Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / The SF Universe of Blake Crouch's "Recursion"

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The SF Universe of Blake Crouch's "Recursion" · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Daniel and Jorge from Daniel and Jorge
0:02
Speaker 1: Explained the Universe. We interrupt this podcast for a special announcement.
0:07
Speaker 1: This Friday March We're having our first ever Daniel and
0:11
Speaker 1: Jorge Explained the Universe live stream event. So join us
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0:17
Speaker 1: questions from listeners like you. You can submit your questions
0:20
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0:22
Speaker 1: time at questions at Daniel and jorghead dot com. To
0:26
Speaker 1: tune in, just go to YouTube dot com slash PhD
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Speaker 1: Comics this Friday March at ten am Pacific. That's one
0:33
Speaker 1: pm Eastern, six pm Europe. That's two am in Tokyo
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Speaker 1: and four am in Australia. What time it's out of Mars, Daniel?
0:40
Speaker 1: You know, in case aliens want to tune in? Do
0:42
Speaker 1: you think aliens want to ask us questions? Um? May not,
0:47
Speaker 1: you may they might have engineering questions. You know, well
0:50
Speaker 1: I got questions for them. So tune in this Friday,
0:53
Speaker 1: March twenty seven at ten am Pacific at YouTube dot
0:56
Speaker 1: com slash PhD Comics and bring your questions about the universe. Hey, Daniel,
1:11
Speaker 1: what's your fondest memory? I have a lot of great
1:14
Speaker 1: memories of finishing a wonderful book. Oh yeah, that's your
1:18
Speaker 1: happy place, sitting down reading a sci fi novel. I
1:21
Speaker 1: love reading a science fiction novel and being totally confused,
1:24
Speaker 1: like what's going on? How does this make sense? And
1:26
Speaker 1: then coming to the end of it and getting some
1:29
Speaker 1: incredible idea to the author had to pull it all
1:31
Speaker 1: together and deliver it to the reader. That's wonderful. Do
1:34
Speaker 1: you remember the bad science fiction novels? Do you have
1:37
Speaker 1: less than fond memories of sci fi novels. I don't
1:41
Speaker 1: remember finishing bad science fiction novels, because I usually don't.
1:45
Speaker 1: You often tossed them across the room and say, I'm
1:47
Speaker 1: not reading that anymore. Really, you're not a completest. I
1:51
Speaker 1: do not finish every novel I start. Now if I
1:53
Speaker 1: get too fed up because the story doesn't make sense,
1:55
Speaker 1: I'm just done with it. Well, do you ever wish
1:57
Speaker 1: you could maybe go back in time, or at least
2:00
Speaker 1: go back in your memories and wish that you hadn't
2:03
Speaker 1: even started the book? I do. In fact, there was
2:05
Speaker 1: one set of novels as a kid that I deliberately
2:08
Speaker 1: never read the last page of because I didn't want
2:10
Speaker 1: to finish it. I didn't want to be done with
2:12
Speaker 1: it and have it in my past. These days, I
2:15
Speaker 1: love seeing my kids read some of those books because
2:17
Speaker 1: it's sort of like getting to re experience them. That's right.
2:20
Speaker 1: Kids are sort of a replay button. Yeah, except they're
2:22
Speaker 1: guaranteed just remake all of our mistakes. Well, there might
2:26
Speaker 1: be a universe, Daniel where that is possible. Hi. I'm
2:46
Speaker 1: or hammy cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi.
2:49
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and avid science fiction reader,
2:53
Speaker 1: and apparently I take science fiction personally. I've seen you
2:56
Speaker 1: get worked up about interesting novels you read, and movels
2:59
Speaker 1: D like less. Yeah, well, you know, a good work
3:01
Speaker 1: of art will make people get worked up, It'll evoke
3:04
Speaker 1: reactions in them, it will make them think. And to me,
3:07
Speaker 1: the wonderful thing about science fiction is that when it
3:09
Speaker 1: makes me think about another science fiction universe and the
3:12
Speaker 1: laws of physics there, the laws of physics here, How
3:14
Speaker 1: does it all fit together? Well? I wonder if you're
3:16
Speaker 1: sort of a science fiction writer's worst nightmare. You know,
3:19
Speaker 1: a particle physicists trained physicist read trying to make sense
3:23
Speaker 1: of a science fiction work. If it wasn't fiction, new
3:26
Speaker 1: just be called the science book probably, And fortunately for
3:29
Speaker 1: those authors, there are not a lot of us particle
3:31
Speaker 1: physicists around, so we don't sway the market very much. Well,
3:35
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
3:38
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio, a podcast in which
3:41
Speaker 1: we usually explore the real universe and take you on
3:43
Speaker 1: a tour of everything that's out there that's incredible, that's amazing,
3:47
Speaker 1: peel back a layer of reality to show you how
3:50
Speaker 1: things actually work. That's right. Does this part of a
3:52
Speaker 1: genre called science reality or science nonfiction? Is that a
3:57
Speaker 1: redundant word, reality nonfiction. It's podcast in which we do
4:01
Speaker 1: try to sort of explore the universe and take you
4:03
Speaker 1: to all the furthest reaches of the cosmos and all
4:06
Speaker 1: the smallest places in uh, this place that we call home.
4:09
Speaker 1: That's right, because we think that the intellectual questions of
4:12
Speaker 1: the universe are questions for everybody. We think everybody wants
4:16
Speaker 1: to know how the universe got started and what its
4:18
Speaker 1: fate will be, in what it's made out of. So
4:21
Speaker 1: normally our job is to take you there and explain
4:24
Speaker 1: it to you. In a way that we hope educates
4:26
Speaker 1: and entertains. Yeah, so it's a big universe, and actually
4:29
Speaker 1: nobody really knows if this is the only universe or
4:31
Speaker 1: if there are other universes out there. But there are
4:34
Speaker 1: sort of people in this universe that create whole universes,
4:37
Speaker 1: not just in their heads but also on the page.
4:40
Speaker 1: And we are big fans of people who do this
4:42
Speaker 1: sort of mental exploration, who wonder what kind of things
4:45
Speaker 1: could happen in this universe, what other laws of physics
4:48
Speaker 1: might there be. And I've long thought that science fiction
4:51
Speaker 1: authors are sort of on the vanguard of intellectual exploration.
4:55
Speaker 1: They're the ones out there wondering what we could build
4:57
Speaker 1: in our universe and how the universe might be there front.
5:00
Speaker 1: Really you put them at a little higher than scientists.
5:03
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely. You got experimentalists trying to discover stuff,
5:06
Speaker 1: theorists trying to think about what experimentalists should discover, and
5:10
Speaker 1: then science fiction authors thinking about the things that theorists
5:13
Speaker 1: should be thinking about. I like Asimov to say Needson
5:17
Speaker 1: to Daniel Whitson, Well, that's an illustrious group, but sure,
5:21
Speaker 1: I'll take it now. I think that science fiction authors,
5:23
Speaker 1: you know, they're not as constrained by reality like particle
5:26
Speaker 1: theorists are. They just sort of think broadly and they
5:29
Speaker 1: get to consider their unchained They get to consider what
5:31
Speaker 1: other universes could look like and how things might work.
