Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / The SF Multi-verse of Adrian Tchaikovsky

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The SF Multi-verse of Adrian Tchaikovsky · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Or Hey, do you think that intelligence is inevitable in
0:13
Speaker 1: our podcast? I'm not sure A lot of our jokes
0:15
Speaker 1: are that's smart. Well, I think puns are a sign
0:18
Speaker 1: of intelligence in my opinion. But I was wondering about
0:21
Speaker 1: in life in general, like if you ran the Earth
0:25
Speaker 1: as an experiment many times, how often do you think
0:28
Speaker 1: you'd get intelligent life? Sometimes I'm not sure we have
0:31
Speaker 1: intelligent life here on Earth anyway. So do you think,
0:35
Speaker 1: like in another version of Earth, dinosaurs became smart, maybe
0:38
Speaker 1: like built the Internet, or what if like plants became intelligent?
0:42
Speaker 1: Then this could be a podcast done by bananas where
0:46
Speaker 1: Banana's world the world. Maybe it's done by bananas and
0:50
Speaker 1: listened to by intelligent dinosaurs, and it's probably a lot
0:52
Speaker 1: smarter than this podcast, or maybe at least it's funnier.
1:11
Speaker 1: I am more handmade cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi,
1:15
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel, and in this element of the multiverse, I'm
1:18
Speaker 1: a particle physicists. You think there's an alternate universe where
1:21
Speaker 1: we swapped Daniel, Like I'm the physicist and you're the cartoonist.
1:25
Speaker 1: I think you're well on your way to becoming a physicist.
1:28
Speaker 1: In this universe. I wish I could say the same
1:31
Speaker 1: about you, Daniel and cartooning. I should spend more time
1:34
Speaker 1: doodling while we podcast, so I can work on my
1:36
Speaker 1: art skills. That's how that's how I'm good at cartooning.
1:38
Speaker 1: What do you think I do while you're talking about physics? Oh?
1:43
Speaker 1: You should totally publish the doodles. No, but I do
1:46
Speaker 1: like to imagine other lives I may have lived where
1:48
Speaker 1: I pursued writing or art or music or something, and
1:51
Speaker 1: I wonder how those would have turned out. But why
1:54
Speaker 1: wait for another universe? Why don't you just right now
1:57
Speaker 1: and pursue music. Okay, hold on, I'm going to hang up.
2:01
Speaker 1: But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain
2:04
Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in which
2:07
Speaker 1: we take you on that mental journey. We explore this universe,
2:10
Speaker 1: We talk about other universes. We wonder, why is this
2:13
Speaker 1: universe like this? Are there other universes out there? How
2:16
Speaker 1: does this universe even work? Is it possible to understand it?
2:20
Speaker 1: We wrap all that up in about forty minutes, stuff
2:23
Speaker 1: some puns in it, and feed it to you for
2:25
Speaker 1: intellectual lunch. Because you know, I think the universe that
2:27
Speaker 1: we live in is rich and amazing and huge, and
2:31
Speaker 1: there's still so much to discover. But there is the
2:34
Speaker 1: amazing and incredible possibility that maybe this is not the
2:38
Speaker 1: only universe, and maybe there are other universes out there
2:42
Speaker 1: waiting for us to discover, universes without bananas, universes without snacks,
2:47
Speaker 1: or maybe even universes with better snacks. Because a natural
2:51
Speaker 1: question when you look at our universe as you wonder like,
2:54
Speaker 1: is this the only way it could be? Could the
2:57
Speaker 1: universe have been different? Are there other examples of universes
3:01
Speaker 1: out there where things are different? What does that mean
3:04
Speaker 1: for how special or how irrelevant we are? Yeah, and
3:07
Speaker 1: I think it's, you know, the job of physicists to
3:09
Speaker 1: think about these other universes. But I think the people
3:11
Speaker 1: who get to have more fun with this idea are
3:14
Speaker 1: writers and science fiction writers, because they are free to
3:17
Speaker 1: let their imaginations run wild and think about all these
3:20
Speaker 1: other universes and what they could be and what could
3:22
Speaker 1: be in them. That's right. Science fiction writers not always
3:25
Speaker 1: constrained by the laws of physics the way us experimentalists are,
3:29
Speaker 1: but they still do contribute to this exploration of how
3:32
Speaker 1: the universe is and how the universe might be, and
3:35
Speaker 1: like we say in this podcast, a lot is a
3:37
Speaker 1: vital element of exploring our universe thinking about how other
3:40
Speaker 1: universes might behave and what the rules are. Yes, So
3:43
Speaker 1: it will be continuing today our conversation with science fiction
3:47
Speaker 1: authors about their work, about how they see these concepts
3:50
Speaker 1: in physics and how they let their imaginations run wild
3:54
Speaker 1: in these universes that's right, and more specifically, how they
3:57
Speaker 1: build their universe, because when you tell story, you have
4:01
Speaker 1: to put it in a universe, and the universe has
4:03
Speaker 1: to follow rules for your story to make sense, for
4:06
Speaker 1: your characters to have constraints, for those conflicts to mean anything.
4:10
Speaker 1: And in science fiction you can invent any kind of
4:12
Speaker 1: universe you like, I suppose, as long as it's self consistent.
4:15
Speaker 1: So we've been having fun talking to well known science
4:18
Speaker 1: fiction authors about how they are gods of their own
4:21
Speaker 1: universe and what rules they decided to put in it
4:23
Speaker 1: and what rules they decided to do leave to be.
4:25
Speaker 1: On the podcast, we'll be talking about science fiction universe
4:34
Speaker 1: of Adrian Tchaikowsky's Doors of Eden, that's right. In Adrian Tchaikovsky,
4:39
Speaker 1: now a very well known and very successful science fiction author,
4:43
Speaker 1: but has a quite an interesting background because he started
4:46
Speaker 1: out actually writing fantasy novels. You can do both, apparently
4:51
Speaker 1: you can't cross over, and he wrote some very well
4:54
Speaker 1: received fantasy novels. You know, he spent a lot of
4:56
Speaker 1: time doing D and D as a kid, and I
4:58
Speaker 1: think those novels came out of that. And then he
5:00
Speaker 1: switched over and a few years ago he wrote a
5:03
Speaker 1: book called Children of Time, which is one of my
5:05
Speaker 1: favorite science fiction novels. I was blown away when I
5:08
Speaker 1: read it, and so I totally recommend his entire series
5:12
Speaker 1: of science fiction works. But today we're talking about his
5:14
Speaker 1: most recent book, which is just coming out now in August.
5:18
Speaker 1: It's called Doors of Eaton. I guess, Daniel, what do
5:21
Speaker 1: you see as a difference between a fantasy novel and
5:23
Speaker 1: a science fiction novel? Like, where do you draw the
5:26
Speaker 1: line the number of dragons? I think, what, did you
5:31
Speaker 1: have a sci fi novel with dragons in it? Nobody's
5:33
Speaker 1: ever done that. No, you totally could have a science
5:36
Speaker 1: fiction novel with dragons, And in fact, the one we're
5:39
Speaker 1: talking about today, the science fiction novel has a lot
5:41
Speaker 1: of weird creators in it. I think though, the difference
5:44
Speaker 1: between science fiction and fantasy, again according to Be and
5:47
Speaker 1: lots of people out there in the podcast verse can disagree,
5:50
Speaker 1: is that a science fiction universe is more like science
5:53
Speaker 1: that you set up the rules and then your universe
5:55
Speaker 1: follows those rules, whereas in fantasy you have magic and
5:59
Speaker 1: so basically you know, the rules can be anything at
6:01
Speaker 1: any point. It's just sort of a different style there,
6:04
Speaker 1: because you're either living in a world where you have
6:06
Speaker 1: to follow the rules or you're living in a world
6:08
Speaker 1: where you sort of discovering crazy stuff at every moment. Well,
6:11
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, sometimes fantasy has some rules,
6:14
Speaker 1: you know, like I know that sometimes they try to
6:17
Speaker 1: have rules about how dragons can breathe and what they
6:19
Speaker 1: need to eat and things like that. So maybe it's
6:22
Speaker 1: a little bit of a fuzzy line. Well, I would
6:23
Speaker 1: say that the best fantasy novels are the ones where
6:26
Speaker 1: the magic does have rules, where there's something about it,
6:30
Speaker 1: there's a reason it works this way, and their limits
6:32
Speaker 1: to what you can do. You can't cast this kind
6:34
Speaker 1: of spell in that situation. You need this kind of
6:36
Speaker 1: ability combined with that one to do something. But in
6:39
Speaker 1: my book, that makes them science fiction and not fantasy,
6:42
Speaker 1: so once you start following the rules, it becomes science fiction.
