's right, speed of light communication between brains, and then
22:55
Speaker 1: faster than like travel between solar systems, which I'll be
22:59
Speaker 1: honest is a bit of a friction for me. Like,
23:02
Speaker 1: you know, she wanted to have both things in her
23:04
Speaker 1: world and they slightly contradict each other, but she separated
23:07
Speaker 1: them sort of in space. Like you can go fastened
23:10
Speaker 1: light between solar systems, but inside a solar system you're
23:13
Speaker 1: limited to speed of light communication. Well, and I guess,
23:16
Speaker 1: like my question is, are these technologies implossible or impossible?
23:20
Speaker 1: They're not right, Like you could maybe imagine developing wormholes
23:24
Speaker 1: in the future, and you can maybe imagine developing like
23:27
Speaker 1: brain implants that can do all these things to your brain. Yeah,
23:31
Speaker 1: I think the big picture is that this could be
23:33
Speaker 1: our future. I mean, we could be all drop bug links,
23:36
Speaker 1: personality zombies in the future. Um, I don't see a
23:39
Speaker 1: physics reason why it couldn't, Like you said, wormholes totally
23:43
Speaker 1: a possibility. We dug into that in a podcast episode.
23:46
Speaker 1: Never been actually observed, but theoretically could happen. I think
23:50
Speaker 1: the trickier bit is this implant. Like, imagine you developed
23:53
Speaker 1: an implant which could sense everything that's happening in your brain.
23:56
Speaker 1: I don't know how plausible it is that I could
23:59
Speaker 1: understand to what's going on in somebody else's brain. Like,
24:02
Speaker 1: even if you say, like I can develop an implant
24:04
Speaker 1: which senses all that stuff, how am I going to
24:06
Speaker 1: process it? Like, it's not clear to me that your
24:09
Speaker 1: brain works in a way is similar to mind, so
24:11
Speaker 1: that it even makes sense to me, right, Like how
24:13
Speaker 1: do you translate it? Yeah? How do you translate it?
24:16
Speaker 1: That is a hard problem, um, And then how do
24:18
Speaker 1: you control it? It's a hard problem, but it's not implausible,
24:21
Speaker 1: Like maybe we'll figure it out. It could be it
24:23
Speaker 1: could be that we figure it out. Um. In her book,
24:26
Speaker 1: it doesn't take very long, Like you turn on a
24:28
Speaker 1: new ancillary and you get control of it pretty fast.
24:31
Speaker 1: But you know that babies or whatever, when they turn
24:33
Speaker 1: on their bodies and need to learn to control it, it
24:35
Speaker 1: it takes them a while to get used to it
24:37
Speaker 1: and and familiar with it and comfortable with it. So
24:40
Speaker 1: I think, at a very minimum, even if you could
24:43
Speaker 1: capture all that information and translate it and experience it,
24:46
Speaker 1: it would take you a while to get used to
24:48
Speaker 1: controlling those bodies. But no, not impossible. And these implants,
24:51
Speaker 1: are they like chips or do they like take over
24:54
Speaker 1: your brain too? They're like chips. Yeah, they're inserted into
24:56
Speaker 1: your brain somehow. They do some surgery to make these
24:59
Speaker 1: ancillaries to take a human body, and they plant all
25:01
Speaker 1: this stuff in them to turn them into an ancillary.
25:04
Speaker 1: I also wonder what it's like to have a hundred
25:07
Speaker 1: bodies and a hundred brains, and you know, two hundred
25:10
Speaker 1: pairs of eyeballs. Where do you feel like you are?
25:13
Speaker 1: Like right now, I feel like I'm in my head.
25:15
Speaker 1: But if I had two bodies that are looking at
25:17
Speaker 1: each other, then do I feel like I'm sort of
25:19
Speaker 1: floating between them? Or I mean both? Or That's the
25:23
Speaker 1: coolest thing about this book is that it tries to
25:25
Speaker 1: give you a sense for what that would be like
25:27
Speaker 1: like if you, as a conscious mind, had multiple experiences. Yeah,
25:32
Speaker 1: and so in the book, she really tries to give
25:33
Speaker 1: you a sense or what this is like and it's
25:35
Speaker 1: a challenge because she's writing from the point of view
25:38
Speaker 1: of something that has multiple experiences simultaneously, but she's telling
25:42
Speaker 1: it to you, the reader that can only experience one
25:44
Speaker 1: thing at a time, in a format of a story
25:47
Speaker 1: where she has to write, you know, one word at
25:49
Speaker 1: a time. She can't like layer ten sentences on top
25:52
Speaker 1: of each other. Did she didn't use columns? Two columns
25:57
Speaker 1: and the chapter could be interesting? All right? So Daniel,
26:01
Speaker 1: so you interview, You got to interview, and like you
26:03
Speaker 1: and you were very excited about this because you're you're
26:04
Speaker 1: a fan of the book. Oh yeah, I'm a huge fan.