5:34
Speaker 1: And not just that. They also write technology fiction. You know,
5:37
Speaker 1: they think, in our universe, could we do this, could
5:40
Speaker 1: we have tricorders, could we build teleporters? Could we travel
5:44
Speaker 1: faster than light? It's a it's fascinating and important work.
5:47
Speaker 1: They think of a stuff and it makes physicists and
5:50
Speaker 1: it tickles the imagination of scientists and maybe that it's
5:53
Speaker 1: burs ideas about what to explore or what kinds of
5:55
Speaker 1: questions to ask right about this universe. Yeah, and it
5:59
Speaker 1: gives real sciences, real ideas, and there are real examples
6:01
Speaker 1: of people reading something in science fiction and then trying
6:04
Speaker 1: to make it real. But there's a challenge there. You know,
6:07
Speaker 1: when you are writing in another universe, you don't just
6:09
Speaker 1: get to follow the rules of the universe. You know,
6:11
Speaker 1: you have to make up the rules and then tell
6:14
Speaker 1: a story in that universe. So you're sort of playing
6:17
Speaker 1: both sides of the equation. And I think with that
6:20
Speaker 1: comes some extra responsibility. Yeah, with great pros comes great responsibility,
6:25
Speaker 1: isn't that what Spider Man said? Yeah, well, they are
6:28
Speaker 1: sort of gods of that universe. You know, they get
6:30
Speaker 1: to decide what the rules are and then they get
6:33
Speaker 1: to tell the story you know, that follows those rules. Well,
6:36
Speaker 1: we thought it would be interesting for our listeners to
6:39
Speaker 1: talk to some sci fi authors here on the podcast,
6:42
Speaker 1: and so we we we have this series now where
6:45
Speaker 1: we talked to science fiction authors who are doing really
6:49
Speaker 1: great and interesting work out there right now, that's right,
6:51
Speaker 1: And we don't just talk to them about their book.
6:53
Speaker 1: We are interested in how did they build that universe?
6:56
Speaker 1: What laws of physics happen in their universe, and why
6:59
Speaker 1: did they make those choices? Or if they are living
7:02
Speaker 1: in our universe, do they think that the technology that
7:05
Speaker 1: they're creating is real, is something that could actually happen. Yeah,
7:08
Speaker 1: and so a little bit recently, we had an episode
7:11
Speaker 1: where we talked Daniel talked to me and like you,
7:13
Speaker 1: and we talked about the science in her science fiction book.
7:16
Speaker 1: And so if you've heard of and like you and
7:18
Speaker 1: are interested in her book, an Selary Justice, check it
7:21
Speaker 1: out in our archive. But today we're talking to an
7:23
Speaker 1: author that we've mentioned in this podcast before and that
7:27
Speaker 1: Daniel has thrown a little shade at Maybe that's right.
7:30
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but
7:33
Speaker 1: somehow Blake Crouch's book Dark Matter came up and I
7:36
Speaker 1: made a not necessarily positive comment about the science in
7:40
Speaker 1: that book. Yeah, because you were saying that the title
7:44
Speaker 1: was called dark matter, but it didn't feature dark matter
7:47
Speaker 1: in it. I kept waiting, where is the dark matter?
7:50
Speaker 1: I kept waiting for it to show up. I think
7:52
Speaker 1: it's ironic that a physicist would complain about the naming
7:55
Speaker 1: of something not being accurate. But I digress. I'm hunting
7:59
Speaker 1: for dark matter in real life, and so then I'm
8:01
Speaker 1: reading a book about dark matter, and I'm like waiting,
8:03
Speaker 1: I'm looking for the dark matter, and so I'm left unsatisfied.
8:06
Speaker 1: To the end, I still have not found dark matter.
8:09
Speaker 1: And it is dark matter? Actually dark Daniel? Is it really, Diana?
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Speaker 1: For sure? It doesn't admit anything. We are not aware
8:15
Speaker 1: of any emissions from dark matter, either the book or
8:18
Speaker 1: the actual kind of Does it matter, actually, Daniel, it
8:21
Speaker 1: does matter. It is matter, and it does matter, And
8:24
Speaker 1: I think it also matters to get the science right
8:27
Speaker 1: in your book. I think go ahead and create a universe.
8:30
Speaker 1: That's fine, but make sure the rules makes sense. Make
8:32
Speaker 1: sure you follow those rules, or if you live in
8:35
Speaker 1: our universe, get the rules right, you know, don't do
8:38
Speaker 1: science miscommunication. Well may it sort of label as science fiction.
8:41
Speaker 1: So I don't think anyone sort of reads it and
8:43
Speaker 1: thinks that it's necessarily real. A lot of people just
8:46
Speaker 1: read it because it's fun and it's interesting to sort
8:49
Speaker 1: of bend the rules, isn't it. Yeah, absolutely, And you're
8:51
Speaker 1: free to create whatever universe you like and make up
8:53
Speaker 1: whatever rules. But I think a story is only good
8:56
Speaker 1: if you're following the rules. You know, if you're telling
8:58
Speaker 1: a detective story and you're looking at the clues and
9:01
Speaker 1: wondering who could have murdered Mr White in the library
9:03
Speaker 1: or whatever, then you want there to be rules. Otherwise
9:06
Speaker 1: you have no chance of figuring it out. And if
9:08
Speaker 1: it comes in the end it was it was a
9:09
Speaker 1: magic genie that appeared and disappeared, and so all the
9:12
Speaker 1: clues are irrelevant. That's not really a very satisfying story.
9:15
Speaker 1: So I like it when it follows the rules. Anyway,
9:18
Speaker 1: said to be on the program, we'll be talking to
9:20
Speaker 1: Blake Crouch and talking about the science in his book
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Speaker 1: called Recursion, and so to the on the program, we'll
9:25
Speaker 1: be covering the science fiction universe of Blake Crouch's Recursion.
9:34
Speaker 1: So there's a book you read recently, Daniel, I did. Yeah.
9:37
Speaker 1: So after I mentioned Blake Crouch on air and invited
9:40
Speaker 1: him to come on the program and defend his universe,
9:43
Speaker 1: we reached down to Blake and said, hey, would you
9:46
Speaker 1: come on the podcast and talk about the science fiction universes.
9:49
Speaker 1: And it turns out he has a more recent book,
9:51
Speaker 1: um than Dark Matter. It's called Recursion, and so I
9:54
Speaker 1: read it and talked to him about it. Was he
9:56
Speaker 1: aware that you're sort of a peaky physicist's flooring, agreed
10:00
Speaker 1: to talk talk with us on air. I thought about
10:03
Speaker 1: this carefully. Um. I didn't want to antagonize him, or
10:06
Speaker 1: attack him or insult him. So I made sure that
10:08
Speaker 1: he knew that I was not going to be throwing
10:10
Speaker 1: him softball questions about what's it like to be a
10:13
Speaker 1: famous writer, but instead that I was going to be
10:15
Speaker 1: probing him kind of deeply about the science of his universe. Oh,
10:19
Speaker 1: I see, so you gave him advance the questions kind
10:22
Speaker 1: of or gave him a flavor for the questions. Yeah,
10:24
Speaker 1: I didn't tell him the questions in advance because I
10:26
Speaker 1: wanted his sort of spontaneous reactions and thoughts to them.