6:46
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're talking about his latest book, which
6:49
Speaker 1: is called Doors of Eden, and it has to do
6:51
Speaker 1: with the multiverse, this idea that there are different universes
6:55
Speaker 1: besides ours, and it's it's the idea that the universes
6:59
Speaker 1: are all different or they're all kind of different versions
7:02
Speaker 1: of ours. Yeah, they're all sort of different versions of Hours.
7:05
Speaker 1: And he really focuses on the role of evolution and
7:08
Speaker 1: how evolution goes down a different path and each multiverse
7:12
Speaker 1: and that's what gives this sort of a fantasy or
7:14
Speaker 1: sort of critter based element, and like thinking about which
7:17
Speaker 1: creator might have become intelligent and become dominant in each
7:20
Speaker 1: of these multiverses. Like if the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped
7:24
Speaker 1: out by an asteroid, could they be maybe the dominant
7:29
Speaker 1: species in our planet right now and have developed intelligence
7:32
Speaker 1: and a physics podcast. They probably wouldn't be talking about
7:36
Speaker 1: bananas though. I can't see a t rex eating a banana,
7:38
Speaker 1: because how does it get it up to its mouth
7:40
Speaker 1: and it's like it's holding it, it peels it, and
7:42
Speaker 1: then it's just like they can't feed themselves. They's just
7:45
Speaker 1: I don't see it working. Well, they're intelligent enough to
7:47
Speaker 1: have a podcast. I would imagine, Daniel, they could figure
7:50
Speaker 1: out a way to peel a banana. Sometimes the simplest
7:53
Speaker 1: problems are the hardest to overcome. Yeah, So it's the
7:55
Speaker 1: idea of the multiverse, and there are many different versions
7:59
Speaker 1: of the more diverse and so we'll get a little
8:01
Speaker 1: bit more into this topic. But we were wondering how
8:04
Speaker 1: many people out there believe the multiverse is possible, and
8:10
Speaker 1: more importantly, if we could ever travel between these different universes.
8:14
Speaker 1: So I went out to the Internet and I asked
8:16
Speaker 1: our listeners and folks like you if they thought it
8:20
Speaker 1: was possible to go from our universe to another. Not
8:23
Speaker 1: just whether the multiverse is real, not just whether other
8:26
Speaker 1: universes exist, but whether we could actually ever visit them.
8:30
Speaker 1: So think about it for a second. Do you think
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Speaker 1: we can travel between universes in the multiverse. Here's what
8:35
Speaker 1: people had to say. No, I don't think we ever
8:39
Speaker 1: will be able to do this. For us to be
8:42
Speaker 1: able to do that, we would have to know or
8:45
Speaker 1: have an idea of like a barrier. I really don't
8:48
Speaker 1: see us doing this any time soon or even in
8:51
Speaker 1: the future. I wish though, no, because fundamentally the multiverse
8:56
Speaker 1: would be causely separated. Well, what don't they know? If
8:59
Speaker 1: there is a multi verse, I can barely travel through
9:02
Speaker 1: the actor the universe, So traveling through the multiverse sounds
9:06
Speaker 1: a bit too much. But well, maybe single particles. If
9:10
Speaker 1: there is a multiverse, I would say no, because if
9:14
Speaker 1: we could travel through the multiverse, it would have to
9:17
Speaker 1: be redefined as just being the universe. Oh I am
9:22
Speaker 1: I don't think we can because I just don't know
9:27
Speaker 1: how we would get there. Do we build a bridge,
9:31
Speaker 1: we have to open up a thing where do you
9:33
Speaker 1: even find out where the opening to the multiverse is? No, No,
9:39
Speaker 1: I don't think so. And even if we could, with
9:42
Speaker 1: this pandemics thing in quarantine fourteen days, it is not
9:46
Speaker 1: worth it. So for once, our listeners are pretty consistent. Yeah, well,
9:49
Speaker 1: I like the one who said we can barely deal
9:51
Speaker 1: with this universe. I can't even wrap my head around
9:55
Speaker 1: multiple universities. It's a good point. Maybe we should figure
9:59
Speaker 1: this one out of we branch into other ones. But
10:01
Speaker 1: then again, maybe other universes have physics as easier to unravel.
10:05
Speaker 1: Just like takes fifteen minutes and boom, theory of everything
10:08
Speaker 1: figured out. Maybe there's a universe where they figure out
10:13
Speaker 1: of egg seed for this pandemic, and then we can
10:15
Speaker 1: learn from that. I guess right, that's a positive thing.
10:17
Speaker 1: That's a positive thing. Yeah. I like that idea. But
10:20
Speaker 1: nobody really seems to think that it's possible to go
10:23
Speaker 1: from our universe to another universe. They sort of all
10:26
Speaker 1: scoff at the idea that you could ever actually travel
10:28
Speaker 1: from this universe to another one. All right, well, let's
10:31
Speaker 1: get into Adrian's book here, Doors of Eden, and so
10:36
Speaker 1: it's about the multiverse, and you're saying that are these
10:38
Speaker 1: what kind of multiverse this is? This like a universe
10:41
Speaker 1: is just like ours but maybe had different initial conditions,
10:45
Speaker 1: or is it like the quantum universe where it gets
10:48
Speaker 1: split off every time a particle makes a left or
10:51
Speaker 1: right decision. It's a very specific kind of multiverse. It's
10:54
Speaker 1: one in which Earth exists and the basic laws of
10:57
Speaker 1: physics are the same. And it doesn't have to do
10:59
Speaker 1: with want of mechanics. It has to do more with
11:02
Speaker 1: thinking about how evolution might have gone differently, Like if
11:05
Speaker 1: you start with Earth with primordial bath of little bugs
11:08
Speaker 1: and life develops then if you run that experiment a
11:11
Speaker 1: lot of different times, what kind of life might develop,
11:15
Speaker 1: what might win the evolutionary sweepstakes, and what might eventually
11:19
Speaker 1: become intelligent because it makes sense to think about how
11:22
Speaker 1: that could be really influenced by random events. You know,
11:25
Speaker 1: a cosmic ray comes in and mutates this creat or
11:28
Speaker 1: not that creator, or a DNA transcription error gives you
11:31
Speaker 1: this mutation and not that mutation, Or an asteroid comes
11:34
Speaker 1: or it doesn't. These little details can really affect downstream,
11:39
Speaker 1: have a massive influence on what ends up surviving and
11:42
Speaker 1: what ends up being intelligent. So in the book, then
11:45
Speaker 1: it's like a universe just like ours, but instead of
11:48
Speaker 1: like a mammal here and with limbs and skin, were
11:51
Speaker 1: actually like dinosaurs with scales and big teeth. Yes, and
11:55
Speaker 1: this is where the novel really shines. Chakowski has a
11:58
Speaker 1: background in zoology and he's very, very creative, and so
12:01
Speaker 1: there are some very inventive other universes there with crazy critters,
12:05
Speaker 1: you know, walrus like creatures that build computers that are
12:08
Speaker 1: mostly out of ice, or bugs that become like the
12:11
Speaker 1: size of planets and float through the universe, or all
12:14
Speaker 1: sorts of other crazy stuff. I don't want to spoil it,
12:16
Speaker 1: but it was really inventive, like ideas I'd never considered,
12:20
Speaker 1: ever thought of before, but seem kind of plausible. In
12:24
Speaker 1: each case, he's really thought through how this thing could
12:26
Speaker 1: evolve and what the environmental requirements were to sort of
12:30
Speaker 1: select for that thing to happen. It's very richly imagined.
12:34
Speaker 1: It's almost like he's visited these things and just like
12:36
Speaker 1: scribbled down notes and come back to tell us about
12:40
Speaker 1: But they're all based on Earth, or are these like
12:43
Speaker 1: dragons coming from space? These are all based on Earth.
12:46
Speaker 1: So in each case he's imagining life here on Earth
12:50
Speaker 1: evolving in lots of different ways and ending up with
12:52
Speaker 1: lots of different kind of intelligence creters. And so then
12:55
Speaker 1: what's the plot? What's the story about? The story starts
12:57
Speaker 1: here on our Earth with people who are like us,
13:00
Speaker 1: and there are cracks that open up between the multiverse,
13:02
Speaker 1: so instead of having completely paralleled separate universes, there starts
13:07
Speaker 1: to be overlaps, places where creators can go from one
13:09
Speaker 1: to the other. And the story begins following some cryptozoologists,
13:14
Speaker 1: people who look for weird creatures like big Foot or
13:16
Speaker 1: the Lockneest Monster, and they find some weird creatures, like
13:20
Speaker 1: actually alive, strange things you wouldn't expect in our universe,
13:24
Speaker 1: and they follow them back and find these doors between
13:27
Speaker 1: universes where you can jump from one to the other.