26:07
Speaker 1: I love this book. When it came out, I reread
26:08
Speaker 1: it just before I talked to her. I was again
26:11
Speaker 1: impressed with the depth of the universe that she imagined
26:15
Speaker 1: and just the sort of craft of the writing of
26:17
Speaker 1: pulling off such an ambitious thing. And then the book
26:19
Speaker 1: is just fun to read. It's like it's an adventure.
26:22
Speaker 1: You want to know what happens. There's mysteries, there's you know, drama,
26:25
Speaker 1: this politics as personalities. It's an impressive book. It deserves
26:29
Speaker 1: these awards, So hats off to her. I was very
26:31
Speaker 1: happy to get to talk to her. Oh, and so
26:33
Speaker 1: what kind of what kinds of questions did you did
26:35
Speaker 1: you ask her? Well, you know, I'm an aspiring science
26:37
Speaker 1: fiction author, so of course I asked her like, how
26:39
Speaker 1: did you get this idea? And what did you like
26:41
Speaker 1: about it? And I was really also interested in how
26:45
Speaker 1: important it was to her that the technology was plausible,
26:48
Speaker 1: Like how much did she drill down and think about
26:51
Speaker 1: how this could work and what would be needed and
26:53
Speaker 1: how that affected her story or was it okay to
26:56
Speaker 1: her that it was just sort of like a little
26:58
Speaker 1: bit handwavy in the details. I see. I wonder which
27:01
Speaker 1: answer would disappoint you or get you more excited. Well,
27:03
Speaker 1: if I had two bodies, I could be simultaneously excited
27:06
Speaker 1: and disappointed. You could have a pessimist Ancillary and an
27:09
Speaker 1: optimist Ancellary. All right, well, here is Daniel's interview with
27:13
Speaker 1: science fiction author and like, it's my pleasure to welcome
27:17
Speaker 1: to the show, and Lucky, And once you introduce yourselves
27:20
Speaker 1: to our listeners, I'm and Lucky. I'm the author, most famously,
27:24
Speaker 1: I guess, the author of the novel Ancillary Justice and
27:28
Speaker 1: its sequels Ancillary Sword and Ancellery Mercy. Well, I'm a
27:31
Speaker 1: huge fan of your book and of the universe that
27:33
Speaker 1: you've created. Congratulations on this wonderful creation and all of
27:37
Speaker 1: your success. But before we dive into the physics of
27:41
Speaker 1: the universe that you've built, we want to ask you
27:43
Speaker 1: a couple of questions to sort of get to know
27:45
Speaker 1: you as a scientist or as a science thinker. And
27:48
Speaker 1: these are questions we're gonna ask every author. The first
27:51
Speaker 1: question is sort of a philosophical question that bounces around
27:55
Speaker 1: the science fiction community, and it has to do with
27:57
Speaker 1: Star Trek transporters. Do you think when you go into
28:01
Speaker 1: a transporter on Star Trek do you think it actually
28:04
Speaker 1: moves you from one place to another? Or do you
28:07
Speaker 1: think it tears you apart, effectively killing you and recreates
28:10
Speaker 1: a clone somewhere else. I actually feel like you're killing
28:14
Speaker 1: somebody and creating a new person. But I mean, it's
28:16
Speaker 1: all ship of theseus that's wonderfull. I totally agree. Um.