10:29
Speaker 1: But I did let him know that we would be
10:30
Speaker 1: going a little bit deeper in the physics than maybe
10:33
Speaker 1: his typical interview. Well, if you're interested, please check it out.
10:36
Speaker 1: And then the name again is Blake Crouch and the
10:38
Speaker 1: book is called Recursion, And so Daniel said, let's step
10:42
Speaker 1: me through before we listen to the interview about what
10:44
Speaker 1: this book is about and what is the basic idea
10:46
Speaker 1: of it. So Recursion is a really fun book to read.
10:49
Speaker 1: It's sort of near future fiction. It takes place in
10:52
Speaker 1: the universe you will find familiar. It's not some kind
10:55
Speaker 1: of thing that takes place in a galaxy far far
10:57
Speaker 1: away with crazy stuff happening. And a book starts out
11:00
Speaker 1: where a scientist is working on memory. She's trying to
11:04
Speaker 1: essentially find a technological solution to Alzheimer's. The idea is,
11:09
Speaker 1: build some device that can map your brain and like
11:12
Speaker 1: record your memories digitally somehow and then later reinject them.
11:17
Speaker 1: Like let's say you and I have lunch and we
11:19
Speaker 1: had a great time. Then you get Alzheimer's and you
11:22
Speaker 1: forget it, and then later you want to remember that
11:24
Speaker 1: lunch because it was so good, but it's faded from
11:26
Speaker 1: your memory. Then in this book, they've developed machine that
11:28
Speaker 1: will let you do that. You sit in a special chair,
11:31
Speaker 1: it reimplants those memories and you can re experience them. Wait,
11:34
Speaker 1: it reads your memories first, or do you have to
11:36
Speaker 1: remember it and while you're remembering it sort of reads
11:39
Speaker 1: those memories. Yeah, you call it up in your mind
11:42
Speaker 1: and while you're remembering it, it stores it, and then
11:45
Speaker 1: later you can come back and it will reinsert them.
11:47
Speaker 1: And as I was reading this, I was thinking, Wow,
11:50
Speaker 1: this is technically pretty Harry. I mean, we don't understand
11:52
Speaker 1: the brain like at all. To interpret what's going on
11:56
Speaker 1: inside of the brain with neurons firing and translate that
11:59
Speaker 1: into digital code that you can then re upload, that
12:01
Speaker 1: seemed pretty crazy to me. But you know, suspension of disbelief,
12:05
Speaker 1: assume there's some technology they can do that. And he
12:07
Speaker 1: did a good job of investigating like what kind of
12:10
Speaker 1: technology you would need in order to probe the brain
12:13
Speaker 1: and reimplant this stuff using like a scanner, and he
12:16
Speaker 1: has like you know, magnets and all sorts of stuff
12:18
Speaker 1: you would need to focus the energy and induce these spikes.
12:21
Speaker 1: That is sort of how they do these neural prosthetics.
12:24
Speaker 1: I don't know if he knows, but I worked at
12:26
Speaker 1: caltag on a new prosthetics lab, and that is sort
12:29
Speaker 1: of how how they do it. They just kind of
12:30
Speaker 1: record you moving your arm, for example, or or looking
12:34
Speaker 1: sideways in different directions, and they just sort of record
12:37
Speaker 1: the raw data and then you know, you don't have
12:39
Speaker 1: to make sense of it, but you just sort of
12:41
Speaker 1: take it in as raw and then you interpret that
12:44
Speaker 1: and say that means right, that means left. That relies
12:46
Speaker 1: on like understanding which part of the brain to record,
12:49
Speaker 1: Like you could record the entire brain, and but then
12:52
Speaker 1: you don't want to replay the entire brain. You want
12:54
Speaker 1: to record the entire brain and somehow pull out the
12:56
Speaker 1: memory part of it and then reinject just that part it,
13:00
Speaker 1: so that part. I don't really know if we could,
13:02
Speaker 1: you know, interpret some random person's brain patterns to know
13:06
Speaker 1: which part was the memory and which part was you know,
13:08
Speaker 1: them breathing, and which part was them controlling other parts
13:11
Speaker 1: of their body. Isn't the brain pretty separated, like there
13:13
Speaker 1: are memory parts, and there are breathing parts, So I
13:16
Speaker 1: mean it's I'm just saying it's it doesn't seem technically impossible. No,
13:20
Speaker 1: not technically impossible, like you know, maybe stretching the ability
13:23
Speaker 1: of what we could do. But you could imagine people
13:25
Speaker 1: could figure that out. So that's cool, that's clever. So
13:28
Speaker 1: the idea is you sit in a chamber and it
13:30
Speaker 1: you think of it a memory, and it records it. Yes,
13:33
Speaker 1: But then the book takes a big twist. And this
13:36
Speaker 1: is a bit of a spoiler, but the book has
13:38
Speaker 1: been out for a while, so I don't feel bad
13:39
Speaker 1: spoiling it. But it turns out that when you reinsert
13:42
Speaker 1: the memory, you go back and you say, oh, I
13:44
Speaker 1: want to re experience that memory of having lunch with Daniel.
13:48
Speaker 1: You're sit in a chair, you turn it on. You
13:50
Speaker 1: don't just remember it. It actually takes you back to
13:54
Speaker 1: those events. It like transforms the universe somehow. So you
13:58
Speaker 1: are back at that lunch and so I need to
14:01
Speaker 1: sit back down in the same chair. It flashes and
14:03
Speaker 1: then and suddenly I'm transported to that time. Yes, transported,
14:07
Speaker 1: teleported timeported memory ported something ported back into that memory.
14:11
Speaker 1: That memory becomes real again. And not like virtual reality.
14:15
Speaker 1: I'm experiencing it, but I'm not really there, but like
14:18
Speaker 1: you are really there, you can order something different and
14:21
Speaker 1: have a different future playout. Okay, so uh, I'm transported
14:25
Speaker 1: through this memory machine to that time, and i still
14:28
Speaker 1: have my memories that I've gained since. Like I'm wiser
14:32
Speaker 1: and I'm replaying the moment, and I can do different things.
14:36
Speaker 1: I can order something different for lunch. That's right, you
14:38
Speaker 1: can decide, you know what. That didn't work out so well,
14:40
Speaker 1: I had stomach cramps all afternoon, so I'm not going
14:42
Speaker 1: to get the you know, Beef Tartar and the world
14:45
Speaker 1: you left behind is sort of like, well, it's not gone.