13:30
Speaker 1: And the basic plot of the book is to figure
13:32
Speaker 1: out why are these universes overlapping, what or who is
13:35
Speaker 1: controlling it and for what purpose? And is it a
13:38
Speaker 1: good idea or a bad idea? And then it just
13:40
Speaker 1: goes crazy as we jump from universe to universe and
13:43
Speaker 1: meet all sorts of crazy creatures. Interesting so they're not
13:46
Speaker 1: naturally occurring cracks. It's like somebody's opening the doorways between universes.
13:51
Speaker 1: That's one of the big mysteries driving the book, and
13:53
Speaker 1: so I won't spoil it for our listeners, but it's
13:55
Speaker 1: a fascinating question. Yes, all right, Well, let's get into
13:58
Speaker 1: the signs of the book and then we'll get to
14:00
Speaker 1: your interview with Adrian Chaikowsky, author of Doors of Eden.
14:03
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. All right, we're
14:18
Speaker 1: talking about the science fiction work of Adrian Chaikowsky, and
14:21
Speaker 1: specifically the book Doors of Eden, in which the multiverse
14:26
Speaker 1: exists and it's fun and there's all kinds of amazing
14:30
Speaker 1: different creatures in it, and the cracks between the universes
14:33
Speaker 1: are starting to show. It's fun sort of the same
14:37
Speaker 1: way like Jurassic Park was fun in those movies. Like
14:40
Speaker 1: it's fun, but it's dangerous. You know. Some of these
14:42
Speaker 1: critters are not exactly friendly. Oh, I see, all right.
14:45
Speaker 1: So it takes place in our universe, and there's these
14:47
Speaker 1: doorways to other multiverses that are opening, and there are
14:51
Speaker 1: creatures from those multiverses coming into and out of our world. Yeah,
14:56
Speaker 1: that's right. And our humans sometimes go into those multiverses
14:59
Speaker 1: and come back after many years suddenly changed, and so
15:02
Speaker 1: there's a lot of going back and forth. But the
15:04
Speaker 1: basic sort of scientific premise is what if you could
15:08
Speaker 1: explore multiple paths at once. You know, it's like when
15:11
Speaker 1: you have to make a decision in life, You're like
15:12
Speaker 1: should I order mac and cheese or should I order
15:15
Speaker 1: pizza or whatever, and you imagine, like, maybe this has
15:17
Speaker 1: a big role in my life. Maybe there's another version
15:20
Speaker 1: of me where I ordered the pizza and something happened
15:22
Speaker 1: and and now I'm a totally different person. And this
15:25
Speaker 1: sort of gets to explore all these different paths the
15:28
Speaker 1: way the Earth might have gone if evolution had worked different.
15:32
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's have a lot of questions about
15:34
Speaker 1: the science, I guess, and so let's dig into that.
15:36
Speaker 1: And so, first of all, maybe we should recap a
15:39
Speaker 1: little bit about this idea of a multiverse, because there
15:41
Speaker 1: are a lot of different flavors of multiverses in physics theories.
15:45
Speaker 1: Yes there are, and multiverse is a hot topic these days,
15:48
Speaker 1: not just in science fiction novels, but in theories of physics.
15:51
Speaker 1: It's something we talk about a lot. So explain to
15:53
Speaker 1: us what is the current definition of a multiverse. So
15:56
Speaker 1: there's lots of different ways to think about the multiverse,
15:59
Speaker 1: and essentially, at the hands on what question you're trying
16:01
Speaker 1: to answer? The whole idea for the multiverse comes from
16:05
Speaker 1: a lack of explanation of things we see in our universe.
16:09
Speaker 1: Like we look at things in our universe and we
16:11
Speaker 1: measure them, and we wonder like, why is it this
16:13
Speaker 1: way and not some other way? You know, Like we
16:16
Speaker 1: measure the rate of expansion of the universe driven by
16:19
Speaker 1: the cosmological constant, and it's a number, and it's kind
16:23
Speaker 1: of a weird number. It's like kind of a small number,
16:26
Speaker 1: and we wonder like, well, why isn't that number just
16:28
Speaker 1: one or seven or twelve? Like why this number and
16:32
Speaker 1: not some other number? Right? Like it could be something else,
16:35
Speaker 1: But why isn't it that? Or what isn't this? And
16:37
Speaker 1: one possible answer is, oh, there's a reason it has
16:40
Speaker 1: to be this way, we just don't yet understand the
16:42
Speaker 1: physics of it. And that's, you know, my favorite explanation,
16:45
Speaker 1: because that's the cleanest, it's the simplest. It tells us
16:48
Speaker 1: why our universe has to be this way, but we
16:51
Speaker 1: don't have that explanation yet. We haven't figured it out yet.
16:54
Speaker 1: And another way to make sense of it, instead of
16:56
Speaker 1: finding a physics argument for why it has to be
16:58
Speaker 1: this way is to say, well, it's just arbitrary and
17:01
Speaker 1: maybe it set sort of randomly when the universe began. Yeah,
17:05
Speaker 1: Like maybe it's just like a random throw of the die, yeah, right,
17:08
Speaker 1: or like a random flip of the coin. And then
17:10
Speaker 1: you're wondering, why is it heads not to Yeah, And
17:12
Speaker 1: that feels sort of like a cop out, like it's saying, well,
17:15
Speaker 1: there is no explanation, so maybe there can't be an explanation,
17:19
Speaker 1: or maybe it's just random, and that's the explanation that
17:21
Speaker 1: sounds reasonable to me, but physicists have a very uncomfortable
17:25
Speaker 1: time dealing with that answer. Yeah, because it feels sort
17:28
Speaker 1: of like giving up, because you could use that argument
17:30
Speaker 1: for anything. You know, why is the Earth going around
17:32
Speaker 1: the Sun? I don't know, Maybe it's random. You know,
17:36
Speaker 1: why are photons act this way? I don't know. Maybe
17:38
Speaker 1: they just do because they do. It feels like a
17:41
Speaker 1: non answer. It feels like you're saying, don't ask any
17:43
Speaker 1: more questions because there are no more answers. But we're physicists.
17:47
Speaker 1: We like to ask questions, We would like to figure
17:49
Speaker 1: things out. But I guess my problem with this is
17:52
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like the best way to answer that
17:54
Speaker 1: question either, Like, you know, why does the Earth go
17:56
Speaker 1: around the Sun? You can dig into it and you
17:58
Speaker 1: find out about gravity and orbits and things like that.
18:02
Speaker 1: But if you get to a number that you can't explain,
18:05
Speaker 1: why can't it just be the way it is? Because
18:07
Speaker 1: it is? Why does it? Why do you have to
18:09
Speaker 1: invent the whole other set of universes to explain it? Well,
18:11
Speaker 1: it could just be the way it is, the reason
18:14
Speaker 1: why a whole other set of universes sort of scratches
18:17
Speaker 1: that itch. Especially works when the number is weird. Like
18:21
Speaker 1: if you measure a number and it's sort of like
18:23
Speaker 1: makes sense to you, like the number is one, you
18:25
Speaker 1: know these dimensionless numbers, You're like, okay, well the number
18:29
Speaker 1: is one. But if the number is really weird or small,
18:31
Speaker 1: then it seems unlikely. And then to explain it, you'd
18:35
Speaker 1: like to imagine like, well, maybe there are lots of
18:36
Speaker 1: other versions and we're just sort of an unlikely random choice.
18:40
Speaker 1: There many of these things and we just happen to
18:43
Speaker 1: be in one that's weird. And so that it doesn't
18:45
Speaker 1: really answer the question. You still have the arbitrary nous,
18:47
Speaker 1: you still have the randomness, but then you have a
18:49
Speaker 1: whole population. So instead of being the only one out
18:53
Speaker 1: on this weird tail, we're out of the weird tail
18:55
Speaker 1: of a large group and most of the universe is
18:58
Speaker 1: normal and we're the weird ones. So it sort of
19:01
Speaker 1: gives you some kind of an explanation, but it's not
19:03
Speaker 1: totally satisfactory. See, it's more like why are we special?
19:06
Speaker 1: And the answer is we're not. Yeah, I feel like
19:11
Speaker 1: that's kind of what you're trying to It's like, yeah,
19:13
Speaker 1: it's like it's weird that we're special, but maybe we're
19:16
Speaker 1: not special. Maybe there's a whole bunch of other universes. Well, actually,
19:19
Speaker 1: I think it's more like the other way around. It's saying,
19:21
Speaker 1: why are we special? Isn't it strange that we have
19:23
Speaker 1: only one example? And this example is special, and so
19:26
Speaker 1: saying oh, yeah, well we are actually special, and there
19:29
Speaker 1: are other universes out there with this special thing doesn't happen,
19:33
Speaker 1: and so that explains, like why it's happening in this one.