28:20
Speaker 1: And then the second question I have for you is
28:23
Speaker 1: about science fiction technology in general. You must read a
28:26
Speaker 1: lot of science fiction, and so I'm wondering what element
28:29
Speaker 1: that you see in science fiction are you most excited
28:32
Speaker 1: about actually becoming real? Would you like to actually see
28:36
Speaker 1: scientists build one day medical tech, like the kind of
28:40
Speaker 1: oh wee can just heal wounds by spraying a thing
28:42
Speaker 1: over it? That would be really fabulous. Uh. And actually
28:46
Speaker 1: food replicators, food replicators would be amazing, And I'm kind
28:50
Speaker 1: of suspicious of the way they're often handled. Like in
28:53
Speaker 1: Star Trek, it's this really amazingly miraculous technology, but it's
28:57
Speaker 1: always Oh but the food is not really as good
28:59
Speaker 1: as when you like it yourself. Well, if it's molecular,
29:02
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's absolutely indistinguishable, then why should it
29:06
Speaker 1: not be as good? Right? I find that kind of
29:09
Speaker 1: an interesting. Oh, but mom has to make it slaving
29:13
Speaker 1: for hours over the stove or it won't taste as good, Like, yeah,
29:16
Speaker 1: mom's tears aren't really that delicious. All right. So let's
29:19
Speaker 1: talk about the science fiction universe that you created in
29:22
Speaker 1: this wonderful novel Ancillary Justice. I was wondering first if
29:26
Speaker 1: you could describe to our listeners. So, what is the
29:29
Speaker 1: key element of the technology that you've created that changes
29:32
Speaker 1: what it's like to be in that universe? There's technology
29:36
Speaker 1: for slaving brains to a central or to each other
29:40
Speaker 1: or to a central uh authority isn't the right word,
29:44
Speaker 1: so that those brains experience themselves as not having an
29:47
Speaker 1: individual identity, but as being part of the larger identity.
29:50
Speaker 1: That's an amazing idea and one that plays out in
29:52
Speaker 1: a fascinating way in your novel. But I was wondering,
29:54
Speaker 1: sort of, how did you come up with that idea?
29:56
Speaker 1: Where's that idea come from? Do you start from the
29:59
Speaker 1: concept of the technology and then come up with the
30:02
Speaker 1: story or think about the story you wanted to tell,
30:04
Speaker 1: and then sort of reverse engineer the technology that could
30:08
Speaker 1: make it happen. It started out my imagining beings that
30:12
Speaker 1: could be in more than one place at a time,
30:14
Speaker 1: Like I think a lot of stories started out with
30:16
Speaker 1: just sort of idly fantasizing about different cool things. You know,
30:20
Speaker 1: you're in line of the post office or whatever in
30:22
Speaker 1: your board and you're making up cool stuff. Uh, And
30:24
Speaker 1: of course eventually it builds up into something more complicated,
30:28
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, I'm like, well, wait,
30:30
Speaker 1: I've built up this character and they're here, but they
30:32
Speaker 1: also need to be this other place. And then I thought,
30:34
Speaker 1: well could I make that work? And that became really
30:37
Speaker 1: fascinating to me, and the story sort of built out
30:39
Speaker 1: from there? And what is it that's so fascinating to
30:42
Speaker 1: you about that idea? What drew you into that idea
30:45
Speaker 1: and made you want to create this entire universe around it?
30:48
Speaker 1: The idea of being in more than one place is
30:50
Speaker 1: really interesting. But then when I came up with a
30:53
Speaker 1: mechanism for how that would work, that was really kind
30:56
Speaker 1: of horrifying, uh and upsetting. That's a terrible thing to
31:00
Speaker 1: do to a person. So then, of course I wonder
31:02
Speaker 1: how deeply did you think about how to actually implement this,
31:05
Speaker 1: Like did you think about the technology in great detail
31:09
Speaker 1: to figure out whether this was plausible. Once I decided
31:12
Speaker 1: how it was going to work, at least the sort
31:14
Speaker 1: of hand wavy version of how it was going to work,
31:16
Speaker 1: because it's all hand wavy, I started looking into human neurology.