14:48
Speaker 1: It's weird because say you go back in time ten
14:51
Speaker 1: years in his novel, you then have ten years to
14:54
Speaker 1: live your life and do things differently. After ten years
14:57
Speaker 1: have passed, when you come back to the moment that
14:59
Speaker 1: you jumped from, then everybody else in that new universe,
15:03
Speaker 1: that new sort of memory line that you're now in,
15:06
Speaker 1: gets the memories from the old timeline and they suddenly
15:09
Speaker 1: all remember them. Suddenly everyone remembers your new choices. Everybody
15:13
Speaker 1: in the new timeline suddenly remembers all the old stuff
15:16
Speaker 1: that they never actually experienced. Okay, you kind of just
15:18
Speaker 1: lost me. Yeah, it's it's it gets complicated, so let's
15:22
Speaker 1: keep let's go back for our lunch. So I went
15:24
Speaker 1: back to lunch. I order something different, and then I
15:27
Speaker 1: hung out in my office and not that I have
15:29
Speaker 1: an office, but hu I hung out, and then it
15:31
Speaker 1: was time for we reached the time where I sat
15:34
Speaker 1: down on the machine originally. So then what happens. So
15:37
Speaker 1: let's think about it from my point of view. I'm
15:39
Speaker 1: having lunch with you in the new timeline. I'm not
15:42
Speaker 1: aware that you've jumped back. It's just Daniel having lunch
15:45
Speaker 1: with Jorge, and you're like, oh, I'm glad you didn't
15:47
Speaker 1: eat my banana this time. Well, I don't know that
15:50
Speaker 1: there is any other time. I'm new Daniel. Right, I'm Daniel,
15:52
Speaker 1: and he's just glad I didn't eat your banana. No,
15:54
Speaker 1: so new Daniel. It just lives his life. But then
15:57
Speaker 1: we get to later that afternoon, the time when in
15:59
Speaker 1: the original timeline you jumped back into the chair, and
16:03
Speaker 1: when we crossed that moment, I get old original Daniels memories.
16:07
Speaker 1: So I'm new Daniel in the new timeline. But then
16:09
Speaker 1: I remember all this stuff which sort of like never
16:12
Speaker 1: happened to me, but happened to a different Daniel. And
16:15
Speaker 1: so suddenly you have two memories. Yes, you remember having
16:18
Speaker 1: lunch with me one where I took your banana, and
16:20
Speaker 1: you remember having lunch where I didn't take your banana.
16:23
Speaker 1: That's right. How can I have two memories? It's confusing.
16:26
Speaker 1: And one of the themes of the book is sort
16:29
Speaker 1: of like memory makes you who you are, and if
16:32
Speaker 1: you don't have your memory, or if your memory is
16:34
Speaker 1: corrupted or manipulatable, then who are you really? And that's
16:37
Speaker 1: a lot of the theme. And you know, there's elements
16:40
Speaker 1: where characters go back in time and redo things so
16:43
Speaker 1: they avoid tragedies or you know, don't make mistakes they
16:46
Speaker 1: made the first time around, and it changes their lives.
16:49
Speaker 1: And you know, it has all ripple all sorts of
16:51
Speaker 1: ripples downstream and changes things. And it gets very complicated
16:55
Speaker 1: because then there's multiple chairs and different people are jumping
16:58
Speaker 1: back and forth and try to erase other people's memories
17:01
Speaker 1: of the chair because they want to control the chair.
17:04
Speaker 1: And it got pretty tangled pretty quickly. I have a
17:07
Speaker 1: sheet of notes I kept trying to map the timeline
17:10
Speaker 1: of this thing. It was crazy. Wow, it made you
17:13
Speaker 1: you have to take notes. Oh yeah, I had to
17:15
Speaker 1: take notes because I want to know, like, wait, is
17:17
Speaker 1: this right? Is he just making this up? Like I
17:20
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure we were following the rules. For me,
17:22
Speaker 1: it's important, Like he set up some rules for this universe.
17:25
Speaker 1: Whether the physics of it makes any sense at all,
17:27
Speaker 1: we'll talk about it in a minute, But he set
17:29
Speaker 1: up some rules from this universe, and I want to
17:31
Speaker 1: know that the characters are constrained by those rules. You know,
17:33
Speaker 1: like you won't actually know this at this moment, so
17:36
Speaker 1: you don't know to jump back, or you can't erase
17:39
Speaker 1: this other purpose person's memory of the chair because they
17:41
Speaker 1: didn't know it yet or something. You know. You stok
17:43
Speaker 1: a sci fi writer's nightmare to a new level, Daniel.
17:46
Speaker 1: Now now they're all imagining physicists not just reading their books,
17:49
Speaker 1: but like reading it and taking notes and taking us
17:52
Speaker 1: or I am like the perfect reader drawing diagram. Yes,
17:56
Speaker 1: this guy spent more than a year of his life
17:58
Speaker 1: imagining this universe, taking characters through it really carefully, you know,
18:02
Speaker 1: and I'm sure he prefers to people take his work seriously.
18:05
Speaker 1: They don't just sort of like skim and go. I
18:06
Speaker 1: don't really understand what's happening, but whatever, I'm sure it's fine.
18:09
Speaker 1: You know, he probably wants people to deeply engage with it. No,
18:14
Speaker 1: maybe that's so sure. But now now it seems like
18:17
Speaker 1: a question, Daniel. Let's get a little bit more into
18:21
Speaker 1: the science in whether or not it makes sense, and
18:24
Speaker 1: then we'll play the interview with Blake Crouch. But first
18:26
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. We're talking about Blake Crouch's
18:42
Speaker 1: book Recursion, in which you can sort of store your memories.
18:45
Speaker 1: When you replay them, you're reliving them. Yeah, you are
18:48
Speaker 1: really there again. It's like time travel, but memory travel.
18:52
Speaker 1: Sort of at first class, it sort of sounds like
18:55
Speaker 1: we just jumped into fantasy. Um. But you know, maybe
18:59
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, you know, maybe there's something about that, like
19:02
Speaker 1: what would make this possible? Like what if what if
19:04
Speaker 1: we're all just in a simulation, Daniel, And so you know,
19:07
Speaker 1: when you remember something, you're somehow skipping the software code
19:12
Speaker 1: that we're you know, all based on, and somehow you
19:16
Speaker 1: are sort of reliving it. Going into your memories is
19:18
Speaker 1: like hacking the source code of the universe. Yeah, you somehow,
19:21
Speaker 1: like you know, you cause some kind of oh recursion,
19:23
Speaker 1: there you go, and it somehow breaks the code and
19:26
Speaker 1: and somehow the code is not meant meant to handle that.