19:36
Speaker 1: You know, it's not a totally satisfactory answer. And I
19:39
Speaker 1: think part of the reason it survives is because it's
19:41
Speaker 1: so mind blowing. It's like, whoa, You're gonna take the
19:45
Speaker 1: whole universe and multiplied by a thousand or multiply by
19:48
Speaker 1: an infinite number of varieties. It's sort of philosophically mind blowing,
19:52
Speaker 1: and that's why I think it's so popular. All right, Well,
19:55
Speaker 1: there are many different kinds of multiverses, and we had
19:58
Speaker 1: a whole podcast that out the different kinds of multiverses.
20:01
Speaker 1: So if you're curious, please go back. There are lists
20:04
Speaker 1: of episodes and find it. But I guess I'm curious
20:07
Speaker 1: about the one that Adrian Chikovski uses in his novel
20:11
Speaker 1: The Doors of Eden. What kind of multiverse is it?
20:15
Speaker 1: Is it like a parallel is it in another spot
20:18
Speaker 1: in space? Is it like a quantum kind of separation?
20:22
Speaker 1: What kind of multiverse is it? I think it's most
20:24
Speaker 1: similar to the quantum multiverse, actually, because it has the
20:27
Speaker 1: same laws of physics. So it's not like the multiverse
20:32
Speaker 1: where the universe is different laws of physics in different places,
20:35
Speaker 1: and other universes are just like you know, other parts
20:38
Speaker 1: of space where the laws of physics are different, the
20:40
Speaker 1: electrons have different masses or something. It's not that kind
20:43
Speaker 1: of configuration like in his book. Your electrons can go
20:46
Speaker 1: to another multiverse and still be electrons, and there's still light,
20:49
Speaker 1: and there's still particles, and everything is familiar. So the
20:52
Speaker 1: laws of physics are the same. It's just sort of
20:54
Speaker 1: like another role of the die. So in that sense,
20:58
Speaker 1: it's most similar to the quantum all diverse. The quantum
21:01
Speaker 1: multiverse is the one where every time a quantum particle
21:04
Speaker 1: does something random, you know, the electron goes left or
21:07
Speaker 1: goes right. It doesn't actually just randomly choose one. It
21:10
Speaker 1: does both. In the universe splits into two, one where
21:13
Speaker 1: it goes left and one where it goes right. And
21:16
Speaker 1: so in this universe, that's kind of what is happening,
21:18
Speaker 1: is that they're they're quantum multiverses, and in these different universes,
21:23
Speaker 1: you know, a primordial cell split this way and not
21:26
Speaker 1: that way. Yeah, it's sort of like biology quantum multiverse,
21:29
Speaker 1: where you're imagining that the random processes, which are fundamentally
21:33
Speaker 1: quantum mechanical, are having a macroscopic effect on the biology
21:37
Speaker 1: and on the evolution, which leads to all sorts of
21:40
Speaker 1: different stuff. And you know that I think is totally
21:42
Speaker 1: plausible because a lot of the mutation that comes in
21:45
Speaker 1: evolution is based on quantum mechanical principles, you know, the
21:48
Speaker 1: chemistry of these things interacting or cosmic rays flipping a
21:52
Speaker 1: bit in DNA, so that's totally possible. Yeah, I guess
21:55
Speaker 1: these things all depend on really tiny events and really
22:00
Speaker 1: tiny random events. Yeah. And in this sense, the multiverse
22:04
Speaker 1: is sort of trying to scratch the same itch as
22:06
Speaker 1: what we were talking about earlier. Instead of thinking like, well,
22:09
Speaker 1: why is this fundamental parameter of the universe point one
22:12
Speaker 1: instead of one or two, it's thinking why are we
22:15
Speaker 1: in this universe and not the other one? Right. Why
22:18
Speaker 1: are we in the universe where the electrone went left
22:20
Speaker 1: instead of the one where it went right? How does
22:22
Speaker 1: the universe randomly choose one of those things? Is there's
22:25
Speaker 1: some like quantum die at the core of the universe
22:28
Speaker 1: computer And so the quantum multiverse tries to answer that
22:31
Speaker 1: question by saying, we're not special. It's not like the
22:33
Speaker 1: universe picked left. It picked both. We just happened to
22:36
Speaker 1: be in the left one, and the people on the
22:38
Speaker 1: right one are thinking why did it go right and
22:40
Speaker 1: not left? Yeah, And in my mind that doesn't really
22:44
Speaker 1: answer the question. This whole quantum multiverse thing doesn't really
22:47
Speaker 1: solve the problem of randomness because we still are in
22:50
Speaker 1: the left one. You know, maybe the other ones exist,
22:53
Speaker 1: that's cool, but how come we ended up in the
22:55
Speaker 1: left one. There's still a specialness to one of those
22:58
Speaker 1: universes because it's the one that we are living in. Oh,
23:02
Speaker 1: I see, you think it's still special because your special
23:05
Speaker 1: I'm the only me I know. So, yes, this universe
23:09
Speaker 1: is different from all the other universes. Right, well, until
23:12
Speaker 1: the dinosaurs come, and then maybe we'll meet dinosaur Daniel,
23:18
Speaker 1: who actually, yeah, there, he's a big advocate for down fruit. Alright,
23:23
Speaker 1: So in this universe, I guess, then his multiverse and
23:26
Speaker 1: the ones that they interact with in this novel, I
23:28
Speaker 1: guess they're probably recent quantum multi universes, right, because like,
23:33
Speaker 1: if you think about it's kind of like a tree,
23:36
Speaker 1: like the branches in a tree, Like it's where he's
23:38
Speaker 1: probably talking about other universes in a very close branch
23:43
Speaker 1: of the multiverse, because like I imagine, if you go
23:45
Speaker 1: back to the beginning of time and start splitting the universe,
23:48
Speaker 1: then those would be super duper different than our universe.
23:51
Speaker 1: You might not get there might not even be an Earth,
23:53
Speaker 1: that's right, Yeah, you wouldn't get a Milky Way or
23:54
Speaker 1: an Earth, or even we might be in the middle
23:56
Speaker 1: of a giant cosmic void instead of being in the
23:59
Speaker 1: center of a superstructure. So you're right, he has an
24:02
Speaker 1: Earth in each of these and the splitting happens sort
24:05
Speaker 1: of after life begins on Earth. But again I don't
24:08
Speaker 1: want to spoil too much. One of the fascinating elements
24:10
Speaker 1: of the book is sort of tracing this back and
24:12
Speaker 1: figuring out where the first branch happens. Interesting, all right,
24:16
Speaker 1: And so there are other animals that develop intelligence and
24:19
Speaker 1: that's all part of the plot to figure out how
24:21
Speaker 1: that happened. Yeah, all right, Well let's get into your
24:24
Speaker 1: interview with science fiction author Adrian Chaikovski, author of Doors
24:28
Speaker 1: of Eden. So it's my great pleasure today to welcome
24:32
Speaker 1: to the program Adrian Tchaikovsky, the author of Doors of
24:35
Speaker 1: Eden as well as many other novels. He's the winner
24:38
Speaker 1: of awards in both fantasy and science fiction writing, and
24:42
Speaker 1: we're very glad to have him today on the program. Hello. Thanks, sure, so,
24:47
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us. Before we get
24:49
Speaker 1: started talking about your book, we'd like to get to
24:51
Speaker 1: know you a little bit better as a writer. Can
24:53
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit more about your background,
24:56
Speaker 1: how you got into writing science fiction. I know that
24:58
Speaker 1: you have some sort of thing background in zoology and law,
25:02
Speaker 1: and then before you wrote science fiction, you wrote a
25:05
Speaker 1: series of well regarded fantasy novels. Yeah, I've got the
25:08
Speaker 1: sort of background you get when you're rolling randomly on
25:11
Speaker 1: some fairly banal tables. So yes, I've got I've got
25:16
Speaker 1: my academic background as zoology and psychology. Um, it's not
25:21
Speaker 1: the case that the zoology in the background led to
25:24
Speaker 1: the zoologe in the writing. It's more the case that
25:27
Speaker 1: they're both symptoms of an overriding fascination with the natural
25:29
Speaker 1: world that I've had since a very young age. Um
25:33
Speaker 1: I have. I did work in law for years. I
25:36
Speaker 1: mean I've been a full time writer for about a
25:38
Speaker 1: year and a half now, but before that i've been
25:40
Speaker 1: I was a sort of fairly junior type of lawyer
25:42
Speaker 1: for about ten years, UM, which came about because when
25:46
Speaker 1: I was looking for a job, there was an opening
25:48
Speaker 1: for a legal secretary, and because of the writing, I
25:50
Speaker 1: had a very good typing speed. And that was basically
25:53