31:20
Speaker 1: And it's really horrifying when you realize how much of
31:23
Speaker 1: our identities and sense of ourselves are contingent on a
31:27
Speaker 1: couple of very delicate connections in our brains. And so
31:30
Speaker 1: how important is it to you that this could actually
31:34
Speaker 1: work in our universe? How important is it to you
31:37
Speaker 1: that the science of it is like all really logical
31:40
Speaker 1: and consistent or is it all right for some of
31:42
Speaker 1: it to be sort of hand wavy and approximate? In
31:45
Speaker 1: some ways it's important to me, and in some ways
31:47
Speaker 1: it's not so. As I said, I spent a fair
31:50
Speaker 1: amount of time looking at the neurological implications for how
31:54
Speaker 1: this sort of thing would work, But in terms of
31:57
Speaker 1: how do ancillary implants actually do the work, like what
32:01
Speaker 1: connections do they cut, how do they communicate with each other?
32:04
Speaker 1: I have no freaking idea that's just reverse the polarity
32:09
Speaker 1: on the whatever that's Star Trek techno babble um. But
32:12
Speaker 1: I did want the neurology and the psychology to be
32:15
Speaker 1: fairly realistic because I feel like one of the cool
32:20
Speaker 1: things about science fiction is you can do that. You
32:22
Speaker 1: can just stand up and say and now talking cows,
32:25
Speaker 1: and your audience will buy and large they'll take it.
32:27
Speaker 1: You don't always have to explain how that happens. But also,
32:31
Speaker 1: if I want my audience to continue to believe in
32:34
Speaker 1: those talking cows, I feel like I need to make
32:37
Speaker 1: other things around them very realistic. So the grass ought
32:40
Speaker 1: to be you believe it's grass, and the cows ought
32:43
Speaker 1: to talk in a way that makes sense for the cows,
32:45
Speaker 1: and if I explain anything, it really should make sense.
32:49
Speaker 1: But I'm never going to explain why the cows are talking. Well,
32:52
Speaker 1: maybe I will, I don't know. There's a lot of
32:54
Speaker 1: power in just being able to say handwavy thing, But
32:56
Speaker 1: there's also a lot of power and being able to
32:58
Speaker 1: describe exactly how it's happening. And then of course I
33:01
Speaker 1: have to ask, do you think this could actually happen
33:04
Speaker 1: in our universe? Do you think in a thousand or
33:06
Speaker 1: five thousand years this might be a reality brains slave
33:11
Speaker 1: to a central intelligence? I kind of hope not. But
33:15
Speaker 1: at the same time, I actually don't think. Given if
33:19
Speaker 1: you could make the things small enough, the equipment, if
33:23
Speaker 1: you could miniaturize it enough and have the kind of
33:26
Speaker 1: sophistication with neurosurgery that we don't yet have, maybe you
33:31
Speaker 1: could do it. I don't know how you empower it.
33:33
Speaker 1: That's another most science fiction doesn't stop to think how
33:36
Speaker 1: you power things? Right? They just say, oh, my, my
33:38
Speaker 1: ray gun works all the time, like yeah, and how
33:40
Speaker 1: big is the battery? And why are you not always
33:42
Speaker 1: changing it? Right? I say nothing about how any of
33:44
Speaker 1: that is powered. In science fiction. One of the ways
33:46
Speaker 1: you don't get people to ask those questions, is you
33:49
Speaker 1: don't mention it? And in your book the point of view,
33:51
Speaker 1: the main narrator is an artificial intelligence. That makes me wonder,
33:55
Speaker 1: do you think artificial intelligence in today's world could actually
34:00
Speaker 1: have a point of view, could have a first person experience?
34:03
Speaker 1: Do you think that if we developed an AI now
34:06
Speaker 1: that was sufficiently complex enough that it seemed human, that
34:09
Speaker 1: it would actually be having a first person experience like
34:12
Speaker 1: you and I? I feel like that's really hard to
34:14
Speaker 1: say because from a certain point of view, and understand
34:17
Speaker 1: I don't subscribe to this point of view, but it's
34:20
Speaker 1: logically makes sense. I don't know that anybody around me
34:23
Speaker 1: is actually having a first person experience except for me,
34:26
Speaker 1: because I'm experiencing mine. And the only way that I
34:30
Speaker 1: can know that anybody else is having that experience is
34:33
Speaker 1: that they tell me. And so I go through life
34:36
Speaker 1: when I meet another person assuming that they're having a
34:38
Speaker 1: first person experience, Uh, partly because it just makes life easier,
34:43
Speaker 1: and I would rather make that my default assumption than
34:45
Speaker 1: the other. So I think if an AI were to
34:48
Speaker 1: pass the interiority touring test and sound really like it
34:53
Speaker 1: was having an actual first person experience, then it would
34:56
Speaker 1: seem to me prudent to accept that. All right, well,
34:58
Speaker 1: thank you very much and for human hearing my questions
35:00
Speaker 1: about your science fiction universe and for coming on our show.