19:29
Speaker 1: I guess that requires like some flaw in the coding
19:31
Speaker 1: of the universe. If the simulated universe is correctly coded
19:34
Speaker 1: and accurately coded or well written, you shouldn't be able
19:37
Speaker 1: to break out of it, shouldn't be able to break
19:39
Speaker 1: those rules. That's sort of like a breaking of those rules, right,
19:42
Speaker 1: But you're assuming it's well coded, you assuming it's well coded. Yeah,
19:45
Speaker 1: I mean the universe side is a heck. Yeah, And
19:49
Speaker 1: you know, that's an interesting, plausible idea, but it requires
19:52
Speaker 1: basically breaking the rules of that universe, or revealing that
19:55
Speaker 1: the universe is larger one with different rules. I guess
19:58
Speaker 1: that wasn't in the book. He didn't say that the
20:00
Speaker 1: world was a simulation. It wasn't in the book. Also,
20:03
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that would work because you have multiple
20:04
Speaker 1: people with multiple memories, and each of them can change
20:07
Speaker 1: the universe, and so it's more of a branching, right,
20:10
Speaker 1: It's not that you can't have one consistent picture of
20:12
Speaker 1: the universe. Anymore when multiple people can use their experiences
20:16
Speaker 1: to change the external reality. What if it's something like
20:19
Speaker 1: the multiverse, you know, because in an infinite multiverse, there
20:22
Speaker 1: are an infinite number of universes, and so there there
20:25
Speaker 1: is a universe in which I sort of have the
20:27
Speaker 1: memories of having gone back and you have the memories
20:30
Speaker 1: of me having gone back. Yeah, that's plausible. There could
20:33
Speaker 1: be a multiverse, of course, we don't know, and it
20:35
Speaker 1: could be that multiverse contains other things that might have
20:39
Speaker 1: happened in our universe. And so it's not that you're
20:42
Speaker 1: actually going back to your memory, but you're like jumping
20:45
Speaker 1: to another version of the universe that's a little bit different,
20:48
Speaker 1: and that that's plausible. But you know, then the question
20:51
Speaker 1: is like, well, how you getting there? And how is
20:52
Speaker 1: it that remembering that somehow gets you to the right
20:56
Speaker 1: location there? This is you need a connection somehow between
20:59
Speaker 1: what's happening in your brain and what's happening in the
21:02
Speaker 1: external reality. You know, normally, just thinking about something doesn't
21:06
Speaker 1: change what's happening out there. Right, I can think there's
21:09
Speaker 1: ice cream on my counter, I can really imagine. It
21:12
Speaker 1: doesn't make ice cream appear on my counter at least
21:15
Speaker 1: I've tried it a bunch of times and it's never worked. Hey,
21:17
Speaker 1: you try it every day, all right. Well, it sounds
21:21
Speaker 1: like a pretty interesting premise for a book, and you know,
21:24
Speaker 1: just to kind of get you to think about memories,
21:27
Speaker 1: and you know, I guess it's sort of a mix
21:29
Speaker 1: of like a time travel story where you sort of
21:31
Speaker 1: wonder what you would do differently and how you can
21:33
Speaker 1: hack that and affect other people. But it maybe also
21:36
Speaker 1: has this layer of like thinking about your memories and
21:38
Speaker 1: what makes you you, and you know what if someone
21:41
Speaker 1: change your memory? Right? Yeah, And there's a lot of
21:43
Speaker 1: nice things to say about this book, like it's really
21:46
Speaker 1: fun to read, it's exhilarating. Blake Craft is really good
21:49
Speaker 1: at writing fast paced, exciting stuff like I'm turning the pages,
21:52
Speaker 1: I want to know what happens next, and there's not
21:54
Speaker 1: a slow moment like this stuff happening. And I definitely
21:56
Speaker 1: finished this book that was not going to be a
21:58
Speaker 1: problem for me. And there and you're right, he's created
22:01
Speaker 1: a universe where there are new rules and those tell
22:04
Speaker 1: you different things about the characters. Right, what is it
22:07
Speaker 1: like to have this option? Would you rather go back
22:09
Speaker 1: and relive this stuff or just make the same mistakes.
22:11
Speaker 1: Lots of really fascinating questions to answer there, So that
22:14
Speaker 1: was really fun. But you know, I feel like there's
22:16
Speaker 1: there's a layer of the science that would could have been,
22:20
Speaker 1: you know, handled a little bit more deeply. Like, you know,
22:23
Speaker 1: this question of can you really control your external reality
22:26
Speaker 1: from your memories bothered me a little bit because you know,
22:29
Speaker 1: if we all believe in one external reality, how do
22:32
Speaker 1: we each individually control it? Right? There's a lot of
22:34
Speaker 1: conflicts there, like can I change the reality but you
22:37
Speaker 1: can also change the reality? Like how many realities are there?
22:40
Speaker 1: Are we jumping into different multiverses or the same one?
22:43
Speaker 1: That whole bit was kind of confusing to me. There's
22:45
Speaker 1: sort of the question of whether we are all in
22:47
Speaker 1: the same reality, right, Well, there is sort of a
22:49
Speaker 1: deep philosophical question like I know that I'm in my
22:52
Speaker 1: reality and I don't know if the external reality exists
22:54
Speaker 1: at all. But from that point of view, you're all
22:57
Speaker 1: just in my reality. And there's no way that if
22:59
Speaker 1: you sit in a chair should somehow change where I
23:02
Speaker 1: am and what I know and and what I am
23:05
Speaker 1: what my experiences are. Right you sitting in a chair
23:07
Speaker 1: and frying your brain in this machine shouldn't change the
23:09
Speaker 1: universe for me, but in this book it sort of does.
23:12
Speaker 1: I see. So it's more of a cause and effect
23:14
Speaker 1: you were, you were thrown up by the cause and
23:17
Speaker 1: effect that he that the rules in his universe seemed
23:20
Speaker 1: to follow. Yeah, and it wasn't sure that it was
23:23
Speaker 1: always that it always made sense, you know, like this
23:25
Speaker 1: bit where the memories from the old universe can somehow
23:28
Speaker 1: get transported into the new universe at a certain moment um.
23:32
Speaker 1: But you know, that's fine. He made up some rules,
23:34
Speaker 1: and I think he really did a good job of
23:36
Speaker 1: trying to follow them and telling the stories that came
23:38
Speaker 1: from that. All right, Well cool, Well you actually got
23:41
Speaker 1: the chance to talk to Blake. You interviewed him over
23:43
Speaker 1: the phone, right or over Skype? Yeah, I talked to
23:45
Speaker 1: him over Skype and we had a really fun conversation
23:48
Speaker 1: about the science of his universe and how he thought
23:50
Speaker 1: about it and uh, and also about technical consulting with
23:54
Speaker 1: a physicist that he talked to. Oh. Interesting, Yeah, he
23:56
Speaker 1: talked to Cliff Johnson, who we both know. Yeah, and
23:59
Speaker 1: you see, Yeah, so we're going to play the interview
24:02
Speaker 1: with you now, and so Daniel. What can we expect
24:04
Speaker 1: from the interview? Was it a fun? It was a
24:06
Speaker 1: lot of fun, and he was a great sport answering
24:09
Speaker 1: you know, what you might consider grumpy questions about physics
24:13
Speaker 1: from basically nobody. And you know, for those of you
24:16
Speaker 1: who don't know, Blake Crouch is not just some random guys.