Speaker 1: that I didn't really decide to become a lawyer at
25:55
Speaker 1: any point, but there was on the job training available
25:58
Speaker 1: and it just kind of happened beyond that. Actually, I
26:01
Speaker 1: think the biggest influence for me becoming a writer has
26:05
Speaker 1: probably been role playing games, which is my kind of
26:08
Speaker 1: enduring obsession when I was certainly a teenager and kind
26:13
Speaker 1: of still is, to be honest, But it turned out
26:15
Speaker 1: to be a very very good sort of training ground
26:18
Speaker 1: for designing worlds and designing characters and putting yourself behind
26:22
Speaker 1: the kind of behind the eyes are very different sort
26:26
Speaker 1: of people and creatures, and that certainly comes out clearly
26:29
Speaker 1: and very well in your fantasy novels. What about the
26:31
Speaker 1: transition to science fiction did you feel like you had
26:34
Speaker 1: to leave some of that behind and build different kinds
26:36
Speaker 1: of worlds. Was that a different muscle for you? Did
26:38
Speaker 1: you feel like the same sort of expression. It's a
26:40
Speaker 1: bit of a different challenge, certainly when I'm writing science
26:44
Speaker 1: science fiction, because I mean, there's a kind of a
26:46
Speaker 1: bit of a slider that you can play with when
26:49
Speaker 1: you're when you're approaching depending on how science accurate you
26:52
Speaker 1: wanted to be, you're you're adding extra constraints that you
26:56
Speaker 1: don't have to work with. So I mean, despite its
26:59
Speaker 1: subject of the children at time, is certainly intended to
27:01
Speaker 1: be a fairly hard science book in that not in
27:04
Speaker 1: that it's full of vastly complex mathematical equations, but in
27:08
Speaker 1: that the science depicted there is at least intended to
27:12
Speaker 1: be plausible and possible. So you don't have time traveling,
27:15
Speaker 1: you don't have faster than light traveling, and of artificial gravity,
27:19
Speaker 1: because I'm not convinced that things can actually be done
27:22
Speaker 1: within the bounds of the universe were in and so
27:24
Speaker 1: if I was approaching a book with those elements, I
27:27
Speaker 1: would have to shift that slider off to the left
27:30
Speaker 1: or whichever direction is is the less scientific end, But
27:33
Speaker 1: within that it's it's not enormously different. It's really just
27:37
Speaker 1: that you you are, rather than setting your own ground
27:40
Speaker 1: rules at the start, you're coming into play with a
27:42
Speaker 1: series of ground ules already there, which are of course
27:45
Speaker 1: the real Those are the real world, so you have
27:47
Speaker 1: to research those. And it doesn't mean that it's considerably
27:50
Speaker 1: more work than just making it up and then ensuring
27:53
Speaker 1: you're consistent with what you've made up. But there is
27:56
Speaker 1: a there's a definite satisfaction to basically working with what
27:59
Speaker 1: what the universe allows and then building something like, for example,
28:03
Speaker 1: a civilization and giant spiders, and there was a lot
28:06
Speaker 1: of fun to read about. Well, then let me ask
28:08
Speaker 1: you a series of short questions that we ask all
28:10
Speaker 1: of our science fiction author guests to sort of acquaint
28:13
Speaker 1: you in that universe. First question is philosophical question about
28:17
Speaker 1: star trek transporters. Is it your opinion that a star
28:20
Speaker 1: trek transporter kills you and creates a clone somewhere else,
28:25
Speaker 1: or that it actually transports your atoms to your destination.
28:28
Speaker 1: The cynic in me definitely goes with the first one.
28:32
Speaker 1: There's a glory that the China Navel book called Krack
28:34
Speaker 1: and where this is a kind of a minor issue
28:37
Speaker 1: that has explored in an absolutely glorious scene in the book.
28:42
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean it is, it's it's it's kind
28:45
Speaker 1: of hard to justify. And I appreciate it's in this
28:48
Speaker 1: series because it's a lot cheaper to show on the
28:50
Speaker 1: screen than actually having things like all bit planet shuttles
28:53
Speaker 1: and things like that. But um, yeah, that the technology
28:56
Speaker 1: is frankly terrifying when you start to think through the
28:58
Speaker 1: implications on it. So if you think it is something
29:00
Speaker 1: that kills you in clones, you would you be willing
29:03
Speaker 1: to step into a transporter. I honestly think that one
29:06
Speaker 1: of the great lessons of modern civilization is there are
29:09
Speaker 1: very few terrifyingly unawysed things people won't do. Just cut
29:13
Speaker 1: down on the commute. That's probably too You probably become
29:21
Speaker 1: totally commonplace to kill yourself and be cloned at your
29:23
Speaker 1: workplace every day. Well, in the vein of science fiction
29:27
Speaker 1: tech becoming real, what technology that you see in science
29:31
Speaker 1: fiction would you most like see become actual reality something
29:35
Speaker 1: we can actually use on a purely practical level. I
29:39
Speaker 1: think teleportation, if it was reliable and freely available, would
29:45
Speaker 1: make a colossal amount of difference portals even though, or
29:48
Speaker 1: even even better. One of Peter Hamilton's recent book Salvation
29:52
Speaker 1: is a world where basically portal technology to anyway you
29:56
Speaker 1: can get your portal as you would do is it
29:58
Speaker 1: is just perhaps commonplace. And you have examples where there's
30:03
Speaker 1: one action scene going through a house where every room
30:05
Speaker 1: in the house is in a different place and the
30:07
Speaker 1: doorways are just portals to take you from continent continent
30:11
Speaker 1: and even into other other planets, just like stepping through
30:14
Speaker 1: a room. Yeah, that's seen reminding me a lot of
30:16
Speaker 1: sort of Hyperion where they have a house with rooms
30:20
Speaker 1: in different solar systems. So on the topic then of
30:22
Speaker 1: transport across solar systems, what's your personal answer to the
30:26
Speaker 1: Fermi paradox? That is why I haven't aliens visited Earth yet.
30:30
Speaker 1: Do you think that they aren't out there, or there
30:32
Speaker 1: aren't interested in nurse, or that is not long lived enough.
30:35
Speaker 1: I believe that there's life. That life is probably not
30:40
Speaker 1: that rare in the galaxy, in the universe. I mean
30:42
Speaker 1: not that rare still means obviously there are vast tracts
30:46
Speaker 1: of universe with very little life in it, because that
30:47
Speaker 1: have the universe works. But I believe that intelligent life
30:51
Speaker 1: such as might be sending signals that we could theoretically
30:54
Speaker 1: pick up. It's probably a lot rarer. There's um The
30:57
Speaker 1: Cohen and Stewart book Evolving an Alien Involving the Alien Sorry,
31:02
Speaker 1: talks about intelligent and extelligent, and the idea of having
31:05
Speaker 1: that great overarching, fabricated civilization that would allow you to
31:10
Speaker 1: kind of extend your reach beyond the planet you evolve
31:13
Speaker 1: on is probably quite difficult to do. And we see
31:17
Speaker 1: lots of examples of intelligence in the natural world where
31:21
Speaker 1: there's no obvious sort of even looking pressure for them
31:25
Speaker 1: to go about inventing cars and mobile phones, because they're
31:28
Speaker 1: doing fine with the level of tool use from the
31:29
Speaker 1: level of problem solving that they've got. I think the
31:32
Speaker 1: other problem is that alien life is alien. It's entirely
31:36
Speaker 1: possible that it's out there and we've even run into
31:38
Speaker 1: its signals and not realized that's what they are. Because
31:41
Speaker 1: there's a lot of background noise in the universe. In
31:44
Speaker 1: order to have any kind of meaningful search at all
31:47
Speaker 1: with the kind of the setting program and so forth,
31:48
Speaker 1: you effectively have to restrict your options so that you're
31:51
Speaker 1: looking for something that's very human. Indeed, and obviously anything
31:55
Speaker 1: that evolves on an alien planet is going to be
31:58
Speaker 1: de facto less like us than the most alien thing
32:01
Speaker 1: on this planet. Although the counter argument, I think is
32:06
Speaker 1: that there's a potential of convergence because we all live
32:08
Speaker 1: in the same universe, and maths and physics is probably universal,
32:12
Speaker 1: and therefore we might be able to communicate conceivably with
32:15
Speaker 1: something very alien at some level, purely because we have
32:20
Speaker 1: a common language in the basic principles of the universe.