35:04
Speaker 1: All right, pretty cool. Um sounds totally fascinating her process
35:08
Speaker 1: and what she thought about the world and the universe
35:10
Speaker 1: and science. What was your takeaway from talking with her, Daniel,
35:13
Speaker 1: I think that she did a good job imagining sort
35:16
Speaker 1: of the important bits of how her universe worked and
35:19
Speaker 1: making those consistent without getting into the weeds of like,
35:23
Speaker 1: you know, how would you actually build this thing? You know,
35:25
Speaker 1: basically the engineering like is there a battery in this thing?
35:28
Speaker 1: Or do you need to recharge every four hours? And
35:30
Speaker 1: you're like where does the triple A fit inside of
35:34
Speaker 1: your brain? And that's why there's no genre called engineering fiction.
35:40
Speaker 1: Oh maybe maybe there should be, Maybe there should be
35:44
Speaker 1: a good talk to your agent. Um. So I think
35:47
Speaker 1: she did a good job. She sort of thought about
35:49
Speaker 1: the details, try to make a world that was consistent,
35:52
Speaker 1: follow those rules in her story, but not get bogged
35:55
Speaker 1: down in all this little trivia. And you know she
35:58
Speaker 1: you can hear she's saying like she thought the audience
36:01
Speaker 1: would accept that the audience didn't want to hear more
36:03
Speaker 1: details that you can say talking cows and the audience
36:05
Speaker 1: would be like, all right, cool, what happens when you
36:07
Speaker 1: have talking cows? Basically tries to avoid the topics she
36:10
Speaker 1: doesn't want to get into. She says, if you don't
36:13
Speaker 1: want people to ask questions about it, just sort of
36:15
Speaker 1: don't bring it up. But then again, I asked her
36:17
Speaker 1: questions that apparently nobody had asked her before, so some
36:20
Speaker 1: people do bring it up. That's what happens when physicists
36:23
Speaker 1: read your book. Well, what do you think is the
36:25
Speaker 1: sort of the core idea or the core lesson from
36:27
Speaker 1: her novel that she was trying to get at, you know,
36:29
Speaker 1: is it's sort of about what does human consciousness means?
36:33
Speaker 1: Or you know, how how does technolog once we go
36:36
Speaker 1: across the universe and across the galaxy, what does that
36:39
Speaker 1: do for our maybe our collective conscious is the human species. Yeah,
36:43
Speaker 1: I think that the core idea of the book is
36:45
Speaker 1: that technology can really change what it means to be human,
36:49
Speaker 1: and that what it means to be human can change,
36:52
Speaker 1: and you know it has, right, our experience of living
36:54
Speaker 1: in this world is very different than the experience of
36:57
Speaker 1: the world ten years ago, just because of the knowledge
37:00
Speaker 1: and the tools that we have and how big the
37:02
Speaker 1: world feels and how accessible the stars field really changed
37:05
Speaker 1: what it's like to be human. And this sort of
37:08
Speaker 1: extrapolates that out to a crazy extreme and reminds you
37:11
Speaker 1: that technology is not just a tool, but it sort
37:14
Speaker 1: of defines who we are and how we live, right,
37:16
Speaker 1: It redefines it changes what it means. Right. Yeah, it's
37:20
Speaker 1: completely like even just our listeners listening to this podcast.