24:18
Speaker 1: A New York Times bestselling author and so he doesn't
24:21
Speaker 1: have to take his time and answer people's questions about
24:24
Speaker 1: his work, but he was nice enough to do so.
24:26
Speaker 1: So thank you, Blake very much for taking your time
24:28
Speaker 1: to talk to me. Yeah, thank you. And so here's
24:30
Speaker 1: the interview with Blake Crouch. Hello Blake, and welcome to
24:34
Speaker 1: the program. Would you introduce yourself to our audience. I'm
24:38
Speaker 1: Blake Crouch, a novelist and screenwriter. I wrote the trilogy
24:44
Speaker 1: Wayward Pines and more recently Dark Matter and Recursion. Well,
24:48
Speaker 1: thanks again for coming on the program. I've been looking
24:51
Speaker 1: forward to talking to you. But before we dig into
24:53
Speaker 1: your novel, I'd like to ask you a couple of
24:56
Speaker 1: warm up questions to sort of get to know you
24:58
Speaker 1: a little bit and how you think about science and
25:01
Speaker 1: science fiction. So the first question is what technology that
25:05
Speaker 1: you see in science fiction? Would you like to see
25:08
Speaker 1: become real? And the stuff in my books is so disrupting,
25:13
Speaker 1: and you know it might take your life if you
25:16
Speaker 1: play around with it too much. I can't actually recommend those,
25:19
Speaker 1: but I love like teleporters and things like that. I
25:21
Speaker 1: really I would love someone also to finally like build
25:24
Speaker 1: a tricorder from Star Trek. Like I happen to know.
25:29
Speaker 1: One is actually being um contemplated right now and they're
25:32
Speaker 1: trying to kind of put it together. Obviously not on
25:35
Speaker 1: the spectrum of of something in Star Trek, but something
25:38
Speaker 1: that you could actually take out into the field and
25:40
Speaker 1: immediately diagnose a variety of illnesses just by a scan.
25:45
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think that's uh. I think that'd
25:47
Speaker 1: be pretty cool. On the topic of Star Trek, I
25:50
Speaker 1: have a philosophy question for you. So where do you
25:53
Speaker 1: land on whether Star Trek transporters actually move you from
25:57
Speaker 1: place to place or whether they disassemble you, kill you
26:02
Speaker 1: and create a clone somewhere else. Oh, I think they
26:05
Speaker 1: kill you and create a clone somewhere else. Yeah, for sure,
26:08
Speaker 1: And yet you still like to see them become reality.
26:11
Speaker 1: Would you be willing to use a teleporter? I would, yeah,
26:14
Speaker 1: absolutely to not have to engage in commercial airline travel
26:18
Speaker 1: absolutely would be worth death. It would be worth death, Yeah,
26:21
Speaker 1: and maybe worse. This is really fascinating stuff. But let's
26:25
Speaker 1: take a quick break. We'll be right back with the
26:27
Speaker 1: rest of Blake Crouch's interview. Let's talk about your book Recursion.
26:45
Speaker 1: In my mind, the core concept of this novel, the
26:47
Speaker 1: idea that you built this story around, is this concept
26:51
Speaker 1: of vividly reimagining a memory and then having the universe
26:55
Speaker 1: actually take you there, like time traveling to the moment
26:59
Speaker 1: the memory it was created. Is it a fair description
27:02
Speaker 1: and the core nugget of the story scientifically, it is.
27:05
Speaker 1: It is the notion of you know, remembering something so
27:09
Speaker 1: vividly and essentially just being transported back into this memory
27:14
Speaker 1: by some quantum or time associated phenomenon that maybe we're
27:20
Speaker 1: not sure of what it is. When I was working
27:23
Speaker 1: on the back half of the book, I kind of
27:24
Speaker 1: was trying to play around with notions of of what
27:26
Speaker 1: it might be. And you know, there's some talk of wormholes,
27:29
Speaker 1: especially tiny little wormholes, and getting sucked into other dimensions,
27:33
Speaker 1: which is little portals into these old, old memories. Yeah,
27:37
Speaker 1: that is the true Conceit I really don't think of
27:39
Speaker 1: the book as a time travel novel. I think of
27:42
Speaker 1: it very much as a memory travel. One of the
27:45
Speaker 1: things I came away with just it wasn't even so
27:48
Speaker 1: much as from the research or anything that I that
27:50
Speaker 1: I stumbled across. It was just more from living in
27:53
Speaker 1: this space for several years where memory was such the focus.
27:57
Speaker 1: I just started to think of of memory as being
28:00
Speaker 1: in some ways maybe more fundamental than time. And we
28:03
Speaker 1: have these things like we have time, and and we
28:05
Speaker 1: have matter, we have space, and we look at these
28:08
Speaker 1: in sort of isolation, But I said, I try to
28:12
Speaker 1: look at them as what is the underlying feature that
28:16
Speaker 1: gives rise to it? In other words, like if we
28:19
Speaker 1: think about consciousness, if you and I subscribe to like
28:22
Speaker 1: what Max type Marks says were an infinite complexity gives
28:26
Speaker 1: rise to consciousness. So what is the thing that is
28:28
Speaker 1: getting giving rise to the to the e notion or
28:31
Speaker 1: to the illusion of time. Memory seem to fit that
28:35
Speaker 1: bill really really neatly. Then in your book you take
28:39
Speaker 1: it one step further, because it's not just an exploration
28:42
Speaker 1: of what you remember and who you are. It's a
28:45
Speaker 1: journey into that memory literally physically transported into those moments.
28:51
Speaker 1: What made you take that extra step? Did you start
28:54
Speaker 1: from the story you wanted to tell and that's sort
28:56
Speaker 1: of the science fiction that you needed, or did you
28:59
Speaker 1: start from what would happen if you could do this
29:01
Speaker 1: cool science fiction thing and then find the story with recursion.
29:05
Speaker 1: And with most of my books, they don't start with
29:07
Speaker 1: the character. It doesn't start really with a setting. It
29:11
Speaker 1: starts with this with the notion of a kind of
29:13
Speaker 1: a very large concept. And when I had finished Dark
29:17
Speaker 1: Matter and I was like, what I want to do
29:19
Speaker 1: something else big? I started thinking, like, what is like?
29:22
Speaker 1: What is like the most sort of fundamental element of
29:26
Speaker 1: humanity and not just humanity but consciousness? And I just
29:29
Speaker 1: kept coming back and back to the idea of memory,
29:32
Speaker 1: because you take a lot of things away from us.
29:35
Speaker 1: I mean, you take our bodies away, and I mean theoretically,
29:38
Speaker 1: if we have some mechanisms upload us to the cloud,
29:41
Speaker 1: we could still be us. You take a lot of
29:43
Speaker 1: things away from us. But if you take away our memories,
29:45
Speaker 1: you really start taking away identity, and you start taking
29:48
Speaker 1: away the notion really of time itself. When I kind
29:52
Speaker 1: of landed upon just the idea of memory as the
29:55
Speaker 1: cential core of the novel. I knew that that's what
29:59
Speaker 1: I wanted to do early on, I didn't know that
30:02
Speaker 1: I have my characters actually returning to a memory and
30:05
Speaker 1: sort of living their life forward again from that point.