32:23
Speaker 1: And there's a fascinating tension there because if we met aliens,
32:27
Speaker 1: we might only be able to converse with aliens that
32:29
Speaker 1: are similar to us, which means they might not have
32:32
Speaker 1: that much more insight into math and physics, whereas we'd
32:35
Speaker 1: love to talk to the aliens that thinks so differently
32:37
Speaker 1: about the universe that their insights into how it works
32:40
Speaker 1: are shattering and mind blowing. But that may effectively be impossible. Yeah,
32:44
Speaker 1: as far as I can work out from someone entirely
32:46
Speaker 1: outside the discipline. It's interesting looking at the way that
32:50
Speaker 1: animal behavior studies have gone fairly recently, because for a
32:53
Speaker 1: long time it was a bit of a desert, certainly
32:56
Speaker 1: from when I was studying back in the in the nineties,
32:59
Speaker 1: because the ominent paradigm was the idea that animals couldn't
33:02
Speaker 1: really think or feel, and maybe humans could think and feel,
33:05
Speaker 1: but that was still up in the air with some researchers,
33:09
Speaker 1: but animals certainly didn't. You weren't allowed to anthropomorphizers, which
33:13
Speaker 1: basically kind of killed off any attempt at at looking
33:16
Speaker 1: at animal behavior in any kind of meaningful way. And
33:19
Speaker 1: this is purely my personal people, and I will probably
33:22
Speaker 1: annoy of ours number of Bavil scientists who will justifiably
33:25
Speaker 1: tear me a strip, But certainly now there appears to
33:28
Speaker 1: be a bit more of an open idea to all
33:30
Speaker 1: that's actually try and understand why they're doing things from
33:33
Speaker 1: the point of or they living creature rather than a
33:35
Speaker 1: sophisticated robot basically. And the reason I'm saying this is
33:40
Speaker 1: if we were to want to try and understand an alien,
33:42
Speaker 1: even an alien that was desperately trying to make itself understood,
33:46
Speaker 1: you kind of need practice. You need to be looking
33:49
Speaker 1: at other minds and on. You know, we've got some
33:51
Speaker 1: effectively some training wheels other minds here on Earth, and
33:54
Speaker 1: we could conceivably, Yeah, we could, we could, and we
33:57
Speaker 1: are I think now trying to work on understanding. I
34:00
Speaker 1: see that the lesson is pay attention to your cat
34:02
Speaker 1: because it could help you understand the aliens. Well, then
34:07
Speaker 1: let's talk about your novel, because this brings us to
34:10
Speaker 1: very similar themes. I really enjoyed reading Doors of Eden, congratulations,
34:14
Speaker 1: and the novel features sort of multiple parallel worlds, which
34:17
Speaker 1: is a familiar concept in science fiction. But you introduced
34:20
Speaker 1: a couple of very clever and new elements exploring how
34:24
Speaker 1: intelligence might develop differently in each of these parallel worlds,
34:28
Speaker 1: and how that intelligence could potentially control and bridge those worlds. So,
34:32
Speaker 1: first I want to ask you what gave you the
34:34
Speaker 1: idea to use this concept in your novel. Did you
34:37
Speaker 1: start from the science concept and try to build a
34:39
Speaker 1: story around it, or was there a story you wanted
34:41
Speaker 1: to tell that needed sort of this mechanism very much
34:44
Speaker 1: the first basically I wanted for quite a while to
34:48
Speaker 1: write a big, sort of speculative evolution book. There was
34:52
Speaker 1: a convention I was at years ago in London where
34:55
Speaker 1: they had a very good speculatory revolution track of talks,
34:59
Speaker 1: and they had some of big names in the business
35:01
Speaker 1: in Dougal Dixon and themo Customer and so forth, to
35:05
Speaker 1: discuss just various sort of speculative world that put together
35:10
Speaker 1: and how they had thought through the biology and so forth.
35:12
Speaker 1: And I've avoid been fascinated by pale intelligion, particularly things
35:16
Speaker 1: like I really enjoyed Steven J. Gould's book Wonderful Life
35:19
Speaker 1: and his slightly off the wall exploration of the Burgess
35:23
Speaker 1: Shale fauna and things like that, and the possibility that
35:26
Speaker 1: he raises there that there's no the evolutionary course of
35:30
Speaker 1: life on this planet is in no way re ordained,
35:34
Speaker 1: and it's not even necessarily that well the best thing
35:36
Speaker 1: one At any given stage, there's a lot of chance,
35:39
Speaker 1: and it could have at any given point it could
35:40
Speaker 1: have gone completely differently, and we could be sitting here
35:44
Speaker 1: as the end result of a completely different evolutionary train.
35:48
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what I wanted to explore in
35:50
Speaker 1: the book. And then, of course, you know, that's the
35:52
Speaker 1: under arching story that the the human scale plot then
35:56
Speaker 1: gets kind of built up around. But really the heart
35:59
Speaker 1: of it is the kind of experiments in speculative evolution
36:02
Speaker 1: and just thinking through balancing things going differently with the
36:08
Speaker 1: kind of rules and principles that we at least think
36:13
Speaker 1: that would apply to revolution under any circumstances. And it
36:16
Speaker 1: seems to be something of a theme in your other novels,
36:18
Speaker 1: Children or Time and Children are Ruined. These examples are
36:21
Speaker 1: sort of varied evolution, intelligence arising in spiders or an
36:24
Speaker 1: octopi or and so. Do you think that intelligence is
36:28
Speaker 1: sort of inevitable and a million parallel universes you would
36:32
Speaker 1: get intelligence on Earth in some significant fraction of them,
36:36
Speaker 1: or do you think that any species is essentially capable
36:38
Speaker 1: of it? I mean, I suppose the key point for
36:42
Speaker 1: me as a writer's intelligence is narratively useful. If all
36:45
Speaker 1: of that had gone on without intelligence, then it still
36:49
Speaker 1: can be a very interesting piece of speculative evolution, and
36:51
Speaker 1: it doesn't plug very well into any kind of human
36:53
Speaker 1: level narrative if you have worlds and worlds without anything.
36:57
Speaker 1: And I mean whenever you see these kind of broad
37:01
Speaker 1: takes on sort of multiple strands of evolution and so forth,
37:04
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a book I read recently by Daniel
37:07
Speaker 1: Benson call Junction, which does it with a number of
37:10
Speaker 1: different eight completely alien worlds where you get to see
37:13
Speaker 1: the kind of what they've come up with, and there
37:15
Speaker 1: isn't intelligence is that is not universal. In fact, it's
37:18
Speaker 1: almost not there at all. But there is at least
37:20
Speaker 1: one example, and you always I think in box by
37:23
Speaker 1: one example where you meet something that is obviously thinking
37:26
Speaker 1: in some way and building in some way and doing
37:28
Speaker 1: something that brings it to that kind of human level,
37:32
Speaker 1: even if it is very alien. Indeed, I mean, in
37:34
Speaker 1: all honesty, and this is very much going by the
37:36
Speaker 1: Cohen and Stewart's metric of all, look what has happened
37:39
Speaker 1: in the past before people, before kind of early hominids,
37:46
Speaker 1: there's no real suggestion that intelligence had turned up. And
37:49
Speaker 1: it may have done, and it may just not aun
37:50
Speaker 1: less new traces. If if you had intelligence that didn't
37:53
Speaker 1: lead itself to a kind of a manufacturing base and
37:56
Speaker 1: a building building of tools and structures and so forth,
37:59
Speaker 1: in the same way that some of my intelligence and
38:02
Speaker 1: doors of Eden don't lend themselves to building things like that,
38:05
Speaker 1: we wouldn't know and you know, several of the civilizations
38:08
Speaker 1: I post it wouldn't necessarily leave any kind of fossil
38:10
Speaker 1: trace that you would identify as intelligence. But there's certainly
38:15
Speaker 1: no evidence that intelligence has turned up in the half
38:18
Speaker 1: a billion years of life that we've got a record for,
38:22
Speaker 1: and therefore I suspected probably isn't inevitable at all. And
38:26
Speaker 1: there is, obviously, when we're talking about the Fermi paradox earlier,
38:29
Speaker 1: there's always that rather dour idea that well, when it
38:32
Speaker 1: turns up, it basically then just accelerates until it destroys
38:36
Speaker 1: itself and knocks herself backed down into a point where
38:38
Speaker 1: it isn't really a civilization anymore. And that also, I mean,
38:42
Speaker 1: I kind of didn't give that idea much credence where
38:45
Speaker 1: I first heard it decades ago, and now I'm looking
38:47
Speaker 1: at thinking, yeah, okay, I see the point there that
38:50
Speaker 1: that does seem to be what we're on the right doing.