37:23
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a totally different human experience than they
37:26
Speaker 1: that humans had, you know, three years ago. Yeah, just
37:29
Speaker 1: like dropbox change what it means to work together, right, Um, lightsabers,
37:35
Speaker 1: draw box, it's all fantasy. Hey can you put that
37:38
Speaker 1: lightsaber in the drop box so I can use it? Also? Awesome? Yeah,
37:42
Speaker 1: you just make sure you turn it off, don't put
37:45
Speaker 1: it don't put it activated. Oh I've made that mistake,
37:47
Speaker 1: let me tell you. But yeah, it's it is an
37:51
Speaker 1: interesting to think as we explore more of the universe,
37:54
Speaker 1: as we learn more about the universe, how is that
37:56
Speaker 1: changing our conception of what it means to be human. Yeah,
38:00
Speaker 1: the answer is that it would be very different. But
38:02
Speaker 1: of course as a challenge there. If you're going to
38:04
Speaker 1: write a novel to be read by today's humans about
38:07
Speaker 1: the experience of future humans, you have to make it
38:10
Speaker 1: at least a little bit relatable. I mean, if your
38:12
Speaker 1: point is, wow, in a billion years or whatever, it's
38:15
Speaker 1: going to be impossible to understand future society, well, then
38:18
Speaker 1: the book is just gibberish, Like if you just wrote
38:20
Speaker 1: it in a future language nobody knows now. Yes, so
38:23
Speaker 1: you have to bridge. You have to make it accessible
38:25
Speaker 1: enough to today's humans that we can get a glimpse
38:28
Speaker 1: for what it might be like to them. And that's
38:30
Speaker 1: also what's fascinating about old science fiction. Like you read
38:34
Speaker 1: science fiction from the nineteen fifties, it's like it's dated.
38:39
Speaker 1: It tells you not just what they thought about what
38:42
Speaker 1: the future would look like, but what was hard for
38:44
Speaker 1: them to imagine, what was easy for them to think about.
38:47
Speaker 1: It gives you a sense really for what it was
38:49
Speaker 1: like to be back there in the nineteen fifties. The
38:51
Speaker 1: way they extrapolated to the future missed a little bit
38:54
Speaker 1: from what where we are now. Yeah, and if she
38:57
Speaker 1: had written this book in a hundred years or in
38:59
Speaker 1: two hundred years, you would probably have different challenges writing
39:01
Speaker 1: it to extrapolate from that society to her future society.
39:05
Speaker 1: So science fiction, in this way, it sort of depends
39:08
Speaker 1: on both time points, the time point in the book
39:10
Speaker 1: and the time point of the reader. And so that's
39:13
Speaker 1: why the best science fiction is the ones that that
39:15
Speaker 1: works well, not just in one year, but you know
39:18
Speaker 1: over ten years, or over twenty or fifty years. If
39:20
Speaker 1: it's really timeless, then you've captured something that's essential about humanity,
39:24
Speaker 1: not something which is like, oh, here's what Twitter looks
39:26
Speaker 1: like today, and how annoying it is, and let me
39:28
Speaker 1: write a science fiction novel about this moment. It's about
39:31
Speaker 1: being human. Yeah, I think I'm just going to write
39:33
Speaker 1: a science fiction novel where the future doesn't have Twitter.
39:36
Speaker 1: That's my fantasy. That would That's called utopian fiction. Utopian
39:43
Speaker 1: that's right. All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed this
39:46
Speaker 1: trip down to the consciousness of other people and like
39:51
Speaker 1: science fiction authors as they take you to other star
39:53
Speaker 1: systems across the galaxy yep. And so if you enjoyed this,
39:57
Speaker 1: let us know, and if you'd like for us to
39:59
Speaker 1: talk about us ses fiction novel that you really enjoyed,
40:02
Speaker 1: send it to me, I'll read it and maybe we
40:04
Speaker 1: will talk about it on the podcast and into your
40:06
Speaker 1: view the author. Yeah, it'll give us an excuse to
40:09
Speaker 1: reach out to these famous people and talk to them. Yeah,
40:11
Speaker 1: which is always fun. It's such an honor. I was
40:14
Speaker 1: so glad that Anne was so friendly and so willing
40:16
Speaker 1: to spend her time explaining her universe two hours. So again.
40:20
Speaker 1: The book is called Ancillary Justice by Anne Lecky, And
40:23
Speaker 1: if you enjoy it, it's part of a trilogy. There's
40:25
Speaker 1: two more books in that same universe, all of excellent quality.
40:28
Speaker 1: All right, well, thank you for joining us. See you
40:30
Speaker 1: next time. If you still have a question after listening
40:40
Speaker 1: to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd
40:44
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
40:46
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or
40:50
Speaker 1: email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
40:54
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
40:57
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I Heart Ready for
41:00
Speaker 1: More podcast from my Heart Radio. Visit the I Heart
41:03
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
41:07
Speaker 1: favorite shows. Yeah,