30:09
Speaker 1: That came a bit later. Because that's quite a leap, right.
30:12
Speaker 1: It makes a lot of sense to imagine exploring your
30:15
Speaker 1: memories and to think about how your memories to find
30:17
Speaker 1: who you are, and you know that's quite rich and fascinating.
30:21
Speaker 1: But then to say that your memory is reality and
30:24
Speaker 1: they if you change your memory, you can change your
30:27
Speaker 1: external reality. That's a big leap. So let me ask
30:30
Speaker 1: you if you believe in an external reality beyond like
30:34
Speaker 1: your experience of it. In other words, would the universe
30:38
Speaker 1: be here if we weren't here to experience it. Are
30:41
Speaker 1: you saying that the universe is here because we observe it,
30:44
Speaker 1: and without our observation that it doesn't exist. It seems
30:47
Speaker 1: to me that your book is suggesting that, because it
30:50
Speaker 1: makes this connection between memory and reality, if you change
30:54
Speaker 1: your memory in your book, you actually change the external reality.
30:58
Speaker 1: I guess I do believe that. I'm not sure I've
31:00
Speaker 1: ever explicitly thought of it in those terms, But as
31:04
Speaker 1: you say it. Yeah, that it lines up exactly with
31:06
Speaker 1: sort of just the general theory and in worldview that
31:10
Speaker 1: I put forward in both like dark matter and recursion.
31:13
Speaker 1: I mean, consciousness is so weird, unbelievably weird, the idea
31:18
Speaker 1: that that it kind of our consciousness is the engine
31:22
Speaker 1: behind giving life and breath to the universe. And if
31:25
Speaker 1: you take us out of it, what does that look like?
31:27
Speaker 1: Or if you take any sort of conscious entity out
31:31
Speaker 1: of it, is doesn't still exist? Yeah? I mean that
31:33
Speaker 1: that is what I'm basically writing about kind of over
31:36
Speaker 1: and over again. It's fascinating and it's a question that's
31:39
Speaker 1: deep and important, but also difficult to probe scientifically. I mean,
31:43
Speaker 1: how do you do the experiment of a universe without observers?
31:46
Speaker 1: You literally cannot observe that experiment. Once AI becomes truly
31:51
Speaker 1: uh sentient, and we can start having a I almost
31:55
Speaker 1: be a stand in for this, maybe we can start
31:58
Speaker 1: to get around that. We can ask the AI philosophers
32:01
Speaker 1: to chime in on that question. Yeah, or are we can?
32:04
Speaker 1: Are we you know, there's some experiment you can use
32:08
Speaker 1: where you know, once you have you know, I think
32:10
Speaker 1: synthetic or digital consciousness is the same thing. I don't
32:15
Speaker 1: think it's any less than bio consciousness. So maybe maybe
32:19
Speaker 1: down the road we get some truly digital, uh sentient beings,
32:24
Speaker 1: and there's some experiments to be had. This is the
32:26
Speaker 1: concept that I had a bit of struggle with digesting
32:29
Speaker 1: when I was reading the book, The idea that if
32:32
Speaker 1: there's an external universe, how can me remembering something different
32:36
Speaker 1: change that external universe? How can I influence the facts
32:39
Speaker 1: out there? Just by thinking about things? It made me
32:42
Speaker 1: wonder how do you think about the physics of it?
32:45
Speaker 1: Do you try to limit yourself to the physics of
32:47
Speaker 1: our universe in your book or did you think, hey,
32:51
Speaker 1: there's a spectrum of different universes that might exist. This
32:54
Speaker 1: could happen in some universe. Another way to ask this
32:57
Speaker 1: is what are the laws of physics in or universe? Well,
33:01
Speaker 1: I knew or suspected I was maybe infringing on some
33:05
Speaker 1: of the laws of like creation and destruction of matter. Theoretically,
33:11
Speaker 1: people could be going back into their memories as often
33:14
Speaker 1: as they use this uh you know, the chair, and
33:16
Speaker 1: then they're kind of creating a new universe at the
33:19
Speaker 1: point in which they returned. So you know, it's described
33:22
Speaker 1: in the book that sort of the universe that they
33:24
Speaker 1: leave becomes this dead timeline. It's kind of great out
33:28
Speaker 1: noir atmospheric thing that is sort of like, I don't
33:32
Speaker 1: know how what you call it matter um in state,
33:35
Speaker 1: in pure stasis. It's probably in a universe with the
33:38
Speaker 1: laws of physics are a little different than ours because
33:41
Speaker 1: I am technically creating kind of a lot of new
33:44
Speaker 1: matter each time, right, And so how deeply did you
33:48
Speaker 1: think about the laws of physics of that universe and
33:50
Speaker 1: try to apply them consistently or did you sort of
33:53
Speaker 1: leave some of those details aside? Well, I thought about
33:55
Speaker 1: it to a point. The whole notion of dark matter
33:58
Speaker 1: dark matter not the book, but dark matter and dark energy. Um,
34:02
Speaker 1: it's still so unknown and it's still so speculative. I
34:06
Speaker 1: feel like it gives uh sci fi novelists like me
34:09
Speaker 1: a little bit of cover to mess with what we
34:11
Speaker 1: think of as the laws of phy six good point.
34:15
Speaker 1: I mean, like, what's the other nineties six percent or
34:17
Speaker 1: whatever it is of unobservable matter that's out there? Are
34:21
Speaker 1: Those are those other universes, other worlds, other dimensions wrapped
34:26
Speaker 1: up in themselves, where you know, matters a fraction of
34:29
Speaker 1: of itself out here. I don't know. Well, that's certainly
34:31
Speaker 1: a fair point. I think there's a lot we don't
34:34
Speaker 1: know about this universe, and so a lot of questions
34:36
Speaker 1: remain about what the laws of physics actually are and
34:39
Speaker 1: what they allow. Speaking of which I see in the
34:41
Speaker 1: acknowledgments that you worked with cliff Johnson as a consultant.
34:45
Speaker 1: I have great respect for him, of course as a colleague.
34:47
Speaker 1: But tell me what was that like for you? Did
34:49
Speaker 1: he shoot down a bunch of stuff or did he
34:51
Speaker 1: give you ideas? What's it like to work with the
34:54
Speaker 1: science consultant? He's so fantastic. He also did worked on
34:58
Speaker 1: dark matter with me. So there's this thing called the
35:01
Speaker 1: Science and Entertainment Exchange, and it puts people like me
35:05
Speaker 1: and screenwriters and show owners in touch with people like
35:08
Speaker 1: Clifford who it gives you a subject matter matter expert
35:12
Speaker 1: who is a tune to working in the entertainment industry,
35:15
Speaker 1: which means they're not coming in to just break down
35:18
Speaker 1: what you've created, the trying to help you take in
35:22
Speaker 1: the spirit of what you want to do and make
35:23
Speaker 1: it as plausible as possible. So, yeah, with Recursion, I
35:27
Speaker 1: finished my first draft without basically telling him at all
35:30
Speaker 1: what was going on. And then we had a phone
35:32
Speaker 1: call and I was like, here's kind of what's happening.