38:53
Speaker 1: So fine, all right, Well I want to talk about
38:55
Speaker 1: that some more with our guest, Adrian Shakosky, But first
38:59
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back and we're
39:15
Speaker 1: talking to Adrian Chaikowski, science fiction author of the book
39:19
Speaker 1: Doors of Eden. The other sort of element, structural element
39:23
Speaker 1: of your novel is this concept of many worlds and
39:26
Speaker 1: having parallel universes and so you made a comment earlier
39:30
Speaker 1: about being limited in science fiction to sort of writing
39:33
Speaker 1: to the rules of our universe. Is it critical to
39:36
Speaker 1: you when you write your science fiction that you follow
39:39
Speaker 1: the rules of our universe, that you that the physics
39:41
Speaker 1: be plausible, or do you feel free to sort of
39:43
Speaker 1: create your own physics and then followed those rules? Yeah,
39:47
Speaker 1: I think. I mean, I live in I live in
39:48
Speaker 1: a kind of morbid dread all sort of picked up
39:51
Speaker 1: my actual scientists forgetting the science wrong. And I think
39:53
Speaker 1: there's if you're writing something and you have the science
39:57
Speaker 1: role and someone reading the book understands that, then that's
40:02
Speaker 1: going to kick him out of the immersion for the
40:04
Speaker 1: reading experience. Now, there's always going to be a level
40:07
Speaker 1: of stuff where again I don't know the questions to ask,
40:10
Speaker 1: and I'm getting it wrong. With that real and knowing
40:12
Speaker 1: I'm getting it wrong, but I kind of fellished my
40:14
Speaker 1: duty as a writer to get it as right as
40:16
Speaker 1: I possibly can and therefore keep the number of disappointed
40:21
Speaker 1: scientifically minded readers to a minimum. I guess, well, that's
40:27
Speaker 1: very kind of you. As a physicist. I certainly enjoy
40:30
Speaker 1: reading scientist fiction novels where they are consistent with the
40:34
Speaker 1: rules that they lay down. So if they create new
40:36
Speaker 1: laws of physics, that's wonderful, that's creative, But then it
40:39
Speaker 1: troubles me if then they depart from those in order
40:42
Speaker 1: to get some story effect that they'd like to achieve,
40:44
Speaker 1: regardless of the rules that they've set for themselves. Yeah,
40:47
Speaker 1: I mean, my current project is more of it on
40:49
Speaker 1: the space opera side. So the kind of the physics
40:51
Speaker 1: slider is set off towards where I can kind of
40:55
Speaker 1: I'm inventing stuff to do with kind of sort of
41:00
Speaker 1: hyperspace travel and that kind of thing. But it's a
41:03
Speaker 1: lot like building a magic system from a fantasy world.
41:05
Speaker 1: And what I mean exactly as you say, it's all
41:08
Speaker 1: to do with you've got to be consistent and you
41:11
Speaker 1: can't suddenly have all. In this case, I can suddenly
41:13
Speaker 1: do this unless it's been well foreshadowed within the kind
41:17
Speaker 1: of a sistem you said. So then let me ask
41:19
Speaker 1: you about the science in this novel. There's the many
41:22
Speaker 1: worlds or the multiverse in your view, is the multiverse
41:26
Speaker 1: something that's real in our universe? I do not have
41:30
Speaker 1: any kind of educated stand point as to to make
41:32
Speaker 1: a call on that one. In the real universe. I
41:35
Speaker 1: suspect I do not understand the physics and the maths
41:38
Speaker 1: enough to say. But to me it seems like I
41:40
Speaker 1: don't think there needs to be one. I mean, it
41:44
Speaker 1: comes down to a bit of an Okhm's Raither thing
41:46
Speaker 1: in that I appreciate that every quantum event kind of
41:49
Speaker 1: has sort of branching parles off from it, but kind
41:53
Speaker 1: of uncertainty aside. It seems to me that each you know,
41:58
Speaker 1: there is a resolution each time, and the resolution probably
42:02
Speaker 1: takes one path rather than constantly splitting into a multiplicity
42:06
Speaker 1: of of universes. Every kind of fraction of a second
42:12
Speaker 1: that the universes is universe is in existence. It's a
42:16
Speaker 1: very I mean from a human narrative point of view,
42:17
Speaker 1: it's a very attractive idea to have an effect. What
42:21
Speaker 1: would be an infinity if that makes any sense of
42:25
Speaker 1: university to choose from, because you could always find a
42:28
Speaker 1: universe where some thumb particular version of event has happened.
42:31
Speaker 1: And of course we're looking at events on a human level,
42:34
Speaker 1: So you know an event where this will went a
42:37
Speaker 1: different way or where that that happened, and you could
42:39
Speaker 1: maybe you could travel there and then maybe you would
42:41
Speaker 1: you get all these TV shows like Sliders or or
42:44
Speaker 1: so forth, where you're going through all these parallels where
42:46
Speaker 1: different things have happened, and that it's it's a it's
42:48
Speaker 1: a great basis for a story, but the kind of
42:54
Speaker 1: the scientist in me kind of shies away from the
42:56
Speaker 1: narrative convenience of its all. So then tell me that
43:00
Speaker 1: your prices in coming over the concept of this connection
43:03
Speaker 1: between intelligence and these multiple worlds, how one intelligence one
43:08
Speaker 1: of these worlds could control or even crack through into
43:12
Speaker 1: other universes. Um Well, weirdly enough, this is something I'm
43:17
Speaker 1: getting from Brian Cox, who I suspect will be horrified
43:20
Speaker 1: to be associated with anything I think like this. But
43:24
Speaker 1: this is obviously Broncox the scientist rather than Brincox the actor.
43:27
Speaker 1: So he was talking about he was specifically actually think
43:29
Speaker 1: talking about ghosts or something like that, but he was
43:31
Speaker 1: talking about the the the way that in a absurn
43:35
Speaker 1: they're kind of breaking things, the universe down to its
43:37
Speaker 1: most fundamental bits so that there isn't effectively there's no
43:41
Speaker 1: room left for ghosts. If ghosts existed and had any
43:45
Speaker 1: kind of effect on the actual universe, it should be
43:47
Speaker 1: detectable because there would be particles or energy or some
43:50
Speaker 1: kind of ghostly fingerprint on what was left there. And
43:54
Speaker 1: if you break things right down and there's nothing that's ghostly,
43:57
Speaker 1: then there are no ghosts. And that was he that's
43:59
Speaker 1: his kind of philosophy of that. And so it struck
44:02
Speaker 1: me that if I've got this set up where there
44:04
Speaker 1: are these multiple timelines existing kind of right next door
44:08
Speaker 1: to each other, and if, as the book posits, there
44:11
Speaker 1: are kind of weaknesses and points where they can intersect,
44:15
Speaker 1: then if you had a sufficiently advanced technology, you pick
44:18
Speaker 1: it up. And that's kind of what certainly were they
44:20
Speaker 1: one of the more the more important sort of timeline
44:23
Speaker 1: cultures in the book. They have a technology that's entirely
44:27
Speaker 1: based around these kind of junctures between the world because
44:31
Speaker 1: they were as the evolved, they became sensitive to them.
44:35
Speaker 1: And again it's another it's a bit like the way
44:37
Speaker 1: that there's if I've got this right, the biochemistry of
44:41
Speaker 1: photosynthesis kind of exploit quantum mechanics to a certain extent
44:47
Speaker 1: to work more efficiently. And if you had a if
44:50
Speaker 1: you had a world with ghosts, as you had a
44:52
Speaker 1: world with parallel world or anything like that that actually
44:55
Speaker 1: was there, things would evolve to exploit it. If you
45:00
Speaker 1: had ghosts, and ghosts could affect the world in anyway
45:03
Speaker 1: by by moving things on a table or wrapping on
45:05
Speaker 1: the walls. Ghosts are therefore a source of energy. You'd
45:08
Speaker 1: have a thing that fed on ghosts if there were ghosts,
45:12
Speaker 1: and just just the same way. You know, if in
45:13
Speaker 1: one of these worlds, because you've got these these parallels around,
45:17
Speaker 1: there's ascension. Species evolves that is sensitive to the places
45:22
Speaker 1: where these worlds interact, and then that becomes a place. Well,
45:24
Speaker 1: that's their energy freelance that they kind of build their
45:27
Speaker 1: society on, and that kind of thing. So if ghosts exist,
45:29
Speaker 1: or parallel worlds exist in our universe, you'd expect particle
45:32
Speaker 1: physicists to discover them first. But also I would I
45:36
Speaker 1: would expect evolution to have discovered them hundreds of millions
45:39
Speaker 1: of years ago. I would expect there to be some
45:42
Speaker 1: kind of single celled organism that flourished in the presence
45:46
Speaker 1: of ghosts because there's energy. Because you know, if ghosts
45:49
Speaker 1: can do a thing, make a noise, lower the temperature,
45:54
Speaker 1: rattlesome chains, that is energy in the system, and energy
45:57
Speaker 1: in the system is a lunch for something you would
45:59
Speaker 1: have extreme a file ghost bacteria, is what I'm saying.
46:03
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. Well, let me ask you one last question
46:06
Speaker 1: about your portrayal of scientists and physicists. I find that
46:10
Speaker 1: scientists and science fiction are often portrayed as dangerous, blindly
46:14
Speaker 1: following their search for the truth, oblivious to the consequence, etcetera. Now,
46:18
Speaker 1: in your novel, I really enjoyed that your physicist k
46:21
Speaker 1: exploring the multiverse has a bit more nuance to her
46:23
Speaker 1: approach though as a scientist. Thank you for that. Can
46:26
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit about how you saw
46:28
Speaker 1: her internal struggles between the desire to know and understand
46:31
Speaker 1: and also the desire to keep her world and her
46:33
Speaker 1: loved ones safe. Um, yeah, I mean it's I mean,
46:36
Speaker 1: I kind of done. As I just read their Children
46:38
Speaker 1: of Time Children of Time will know, I've kind of
46:41
Speaker 1: done the more traditional mad scientists with Avon occurred, although
46:47
Speaker 1: she's not the bad guy at any point, particularly, I mean,
46:51
Speaker 1: she's a bit wrapped up in our own desires and ambitions,
46:55
Speaker 1: but she's certainly not the villain of the piece. With Kay,
46:59
Speaker 1: she's one who has I mean, unlike unlike Evona, and
47:02
Speaker 1: I guess she's someone who's lived in the in our
47:04
Speaker 1: real world. She's from here and now this with a
47:08
Speaker 1: writing headache I'm probably not going to repeat, but yes,
47:10
Speaker 1: the large show of the book is set in the
47:11
Speaker 1: modern world in roughly the present day, although obviously written
47:15
Speaker 1: before all of this business. And she's someone who's lived
47:21
Speaker 1: her entire life with a theorem which has been completely
47:24
Speaker 1: impossible to prove because effectively she doesn't have the missing piece,
47:29
Speaker 1: which is the whole parallel world's business. And it's a
47:33
Speaker 1: theory that's based on some things I've kind of peripherally
47:37
Speaker 1: picked up about the idea of particular means of encrypting
47:42
Speaker 1: information and decrypting information and things like that, and and
47:46
Speaker 1: also kind of based on flat land, which is actually
47:50
Speaker 1: something I've used a couple of times in my writing,
47:52
Speaker 1: the idea that if you are able to kind of
47:57
Speaker 1: a cent or higher dimension in the purely sort of
47:59
Speaker 1: g M trical sense of dimensions, it will give you
48:02
Speaker 1: a colossal amount of freedom and influence on a lower
48:07
Speaker 1: dimension world because of the way you wouldn't be bound
48:09
Speaker 1: by it, and thence you could get in places and
48:12
Speaker 1: access places and look into places that would be completely
48:16
Speaker 1: hidden to someone restricted by the recommentional number of dimensions,
48:20
Speaker 1: and so that's kind of I've extended that to having
48:23
Speaker 1: a dimension which is the access of parallel world, and
48:26
Speaker 1: obviously there are Monday again, it's it's like the evolution.
48:29
Speaker 1: There are mundane applications to that, such as in this case.
48:33
Speaker 1: It completely makes a nonsense of any attempt at data
48:37
Speaker 1: security because you can always get to the data. They
48:40
Speaker 1: made for a lot of fun twists in the book. Wonderful. Well,
48:42
Speaker 1: thanks very much for answering all of our questions. I
48:45
Speaker 1: would love to ask you also about your future project.
48:48
Speaker 1: You mentioned you're working on space opera again. Is there
48:51
Speaker 1: anything you can tell us about that or is it
48:52
Speaker 1: all under wraps announcement of recently just kind of the
48:56
Speaker 1: main stick is it's set quite a long in the
48:58
Speaker 1: future where there is a humanity has a starfaring civilization.
49:03
Speaker 1: There are other species around with star faring civilizations at
49:05
Speaker 1: roughly the same level, which is again a narratively convenient conceit.
49:10
Speaker 1: And the mechanics of getting from star to star involved
49:15
Speaker 1: going through a kind of an hyper space called in space,
49:19
Speaker 1: and probably there are things that come out of on
49:21
Speaker 1: space and that are kind of natives there and some
49:25
Speaker 1: of the things are called architects. You know about the
49:26
Speaker 1: size of the moon. And what they do is find
49:29
Speaker 1: planets that people are other sentient life live on and
49:33
Speaker 1: turn them into avant garde sculptures, which is fatal for
49:37
Speaker 1: everyone living on it. And they've done this to Earth,
49:39
Speaker 1: which is what you see at the very beginning of
49:41
Speaker 1: the book, and they've done it to a number of
49:43
Speaker 1: viewer planets. And then they went away because we were
49:47
Speaker 1: able to contact them and say we're here, And as
49:50
Speaker 1: soon as they realized that people were actually there, they
49:52
Speaker 1: just went away. And then the rumors have started about
49:56
Speaker 1: a couple of generations later that actually they didn't go
49:58
Speaker 1: away all that much. And may you be very in
50:00
Speaker 1: fact back I see. Well, that sounds like a fascinating concept.
50:04
Speaker 1: I can't wait to read it. All right. Well, thanks
50:06
Speaker 1: again for coming out our program. It's very very kind
50:08
Speaker 1: of you to invite me. All Right, pretty cool interview.
50:12
Speaker 1: And what was your takeaway from talking to the Dream
50:15
Speaker 1: Well that was super fun for me because I've been
50:17
Speaker 1: a big fan of his work for a long time.
50:19
Speaker 1: I really liked a few things about the interview. I
50:21
Speaker 1: liked his acknowledgement that alien life is probably really really alien.
50:27
Speaker 1: You know, that it could be out there and it
50:29
Speaker 1: could just be like too hard to talk to. And
50:32
Speaker 1: that's sort of satisfying in one way, because we want
50:35
Speaker 1: to meet alien life because we hope to discover other
50:38
Speaker 1: ways of living. But then they'd be frustrating because it'd
50:41
Speaker 1: be really hard to figure out how to talk to them.
50:43
Speaker 1: So I thought that was really realistic. And I also
50:45
Speaker 1: liked that he, you know, respected the rules of our universe.
50:48
Speaker 1: He wants to write a book exploring how things could
50:52
Speaker 1: happen in our universe because he didn't feel confident inventing
50:56
Speaker 1: rules for another universe. I thought that was pretty cool,
50:59
Speaker 1: and he's done a great job of imagining, you know,
51:02
Speaker 1: other crazy things that could happen in our universe without
51:05
Speaker 1: changing any of the laws of physics. Right. Yeah, did
51:09
Speaker 1: he have any regrets about non including dragons. I didn't
51:13
Speaker 1: say there were no dragons. Spoiler alert, spoiler alert. And
51:19
Speaker 1: the other really interesting comment he made was that he
51:21
Speaker 1: doesn't think it's necessary for intelligence to arise, which I
51:25
Speaker 1: think is fascinating because in the book that you hear
51:27
Speaker 1: me talk about in the interview, he has all these
51:30
Speaker 1: parallel multiverses in which intelligence arises in all sorts of
51:33
Speaker 1: different creative ways, but he doesn't think it's necessary. He
51:36
Speaker 1: thinks we could have had Earth and life, a multicellular
51:39
Speaker 1: life and just all have it be kind of dumb. Yeah,
51:43
Speaker 1: it's totally possible, right, Like, if you wipe humans out
51:46
Speaker 1: right now, the Earth would keep going. The Earth would
51:48
Speaker 1: keep going. And it's not clear whether intelligent life is inevitable.
51:52
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of fascinating studies recently about how
51:54
Speaker 1: life began sort of quickly on Earth, but an intelligent
51:57
Speaker 1: life became sort of late. And that's the us that
52:00
Speaker 1: life might be inevitable, but intelligent life might be rare.
52:03
Speaker 1: But then again, you know we're basing that on just
52:06
Speaker 1: one example, which is why it's so much fun to
52:08
Speaker 1: think about all the other possibilities and all the other
52:11
Speaker 1: examples that live in Adrian Sharkovsky's multiverse, and actual intelligence
52:16
Speaker 1: in an intelligent species might be even rarer yet to be.
52:21
Speaker 1: Maybe we can tap into the multiverse podcast network and
52:24
Speaker 1: listen to that dinosaur podcast for better jokes. Maybe we'll
52:27
Speaker 1: get better jokes from them. That's where all our best
52:31
Speaker 1: jokes come from. I see you've been talking to dinosaur
52:34
Speaker 1: Daniel having you, I'm plagiarizing all of his good ideas.
52:36
Speaker 1: When you do work together. How do you high five?
52:39
Speaker 1: That's a sore point. Okay, his little arms don't reach
52:42
Speaker 1: very high, so I try not to make fun of it.
52:44
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks for joining us. I hope that
52:46
Speaker 1: you enjoyed then and got you to think about all
52:48
Speaker 1: the different ways that our universe could have played out
52:51
Speaker 1: and how special it is that we're here. And if
52:54
Speaker 1: you have a science fiction book that you'd like us
52:56
Speaker 1: to break down and interview the author, please send us
52:58
Speaker 1: a suggestion to questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
53:02
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, See you next time. Thanks for listening,
53:13
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained the universe is
53:15
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from
53:19
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
53:23
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.