35:34
Speaker 1: I'd love to just send you the book and then
35:37
Speaker 1: you hit me back with you know, anything that you
35:39
Speaker 1: think you can improve on or that I'm completely off base.
35:42
Speaker 1: And he helped me a lot with the technology behind
35:45
Speaker 1: the memory retrieval process. And he also helped me a
35:49
Speaker 1: little skirts some of the speculation of of how someone
35:55
Speaker 1: might return to the memory, because there's some some talk
35:57
Speaker 1: deep into the book about wormholes, black holes. Can't remember.
36:00
Speaker 1: I think I took out white hole. I honestly don't
36:02
Speaker 1: remember if that's there anymore. He gave some suggestions for
36:05
Speaker 1: how to talk about it and much more plausible not
36:09
Speaker 1: getting anyone's back up kind of ways. All right, so
36:13
Speaker 1: he was okay with creating entire universes. Yes, all right, great,
36:17
Speaker 1: well again, thank you Blake very much for your time
36:20
Speaker 1: and for coming on our podcast to answer our rather
36:23
Speaker 1: nitpicky physics questions. It's been a pleasure, of course. All right,
36:27
Speaker 1: pretty fun interview with Blake Crouch there, the author of Recursion,
36:32
Speaker 1: which is a sci fi novel. And so Daniel, what
36:35
Speaker 1: were what were some of you were taking aways from
36:36
Speaker 1: talking to Blake. I thought he made a lot of
36:38
Speaker 1: really good points. You know, he clearly thought about the
36:40
Speaker 1: universe he was creating, and he thought about it sort
36:42
Speaker 1: of up to a point. He didn't worry about whether
36:45
Speaker 1: physicists today had an idea for how this might actually happened.
36:49
Speaker 1: He was like, you know, here are the rules, and
36:50
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell the story. And I was also
36:53
Speaker 1: impressed with it, with the point he made that, like,
36:55
Speaker 1: we don't know much about what's going on in the universes.
36:58
Speaker 1: We like to say on this podcast all the time
37:00
Speaker 1: time there's a lot about the universe we don't know.
37:02
Speaker 1: And so did he throw you off a little bit
37:04
Speaker 1: when he said that, Were you like, oh, I have
37:06
Speaker 1: to concede that point. And I was happy to concede that.
37:09
Speaker 1: I love that point about the universe, that we don't
37:11
Speaker 1: know what's going on. And as I said earlier, that's
37:13
Speaker 1: one of the roles of science fiction authors to imagine
37:16
Speaker 1: what else is in those gaps and and to be
37:18
Speaker 1: creative about it, to think outside the bounds of what
37:21
Speaker 1: sort of academia is considering. And so absolutely that's wonderful.
37:25
Speaker 1: And I also really enjoyed hearing about his experience talking
37:28
Speaker 1: to a cliff and what that's like to, you know,
37:30
Speaker 1: try to incorporate the comments from a real working physicist
37:35
Speaker 1: into your fiction universe. I wonder if a lot of
37:37
Speaker 1: what what you take away from these sci fi novels
37:40
Speaker 1: has to do with the language, Daniel, Like, I feel like,
37:43
Speaker 1: you know, if it wasn't called science fiction, and maybe
37:45
Speaker 1: it was called speculative fiction, and you know, maybe it
37:48
Speaker 1: didn't use some of the same words that you use
37:52
Speaker 1: in your work in real science, you would, maybe, you know,
37:55
Speaker 1: enjoy this book a little bit more and just be
37:58
Speaker 1: more opening your disbelief in and just going alone for
38:01
Speaker 1: the right I can't tell if that's a question or
38:03
Speaker 1: a suggestion, but you know, I also like fantasy novels,
38:06
Speaker 1: and the ones I like the most are the ones
38:08
Speaker 1: where they think careful about what the rules are, you know,
38:10
Speaker 1: like Robert Jordan's his world. He has magic and that
38:13
Speaker 1: magic follows rules, which means like you can cast a
38:16
Speaker 1: spell in these moments, but you can't in those other moments. Okay,
38:19
Speaker 1: I think I'm getting more of a sense here, Daniel.
38:21
Speaker 1: It's all about the rules for you. Well, look, I'm
38:25
Speaker 1: a physicist. My entire goal in life is to figure
38:28
Speaker 1: out what are the rules of the universe, because it's
38:30
Speaker 1: those rules that constrain our lives. Why can't I go
38:33
Speaker 1: to Alpha Centauri right now because there's a rule against that,
38:36
Speaker 1: Otherwise I would totally be there. So it's all about
38:39
Speaker 1: bumping up against the rules and figuring out how they
38:42
Speaker 1: constrain the stories we tell and the lives we live.
38:45
Speaker 1: So if we find out that the universe doesn't have
38:47
Speaker 1: consistent rules, Daniel, are we gonna be critiquing in on
38:50
Speaker 1: our podcast as well? Yeah? Right, I'm going to talk
38:53
Speaker 1: to the creator of the universe and given my notes
38:55
Speaker 1: or her my notes or podcast, Daniel talks to God.
38:59
Speaker 1: That's selling author of the universe, Daniel and the other universe,
39:07
Speaker 1: the universe without Daniel, after God deletes me from making comments. God,
39:11
Speaker 1: Why isn't the universe hard science fiction? Anyway? To wrap
39:16
Speaker 1: up about Blake, CRUSH's Recursion is a totally fun book
39:20
Speaker 1: if you're really interested in sort of like fast moving
39:23
Speaker 1: stories with cool technology that take place in other universes.
39:26
Speaker 1: I really recommended I wouldn't consider it like the hardest
39:29
Speaker 1: of science fiction. It's not like Alistair Reynolds. That really
39:32
Speaker 1: delves deeply into the physics underlying the story. But he
39:36
Speaker 1: did a good job of making it consistent and telling
39:38
Speaker 1: a fun story sort of within that universe. But thank
39:40
Speaker 1: you to Blake Crush for coming on the program. And
39:42
Speaker 1: it's great to hear from him and learn from him.
39:45
Speaker 1: And it's great to think about the ideas in his
39:47
Speaker 1: book but memory and about time travel. Yeah, so it's
39:51
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Thank you very much, Blake. All Right,
39:52
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed that. See you next time. Before
40:02
Speaker 1: you still have a question after listening to all these explanations,
40:05
Speaker 1: please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
40:08
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
40:12
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at
40:15
Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening,
40:19
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is
40:21
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from
40:25
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio Apple Podcasts
40:29
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah,