Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / The Science Fiction Universe of "Meru" by SB Divya

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The Science Fiction Universe of "Meru" by SB Divya · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Kelly, do you still remember your parents phone number
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: from when you were growing up?
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: I do.
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: I doubt I'll ever forget it.
• 0:15
  Speaker 4: My fingers can still go through the muscle memory of
• 0:18
  Speaker 4: pushing it on a Touchtowne phone.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: And now do you know like all of your family
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: phone numbers?
• 0:23
  Speaker 5: No?
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: Absolutely not.
• 0:25
  Speaker 4: They're on my phone. There's no need to remember them.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: They're on the brain in my pocket.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: So do you think of your phone as like an
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: extension of your brain?
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: I am not.
• 0:34
  Speaker 4: Sure I could be a fully functioning human being without
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: it anymore.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: So maybe do you ever wonder, though, if like our
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: phones feel the same way. Do they feel like they're
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: part of our brains or that we are part of them?
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 0:49
  Speaker 4: I hope not, because if my phone has feelings, I'm
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: sure it's crumpy because I drop it all the time
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: and I have filled it with photos of disgusting bugs
• 0:59
  Speaker 4: and rolling poop. So I hope my phone does not
• 1:02
  Speaker 4: have feelings.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: We've all dunked our phone in places we'd never want
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: to mention. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: a professor at UC Irvine, and I think my phone
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: is smarter than I am.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: I'm Kelly wier Smith.
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: I'm an adjunct assistant professor at Greece University, and I
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: am sure that my phone is smarter than.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I am because your phone told you so.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: That's right, and I believe everything my phone says.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Well, my phone is definitely better at some things than
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I am, though I still hold out hope that there
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: are things that humans can do that phones can't do.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: That gap is getting smaller and smaller every day, though, Daniel.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: But maybe that's not the right way to look at it.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Maybe instead of heating with our phones about who's most intelligent,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: we should just be thinking about us and our phones
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: together working in harmony to unlock the nature of the universe.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: The Ultimate Symbiosis.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: And Welcome to the podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: universe in which we try to unlock the nature of
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the universe. We use all of the technology at our disposal,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: all of the AI, and all of the biological intelligence
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: to try to unravel the mystery of this beautiful and
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: gorgeous cosmos, to boil it all down into a story
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: that makes sense, at least to our human brains, if
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: that's even possible. My friend and usual co host Jorge
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: can't be here today, but I'm very pleased to be
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: joined by our regular guest host, Kelly. Kelly, thanks again
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: for coming on the pod.
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: Hello, thanks for having me on the pod. I especially
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: love when you're having me on the podcast to talk
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: about science fiction books. So I'm super excited to be
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: here today.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: That's right. Usually we are analyzing the science of our
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: actual universe, wanting to understand how quantum mechanics weaves itself
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: together to make our reality, or what's going on going
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: on with the latest advances in astronomy and cosmology. But
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: part of doing science is being creative, is thinking about
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: the ways the universe could work or might work, or
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: ways alternative universes could work. And so that's why I
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: like to read so much science fiction, and on the
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: podcast we have a series of episodes diving into the
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: physics of fictional universes in which we interview science fiction authors.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: It's an excuse for me to get to read science
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: fiction and an opportunity for Kelly and I do fanboy
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: and fangirl out talking to the authors themselves. Yay. But
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: it's a fascinating process hearing about how somebody puts together
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: an entire fictional universe, how they build it up from
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: the rules, the consequences of living in that universe. What
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: is it like to be human if the rules are
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: fundamentally different, or if technology has progressed so far that
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: it changes the nature of being human.
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: You know, I've always had a lot of respect for
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: sci fi authors, but through the course of doing these
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: interviews with you, I have there's so much more respect
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: thinking about how much world building needs to happen before
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: a book comes out.
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: It's just it's so much more work than I would
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: have imagined.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: That's right, because you have to be creative not just
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: about the science of your universe and the technology of it,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: but really thinking deeply about the human side of it.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: The best science fiction, of course, they're human stories. They're
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: about people and what it's like to be human in
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: that era, and you have to also bridge this gap.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: You can't write stories about people who are so far
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: away from us emotionally personally that we can't identify with them, right,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: You need to somehow create that universe and make it
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: adjacent enough to ours that we can connect with these
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: characters and care about them, even though their lives can
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: be so different. From ours, and.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: This book did such a good job of that.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: It really did. It also sort of puts us in
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: our place as humans and makes us feel like, oh boy,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: we better get our stuff together. Yes. So on the
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: podcast today, we'll be talking about the science fiction universe
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: of Meru by S. B. Diva. Diva is an author
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: we've had on the podcast before. She is very acclaimed.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: She's the Hugo and Nebula nominated author of Machinehood, which
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: we talked about about a year ago on the pod.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Her stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. She's
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: also a former editor of Escape Pod, which is a
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: weekly science fiction podcast which is a lot of fun.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: She has degrees in computational neuroscience and signal processing and
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: has worked in the medical device industry, so she knows
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: what she's talking about when it comes to post humanity,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: as we'll hear all about in our interview with her.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: And one of my favorite things in her bio is
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: that on her homepage she writes, quote, I am currently
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: mortal and full of squishy organs, but I hope to
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: outlive that.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: M I wonder what the timeline is going to be
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: for that.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: I think she's hoping that some of the stuff in
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: her book happens soon enough that she can move beyond
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: her earthly existence as a bag of squishy meat.
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: I'm happy as a bag of squishybeat, but the whole
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: big things work out for her.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: So, Kelly and I both read this book. It's called
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Mehru Meru, and it's available for sale now. We encourage
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: you to get it. Kelly, what do you think this
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: book is about? How would you summarize the topic of
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: the book for our listeners?
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: Oh, I wish you had told me you were going
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: to ask you that ahead of time. There's lots of
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: moving pieces in this book. It's like complicated in a
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: great way. But so I guess in summary, humans have
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: sort of messed up, and another branch of humans have
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: evolved and they've been sort of taken care of things
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: to make sure we don't mess up again, and this
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: is sort of the story about whether or not we
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: deserve to be released.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: Back out into the universe. What do you think?
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: How would you describe what the book is about in
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: just a few sentences?
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Either? That was a great summary. Yeah, in my view,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: it's like near future science fiction, and so it's close
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: enough that we can imagine it happening. And the major
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: movements that happened between now in this near future are
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: that there's a new race of humans, humans that have
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: sort of machines built into them. More than like your
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: phone in your pocket. These are like really integrated into
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: what it's like to be these beings, and they don't
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: call themselves humans. They call themselves alloys. In the way
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: that you can mix metals together to get a stronger metal.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Here she's mixing organic and machine parts together to make
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: an alloy. And you have all sorts of really fascinating mixtures,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: including beings that can fly through space. They're basically living ships,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: you know, humans that are ships that fly through space
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: that have other humans inside of them. It's really very creative.
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: It's such a cool idea, and I feel like that
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: is maybe the part of the book that kept me
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: up the most sidnight thinking about, like one thinking about
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: the social dynamics, but then two thinking about you know,
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: if you're traveling through space and it takes you like
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: months to get somewhere, what do you do on a
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: trip like that when it's just.
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: You and anyway.
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: I could talk about this all day long, It is
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: such a cool idea, and she does great things with it.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: She does great things with it. She really thinks, sit
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: through what it's like to be that and the emotional
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: relationship you have with this ship. I was just also
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: pleased to have so many new ideas. When I read
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: so much science fiction, I feel like the same five
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: ideas for getting from one place to another are recycled
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: over and over again. And so I just love seeing
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: something news. I mean, you haven't seen before. It's really creative.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: And I was also really impressed by the reality of
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: the experience, you know, the human side of it. A
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: lot of times when you find yourself in a new
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: world in science fiction, it's a bit cartoony, you know,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: it's very simplified. But she is such a rich description
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: of like the politics, the arguments. You know, there's no
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: monolithic organizations here where like all of the alloys think
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: this and all the humans think that. You know, there's
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: currents and there's factions and there's disagreements among every group
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: in a way that I think is very human and realistic.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, these days, nobody can seem to agree about
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: anything that's right.
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: That's right, and she built out this huge history to
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: sort of support the story, and you get glimpses of
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: it every once in a while, but this is like,
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: this is a complete world that she has built and
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: you immerse yourself in it and it's yeah, I agree,
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: So politics don't feel corny.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: The history makes perfect sense and it's it's awesome.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I love that she has like massive failed
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: projects in the book. This is time in the book
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: where so many builds like a meta habitat out in space,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: and then everybody's like, nah, I don't really want to
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: move there. Eh, it's like, wait, trillions of dollars, that
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: seems like something that's likely to happen.
• 9:23
  Speaker 6: You know.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: That's basically what Mark Zuckerberg is doing right now with
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: the metaverse.
• 9:27
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, very very realistic.
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: I imagine when we start eating out into space, there
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: are going to be things that people like that work
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: and things that people like that don't work, and it'll
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: be you know, interesting to see how things pan out.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there'll be all sorts of fascinating dead ends and
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: the equivalent of like abandoned apartment buildings and all sorts
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: of stuff in a way that I think will be
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: totally unpredictable, right, and so people make lots of money
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: and people who don't. And so I loved seeing that
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: in the book. It makes it feel very much like
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: you're actually visiting another universe. It does.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she's got multiple different things that failed, from like
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: biology experiments to engineering the experiments, and then you just
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: sort of see how you've learned from those failures and
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: you move forward.
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: And you know, one of the ways that they move
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: forward and learned from a failure was humans tried terrorforming
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: bars and just totally blew it, which is super interesting
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: to think about from the perspective of you know, current
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: things that are going on right now. But anyway, in
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: the book, humans totally blew their chance and destroyed things.
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: And now the alloys are taking care of the humans,
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: but humans aren't really leaving Earth that much because they've
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: sort of been contained.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: And this is the story of a human.
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: Who actually gets the option or the opportunity to travel
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: out and show that humans can do the right thing.
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: We've learned our lesson. But you know, they're also upon
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: between all these different powerful forces. They've got these different
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: factions that are fighting that think humans should have the
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: chance and others that think that they shouldn't and then
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: you'll have to just see what happens.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: That's right, no pressure, You're only standing in for all
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: of humanity, right right, right. So let's talk about the
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: science of the book A Lion little bit. She has
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: some really fascinating innovations here. She has these really deep
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: human computer alloys. This is more than just like I've
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: got something wired to my brain where I can control
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: a machine. These are people where they have organic and
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: metallic machine based elements really of their biology. She talks
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: about like programming these things, having these things really be
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: an outgrowth of their DNA. You're the biologist here, Do
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: you think that that's something we could have, you know,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: in fifty years, one hundred years, five hundred years sort
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: of ever? Or is that implausible?
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: You know? I just don't know.
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: So, like as you might remember from Sunish, I really
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: hate putting dates on things, but you know, I will
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: say that it does seem like on the one hand,
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: biology is super complicated and traits are controlled by many,
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: many genes, and so if you're going to have part
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: of your body growing as like you know, a computer part,
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: that you're going to be able to control that sounds
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: very complicated. But you know, on the other hand, crisper
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: is an amazing tool that we sort of surprise came
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: across in the near future.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: So maybe we'll stumble.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: Upon more surprises that shorten the timeline on these sorts
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: of things. But I guess, if I had to guess,
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: if I'm going to have like a leaf blower arm,
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: I don't think my grandkids are going to have this
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: sort of technology.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: Let's just say, but I could be wrong.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Is that your top choice? If you have some modification
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: you're like leaf blower arm? I could use it to
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: what brush my teeth to clean off that do the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: dishes just like sort of blow all the dishes into
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: the sink.
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: I'm in my garage recording right now, and I just
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: looked at the leaf blower and so that would not
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: be my first choice.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: It reminds me of all those internet videos of people
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: blowing leaf blowers into their mouths. I don't know why
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: that's so fun for people. Anyway, one day, maybe we'll
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: have people with leaf blower arms and we'll see weird
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: movies about it. Another really fascinating aspect of the science
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: of this book is how she gets from star to star.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: So in loss of science fiction novels, there are warp
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: drives or there's war there's sort of these standard solutions
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: to getting from start a star not having it take
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: thousands of years. But in this book, she has something
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: totally new. She has invented like another layer of physics
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: beneath what we know. So she's taken our universe. She
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: says below that there's something else. There's this thing called
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: a famite field, and there's particles in that field, which
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: we would call famatons, and we can use that field
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: as an energy source and as a way to manipulate
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: space time itself to get between stars. I thought that
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: was really clever.
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: Well, okay, now it's byrd to ask you, as a physicist,
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: is this plausible?
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: So in general, like, is it plausible that there's something
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: beneath space time? A completely different way to think about
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: the universe. Absolutely, Like the message that we send on
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: this podcast all the time is that we really just
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: don't understand the way the universe works, Like we don't
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: know what space time is. Is it actually built up
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: from like weird little quantum dots that are woven together
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: using theories and forces that we don't understand it. Certainly
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: could be we have no idea. We have this theory
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: of general relativity that tells us about space time, but
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: we suspect it's probably wrong because it's not quantum mechanical.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: So we're always looking for that next layer of knowledge
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: about what's going on in the universe. And so it's
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: certainly possible that there's something going on deep down there
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: which could allow us, if we understood it, to control
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: space time in just this way. I mean, her description
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: of it is a little bit more like spiritual and
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: fantastical than scientific. You know, she has these ships and
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: they sort of will themselves. They interact with this famity
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: field through their minds, and they will themselves from star
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: to star. But could there be famity fields and famatons
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: and in a way that lets us travel. Yes, absolutely,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: that's totally possible.
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: So like when my grandkids have leaf flower arms, maybe
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: they'll be trapped into distant stars.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: That's right, and then when they get there they can
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: use their leaf blower arms to like hover over the surface.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: Right, So maybe it wasn't such a bad idea. It
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: seems like a very versatile attachment.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I keep thinking of new applications for it all
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, maybe we should see if we can
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: get a leaf blowing company to support the show. But
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: here's some commercial from someone who supports the show.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: All right, we're back and we're talking about the science
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: fiction universe of Meru, a novel by SB Diva about
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: post humanity where humans have become melded with machines and
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: formed a new race of humans, humans that are more
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: responsible than we are and allowed to travel through space
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: and do all sorts of things. And so, as we
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: usually do in the podcast, we were lucky enough to
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: speak to the author of this book here about her process.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: So here's our interview with SB Diva. So it's my
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: pleasure to welcome back to the podcast SB Diva, the
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: author of this wonderful book, Mary that we've just been
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: talking about. Thanks very much for joining us again.
• 16:04
  Speaker 7: Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to
• 16:07
  Speaker 7: be here and talking about this book.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: So you're the first author we've actually had back on
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: the podcast for a second round. And usually we ask
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: a series of silly questions to get people warmed up,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: but we've already asked you about your thoughts about Star
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: trek transporters. So I have a different question for you
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: to get us oriented in your space of philosophy of science,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: which is in your view, is Star Wars fantasy or
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: science fiction?
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good one.
• 16:36
  Speaker 7: I'm going to do a why not both and say
• 16:38
  Speaker 7: there is a subgenre called science fantasy, and Star Wars
• 16:43
  Speaker 7: falls squarely into that. For me?
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Is that because there are elements of it that are
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: sort of like hardcore science and also elements that are
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: sort of like left unexplained a little bit magical.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
• 16:54
  Speaker 7: I mean, notwithstanding the Mediclorians, the rest of the force
• 16:58
  Speaker 7: is very mystical, right. I thought the original stood a
• 17:02
  Speaker 7: little better that way than trying to explain it with science,
• 17:06
  Speaker 7: especially as a retcon. So, yeah, science fantasy is you know,
• 17:10
  Speaker 7: things like dragons in space. There are books out there
• 17:14
  Speaker 7: that involve this very topic, things like Binti by netdi
• 17:19
  Speaker 7: ocarfor you know, that involves space travel, astrolabes, but also
• 17:23
  Speaker 7: certain forms of indigenous magic. So it's a very why
• 17:28
  Speaker 7: not both the genre and I feel like that's one
• 17:30
  Speaker 7: of the reasons so many people love Star Wars, right,
• 17:33
  Speaker 7: is because you have all the cool tech, but then
• 17:36
  Speaker 7: you have the mystical force, and you have magic as well.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: I must be one of the very few people who
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: thought it was cool to try to explain the force
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: in terms of science, because you know, that's like kind
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: of who I am. I'm like, how does that work?
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: You know, what is the microscopic process that makes that happen?
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: So I was kind of into that. I was like, oh, cool,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: And then I discovered it was very uncool to like that.
• 17:57
  Speaker 7: I think if it had been that way from the start,
• 18:00
  Speaker 7: I would have been on board with it. But trying to,
• 18:03
  Speaker 7: like I said, trying to shoehorn it in after the
• 18:06
  Speaker 7: fact just felt kind of forced to me.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: All right, well, we'll try to get our science in
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: draft one every time as well.
• 18:13
  Speaker 7: From yes, for sure.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: All right, so let's talk about your book, which Kelly
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: and I both read and both really enjoyed, and the
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: focus of the book is on this sort of post
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: human or transhuman I'm not sure what the right word is,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: experience far in the future, when it's more than just
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: like biological humans, as humans have all sorts of modifications
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: that are really quite different from the humans that we
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: know that you call alloys in your book, tell us
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: about your inspiration, What made you write this book, Where
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: did the idea come from? What's exciting to you about
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: post humanity?
• 18:44
  Speaker 7: Yeah, so, first off, I will say I prefer post
• 18:47
  Speaker 7: humans to transhuman only because transhumanism is a thing now
• 18:53
  Speaker 7: and it's particular philosophy about improving humankind. And this book
• 18:59
  Speaker 7: is very intentionally interrogating that very idea, right, which is
• 19:06
  Speaker 7: can and should we even talk about improvement when it
• 19:10
  Speaker 7: comes to biology, humanity, life in general. And so the
• 19:16
  Speaker 7: idea for this book, especially for the Alloys, was that
• 19:20
  Speaker 7: I did want to carry some of the themes of
• 19:23
  Speaker 7: genetic engineering and cybernetic enhancements for my first novel, Machinehood,
• 19:28
  Speaker 7: but much much further.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Into the future.
• 19:31
  Speaker 7: You know, we talk a lot today in the media
• 19:34
  Speaker 7: about designer babies and the ethics of genetics, and I thought, okay, well,
• 19:38
  Speaker 7: let's assume that genetic editing is happening right, the genies
• 19:43
  Speaker 7: out of the bottle, and let's say that one day,
• 19:45
  Speaker 7: just like we write software code, we can build DNA
• 19:51
  Speaker 7: up from scratch. And that's not as hypothetical as it sounds.
• 19:54
  Speaker 7: We've already done that with yeast. So there are yeast
• 19:58
  Speaker 7: legos that people in the lab play with today, and
• 20:01
  Speaker 7: so you know, a thousand years from now, I don't
• 20:03
  Speaker 7: think it's much of a stretch to say that we'll
• 20:05
  Speaker 7: have the technology to do that with our chromosomes. And
• 20:09
  Speaker 7: at that point, I think, you know, it really begs
• 20:11
  Speaker 7: the question of what kind of DNA is allowed, what
• 20:15
  Speaker 7: kind of beings might exist, you know, and why? And
• 20:19
  Speaker 7: so this book explores a lot of those questions.
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: I'm really interested in the designer baby's angle, and so
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: I thought it was really interesting that, like, right at
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: the beginning of the book sort of you start with
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: an interesting ethical question here. And so in my mind,
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: people are more comfortable with thinking about designer babies when
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: you are tinkering to make an improvement to make their
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: lives better. But in the book there's some tinkering that
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: is negative, but maybe.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: It'll end up being better at some point. Like what
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: do you think the future looks like in terms of
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: our ethical sort of roads? Do you think at one
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: point will feel comfortable making these tinkerings that might not
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: make someone better?
• 20:59
  Speaker 7: I think we're already making tinkerings that have the potential
• 21:02
  Speaker 7: to not make someone better or perhaps in a more
• 21:05
  Speaker 7: nuanced way better here worse there right. Again, it can
• 21:11
  Speaker 7: be a combination of things, and as we know, gene
• 21:15
  Speaker 7: expression and how it translates to your health, your behavior,
• 21:19
  Speaker 7: your biochemistry can be pretty complicated. You know, certain things
• 21:23
  Speaker 7: rely on one or two genes, but a lot of
• 21:25
  Speaker 7: other things rely on many, and the combination of how
• 21:28
  Speaker 7: those different genes are.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Expressed in your body.
• 21:31
  Speaker 7: And so I don't think we have the tools right
• 21:34
  Speaker 7: now to model that in detail enough to know what
• 21:37
  Speaker 7: we're doing. But assuming at some point we do, I
• 21:40
  Speaker 7: think the risk of doing it in an unintentional way,
• 21:44
  Speaker 7: like without very specific rules and regulations is that, yes,
• 21:48
  Speaker 7: this idea of making someone's life better can land us
• 21:52
  Speaker 7: on a very steep, slippery slope to eugenics. So upfront
• 21:56
  Speaker 7: I wanted to establish that in this world they've.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Gone through that.
• 22:00
  Speaker 7: Actually, you know, in the history of Meru there's the
• 22:03
  Speaker 7: directed mutation catastrophe, which is when things went bad for
• 22:08
  Speaker 7: life because we tinkered a little too much and we
• 22:11
  Speaker 7: oversimplified actually to where genetic diversity was reduced and that
• 22:15
  Speaker 7: ended up working against us from natural selection factors. So
• 22:20
  Speaker 7: they come to the realization that a you have to
• 22:23
  Speaker 7: allow for trance mutations in order to just have innovation
• 22:27
  Speaker 7: in general, and b you have to allow for various
• 22:33
  Speaker 7: types of diseases and disabilities to exist in the population
• 22:36
  Speaker 7: as well. You do your best to accommodate them and
• 22:39
  Speaker 7: make their lives good, and you give them the option
• 22:42
  Speaker 7: of treatment if it really can't be good. But you
• 22:46
  Speaker 7: don't eliminate it from the gene pool, because you never
• 22:49
  Speaker 7: know when the environment might demand that those genes exist,
• 22:54
  Speaker 7: and we might find it useful to have people who
• 22:56
  Speaker 7: have expressed those so that we understand how they work.
• 22:59
  Speaker 7: And I think that plies today actually just as well
• 23:02
  Speaker 7: as a thousand years from now. It's just that we
• 23:04
  Speaker 7: don't necessarily have the tools.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: So that's a very good argument from a practical point
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: of view, like we can't predict, we can't model, we
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: don't know the impact of any decision, and also we
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: don't know what the future will need from us as
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: a gene pool in terms of diversity to survive. But
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: what about the moral side of it? Can we drill
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: down on that? Are you suggesting that people don't have
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: the right to do this kind of thing or that
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: it's a bad idea from a policy standpoint? Can we
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: make that decision for everybody? I mean suggesting we should
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: like not allow anybody to do this for their own babies.
• 23:35
  Speaker 7: I think what we have to sit down very carefully
• 23:40
  Speaker 7: and consider what rules and regulations we're going to build
• 23:44
  Speaker 7: around this, and it's going to be you know, as complicated,
• 23:47
  Speaker 7: if not more complicated than something like the FDA regulating drugs. Right.
• 23:53
  Speaker 7: It's there's a lot of parallels.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: There's a difference, I would say, between.
• 24:00
  Speaker 7: Gene therapy, which is something you change in gene expression
• 24:06
  Speaker 7: or certain types of cells in the body, but that
• 24:11
  Speaker 7: are not necessarily psychotic, that aren't going to be hereditary, right,
• 24:16
  Speaker 7: So you're not necessarily changing the genome, you're not changing
• 24:19
  Speaker 7: the eggs or the sperm, and so I think there's
• 24:24
  Speaker 7: an important distinction to be made there as well. So parents,
• 24:28
  Speaker 7: or in the case of METO, a person when they
• 24:31
  Speaker 7: become a consenting adult, can choose to have gene therapy
• 24:35
  Speaker 7: to correct for certain conditions that they're not happy living with, right,
• 24:41
  Speaker 7: And I think that absolutely everyone should have that choice.
• 24:44
  Speaker 7: Whether parents should have that choice for their babies is
• 24:46
  Speaker 7: another ethical argument, you know, moral or ethical argument that
• 24:49
  Speaker 7: we're having already today. Right, the deaf communities having it
• 24:53
  Speaker 7: cited communities and uncited communities are having it right, anything
• 24:57
  Speaker 7: where it's hereditary but livable, like you can still have
• 25:01
  Speaker 7: a good quality of life. You know, we're having these
• 25:03
  Speaker 7: conversations with autism, with down syndrome, like who gets to decide,
• 25:06
  Speaker 7: you know, whether or not they want to raise a
• 25:08
  Speaker 7: child with these conditions? Right, So there's important considerations for
• 25:12
  Speaker 7: the parents, for the children, and then there's the social considerations,
• 25:17
  Speaker 7: and then there's the species wide considerations and so admity.
• 25:20
  Speaker 7: I was really trying to tackle that that final scale, right,
• 25:24
  Speaker 7: which I don't think a lot of people are talking
• 25:25
  Speaker 7: about today because again we don't have that capacity right now,
• 25:29
  Speaker 7: but species wide survival and people who've paid close attention
• 25:35
  Speaker 7: to certain animal and insect population studies have noticed that
• 25:41
  Speaker 7: things that sound good as adaptive behaviors, when taken to
• 25:46
  Speaker 7: the extreme, can often lead to species extinction, right, aggressive
• 25:49
  Speaker 7: mate selection for example, or certain types of decorative mutations
• 25:54
  Speaker 7: that you know, take into the extreme end up reducing
• 25:58
  Speaker 7: survivability overall. And so that I think, you know, is
• 26:03
  Speaker 7: a consideration a little bit more for the future compared
• 26:05
  Speaker 7: to parents' children and family and society, which are a
• 26:10
  Speaker 7: little bit more pressing. I would never arrogate the power
• 26:14
  Speaker 7: to myself to sit here and say that I know best.
• 26:17
  Speaker 7: I certainly don't, And I think this is the sort
• 26:20
  Speaker 7: of thing that, you know, we need to tap millions
• 26:23
  Speaker 7: of people from across the world and attempt to achieve
• 26:27
  Speaker 7: some kind of global consensus ideally on.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Where we go with this.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: I totally respect that we don't know what we're doing
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: in this area, and that makes it terrifying, and it
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: feels like a bad idea to give people power to
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: make these decisions which could have crazy consequences. But I
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: also feel like we're kind of already in that situation.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, as a parent, I'm making decisions all the time.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: They're going to totally influence the path of my child's life.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: How to educate them, where to raise them up, how
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: to solve this problem, how to deal with this discipline issue.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: I certainly don't know what I'm doing, and I'm probably
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: missing them up in all sorts of ways I can
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: even imagine, And I see other people making choices that
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: I think verge on the edge of child abuse. You know,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: how can you teach your kids those things about the universe?
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: That's just wrong? And so I guess you know. To me,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: the argument is like, well, at least we're limiting our
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: power a little bit, we're bounding ourselves. We're doing the
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: stuff that we've been doing for thousands of years, and
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: we're still here. So I guess in a sense, it's
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: a conservative viewpoint to say, like, let's not give ourselves
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: too much power too quickly to change the direction of
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: the whole species.
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: Another change that you allow to happen in your universe
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: is you have these human machine hybrids. I'm interested in
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: brain computer interfaces and all these various ways that we're
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: sort of augmenting ourselves with technology these days.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: Do you think these kinds of human machine hybrids are
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: the future? And how near term is this future?
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: If so?
• 27:45
  Speaker 7: I guess my hopeful vision of the future is that
• 27:49
  Speaker 7: we will have a spectrum of beings, you know, everything
• 27:53
  Speaker 7: from Homo sapiens to artificially intelligent machines right that are sentient,
• 28:00
  Speaker 7: conscious and have full rights as individuals. And you know
• 28:05
  Speaker 7: those who are blends in between with MEDU and with
• 28:08
  Speaker 7: the alloys. And the reason I call them alloys is
• 28:11
  Speaker 7: that they organically through their DNA, express parts of their
• 28:18
  Speaker 7: bodies that are not purely organic right, So it's not
• 28:23
  Speaker 7: just carbon based. So they have silicon, they have heavy metals,
• 28:27
  Speaker 7: but the instruction set for how these things are organized
• 28:30
  Speaker 7: in their bodies comes still from their chromosomal sets. And
• 28:35
  Speaker 7: this is something I think we're definitely going to have
• 28:37
  Speaker 7: the capacity to do going forward.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: There's already a lot of bleedover.
• 28:41
  Speaker 7: Between DNA and silicon, so I see no reason why
• 28:45
  Speaker 7: we couldn't get a lot more interesting with that going forward.
• 28:48
  Speaker 7: And again, we have life on Earth that show us
• 28:51
  Speaker 7: how some of these things can be done, so we
• 28:53
  Speaker 7: can already steal creatively from what we have around us.
• 28:57
  Speaker 7: And so yeah, I don't see any reason why we
• 29:00
  Speaker 7: couldn't coexist, right, Like, that's my hope, as past fist
• 29:04
  Speaker 7: an optimist, that we will coexist with a variety of
• 29:09
  Speaker 7: forms of consciousness, some which are living and carbon based.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: And some which aren't.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: And so tell us more about this idea you developed
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: of humans traveling inside alloys. This concept of ships that
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: are essentially living beings that have as you say this
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: like non organic component that could travel through space. That's
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: a really cool and creative idea. Haven't seen somewhere else where?
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Did that come from?
• 29:32
  Speaker 7: That came from me wanting a cool and different way
• 29:35
  Speaker 7: of space travel. I'm a very idea driven writer, and
• 29:41
  Speaker 7: so when I sat down to envision this, I knew
• 29:44
  Speaker 7: I wanted it to be a space opera, and I thought,
• 29:47
  Speaker 7: what can I do with space travel that hasn't been
• 29:50
  Speaker 7: done that I have seen? And it's like, we've seen
• 29:53
  Speaker 7: sentient spaceships, right, We've seen all the old school spaceships
• 29:59
  Speaker 7: from the previous century that are warp drives, etc. Ion
• 30:02
  Speaker 7: drives that are just very complicated machines, and we've even.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Seen living spacecraft.
• 30:10
  Speaker 7: Again, I will raise the example of Binti, but also
• 30:14
  Speaker 7: in Escaping Exodus by Niki Drayden. Some of these I
• 30:17
  Speaker 7: haven't actually read them, but I remember from a blurb
• 30:20
  Speaker 7: one of these like dragons in spaceships type things. Right,
• 30:24
  Speaker 7: So we've considered having creatures that can transport us in space.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: So I guess the natural progression.
• 30:33
  Speaker 7: To me was, well, why not people, you know, especially
• 30:37
  Speaker 7: if we can genetically engineer them. We know whales can
• 30:40
  Speaker 7: get pretty big, we know dinosaurs can get even bigger,
• 30:44
  Speaker 7: and certainly some of those animals were large enough to
• 30:48
  Speaker 7: have a small human being inside them, right, or even
• 30:51
  Speaker 7: a regular sized human being so then it's just a
• 30:53
  Speaker 7: matter of in this magical thousand years from now genetically
• 30:56
  Speaker 7: engineered future, creating a person who has organs that can
• 31:01
  Speaker 7: carry smaller people inside them and also has organs that
• 31:05
  Speaker 7: allow them to travel through space to absorb energy from
• 31:10
  Speaker 7: sunlight to basically meditate their way across interstellar distances.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: I definitely went a little, you know, maybe.
• 31:19
  Speaker 7: Arguably quite a bit towards space fantasy with this, Like
• 31:22
  Speaker 7: I came up with science ish reasons and ways that
• 31:25
  Speaker 7: all of these things could happen. But certainly there's no
• 31:29
  Speaker 7: such thing as a family feel today, right, And there's
• 31:32
  Speaker 7: no such thing as reality transits where you can you
• 31:35
  Speaker 7: can see all of space time in your mind and
• 31:39
  Speaker 7: decide where you want to go.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I wish, yes, right, But I definitely got very Jonah
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: and the space whale vibes from that sort of structure. Yeah,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: very cool.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: I loved how much you thought through what it would
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: be like to live in an alley. So my first
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: thought was like, oh my gosh, if I was living
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: inside of someone else, every step I took I would
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: worry about and like private you know, a person who
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: has social anxiety and needs them alone time, and how
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: do you get alone time when you are like living
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: in the person who is transporting you? And and I like, yeah,
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: how long did it take to think through all of
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: the like, you know, what would be the social implications
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: of talking to the vehicle.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: That's taking you from place to place and not being
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: able to escape.
• 32:20
  Speaker 7: Yeah, before we get into that, I do want to
• 32:25
  Speaker 7: point out that females are already vehicles for other people.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: That right, like I was.
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: Suddenly like, yeah, there's there's this one other obvious parallel
• 32:36
  Speaker 5: in my mind where it's like, yes, we can already
• 32:39
  Speaker 5: carry people around inside as granted they are people who
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: are highly dependent on us and symbiotic or parasitic in
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: some ways, and for a long time are arguably not
• 32:50
  Speaker 5: people yet and then they.
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: Kick you and it's uncomfortable, and then I guess that's
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: what made me think about, like, you know, if you're
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: walking around inside, like is it uncapable to have those footsteps?
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: And that definitely was on my mind.
• 33:01
  Speaker 7: You know, in late stages of pregnancy, it's pretty clear
• 33:04
  Speaker 7: that there is a person in there with a will.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: And a lot of punching and really bad sleep habits.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: So definitely, you know, in.
• 33:16
  Speaker 7: Thinking about transportation in general. Right, And once I had
• 33:20
  Speaker 7: the main character Gianthe inside the other main character of
• 33:23
  Speaker 7: Aha having this chamber, I was like, she's an adult,
• 33:26
  Speaker 7: She's going to need some privacy in there, right, And
• 33:30
  Speaker 7: they're also going to need ways to communicate, and it's
• 33:32
  Speaker 7: got to not be squishy, like I think it would
• 33:35
  Speaker 7: be really disconcerting as a mammal to constantly be in
• 33:41
  Speaker 7: an environment that's warm and squishy. Like maybe eventually we
• 33:44
  Speaker 7: would adapt and get used to it, but you know,
• 33:47
  Speaker 7: we definitely prefer our firmer surfaces where we have always
• 33:51
  Speaker 7: constructed our houses and footing are pretending waterbeds don't exist.
• 33:57
  Speaker 7: I mean they do, but you wouldn't want your entire
• 34:00
  Speaker 7: floor to be a waterbed, right like.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: You could spaceship I mean I read that in the seventies, right.
• 34:09
  Speaker 7: No, you're yeah, well, there is that story where there's
• 34:14
  Speaker 7: a male space traveler inside a highly sexual, very very
• 34:18
  Speaker 7: soft spacecraft.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: And I'm just I'm blanking on the name.
• 34:23
  Speaker 7: It'll come to me at some point, or hopefully one
• 34:25
  Speaker 7: of your listeners will know what I'm talking about. I
• 34:27
  Speaker 7: very distinctly remember that story because wow, that was quite creative,
• 34:32
  Speaker 7: and so you know, putting all that together and thinking
• 34:34
  Speaker 7: about again, what examples do we have today on Earth?
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, we have.
• 34:40
  Speaker 7: Snail shells, right, shells are exuded from the soft part
• 34:44
  Speaker 7: of the snail, the calcium, and so why not be
• 34:49
  Speaker 7: able to you know, exude it the same way internally, right,
• 34:52
  Speaker 7: just like and we have bones obviously too, right, So
• 34:55
  Speaker 7: you just need to map it into something that's more
• 34:58
  Speaker 7: spheroidal shape. Right, So then the human being can be
• 35:02
  Speaker 7: in there moving around relatively comfortably, and the alloy pilot
• 35:06
  Speaker 7: that's carrying them also will experience less discomfort.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: Hopefully.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Let's just hope nobody sits on their bladder, right. All right,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: we have lots more questions for our author and guests,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: but first we have to take a quick break. All right,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: we're back and we're talking to Divia, author of Mehru,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: about the science of her fictional universe. Something I really
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: enjoyed in the book is the angle where the alloies
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: are sort of the grown ups. Humans are sort of
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: like have misbehaved in the past and made some big mistakes,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: and the alloies are sort of like now they're to
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: keep them in charge. It makes the humans somehow feel
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know, almost subhuman in comparison, and specifically in
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: your book, human have attempted to terraform Mars and ended
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: up destroying it in the process. So people are talking
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: about terraforming Mars. Elon Musk has plans to live there,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: and he talks about like nuking the polar ice caps
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: to release additional atmosphere. What are your thoughts for some
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: of the wild proposals for how to go about terraforming Mars.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Are you afraid we're going to end up living your novel?
• 36:20
  Speaker 7: I don't know that afraid is the right word there.
• 36:22
  Speaker 7: I certainly see the possibility of hitting tipping points in
• 36:29
  Speaker 7: terraforming that we don't even know exist right law of
• 36:32
  Speaker 7: unintended consequences, And again, we don't have good enough simulations, modeling,
• 36:36
  Speaker 7: and understanding of geophysics to be one hundred percent confident
• 36:41
  Speaker 7: of what we're doing. I have similar concerns with a
• 36:43
  Speaker 7: lot of the atmospheric engineering that they're talking about right
• 36:46
  Speaker 7: now to reduce global warming, right like spraying silicates and
• 36:49
  Speaker 7: aerosols and all kinds of things in the upper atmosphere
• 36:52
  Speaker 7: to try to reflect sunlight, like, okay, we could do,
• 36:57
  Speaker 7: and there are models, But how confident are we you
• 37:01
  Speaker 7: know that these aren't going to have bad repercressions down
• 37:06
  Speaker 7: the line. But at the end of the day, we
• 37:08
  Speaker 7: are human beings today. We are not the human beings
• 37:11
  Speaker 7: of Meru who were properly chastised and actually chose to
• 37:17
  Speaker 7: be confined on earth, untreated in some ways like a
• 37:20
  Speaker 7: children right to be well taken care of and still
• 37:23
  Speaker 7: live very free, good lives, but let go of a
• 37:26
  Speaker 7: lot of human nature and allow their genes to be altered.
• 37:30
  Speaker 7: We're not there, obviously. We're here today, and in today's world,
• 37:34
  Speaker 7: the dominant factor is still survival and expansion and consumption.
• 37:41
  Speaker 7: And then you know, as long as those are the
• 37:43
  Speaker 7: things that are driving our social values and our progress
• 37:47
  Speaker 7: and our ideas of progress, I don't know that we're
• 37:49
  Speaker 7: going to stop the elon Musks of tomorrow from taking
• 37:55
  Speaker 7: action right and maybe to some extent, damn the consequences,
• 37:59
  Speaker 7: because you know, we did that with the industrial age,
• 38:01
  Speaker 7: and I don't think there are huge regrets with the
• 38:05
  Speaker 7: level of industry and technology that we have today, but
• 38:09
  Speaker 7: I hope that there are at least some regrets in
• 38:11
  Speaker 7: how we got here right and the level of side
• 38:16
  Speaker 7: effects pollution, climate change, and everything else that we are
• 38:19
  Speaker 7: now dealing with and having rushed into it without thinking
• 38:23
  Speaker 7: it through.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: So you mentioned that at one point in the future
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: you're hoping that there'll be sentient machines that will have
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: full rights with humans with artificial intelligence like just booming lately.
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: What do you think the future looks like? There?
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: Are we close? Is that going to happen in our lifetime?
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: And like, what is the line at which the machines
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: should be getting rights?
• 38:46
  Speaker 7: Yeah, that that's not a line. Unfortunately, it's a zone
• 38:51
  Speaker 7: or even just an infinite continuum. And unfortunately, I suspect
• 38:57
  Speaker 7: that our incentive structure is in the wrong places for
• 39:02
  Speaker 7: giving machines rights, and we're probably going to get to
• 39:08
  Speaker 7: it far later than we should. Daniel knows from my
• 39:11
  Speaker 7: previous novel Machinehood. I got into this quite a bit
• 39:15
  Speaker 7: more there, into this exact question of you know, how
• 39:18
  Speaker 7: will we know when they're sentient? Will we want to
• 39:21
  Speaker 7: admit to ourselves when they're sentient when it's not to
• 39:25
  Speaker 7: you know, to our advantage to do so?
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 39:28
  Speaker 7: And I think that's where some of the existential fears
• 39:30
  Speaker 7: come in that people like Stephen Hawking have expressed that, well,
• 39:34
  Speaker 7: the ais are at some point going to be sentient
• 39:39
  Speaker 7: and intelligence enough to like rise up and either destroy
• 39:44
  Speaker 7: us or claim personhood whether we like it or not.
• 39:47
  Speaker 7: And you know, possibly violence will ensue, because that's what
• 39:51
  Speaker 7: biological creations always do. I'm not convinced that violence has
• 39:55
  Speaker 7: to ensue for artificial intelligences. I'm not convinced we know
• 40:00
  Speaker 7: what sentience and consciousness is today. We don't have good,
• 40:03
  Speaker 7: testable definitions of any of these things, and they're very fuzzy,
• 40:07
  Speaker 7: and it's sort of like, what was I forget who
• 40:10
  Speaker 7: said the quote about pornography and obscenity that I know
• 40:14
  Speaker 7: it when I see it, right, there's very much that
• 40:16
  Speaker 7: kind of attitude. And yet I think you push people
• 40:20
  Speaker 7: on that and suddenly they're like, oh wait, you know,
• 40:23
  Speaker 7: is an ant sentient? Is it conscious? Does the ant
• 40:27
  Speaker 7: deserve rights just because it's less sentient and less conscious
• 40:30
  Speaker 7: than us? Like, at what point do things with some
• 40:34
  Speaker 7: iota of that deserve rights? Are plants? Sentient plants are
• 40:39
  Speaker 7: definitely conscious. We have experiments that have anesthetized plants and
• 40:43
  Speaker 7: put them to sleep, so there is some kind of
• 40:46
  Speaker 7: consciousness there.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: And that's where with Metu.
• 40:49
  Speaker 7: I decided to step past all of this into a
• 40:52
  Speaker 7: world in which everybody grants that there are degrees of
• 40:56
  Speaker 7: consciousness and sentience and also livingness. Right, what does it
• 41:02
  Speaker 7: mean to be alive? What is a life form versus
• 41:05
  Speaker 7: non life? If you have an android that is using
• 41:11
  Speaker 7: cultured human skin, but everything else inside is you know,
• 41:15
  Speaker 7: metal machine parts, is that android now biological because some
• 41:21
  Speaker 7: parts of it, you know, is it alive or is
• 41:23
  Speaker 7: it non living? Right?
• 41:25
  Speaker 6: Like?
• 41:25
  Speaker 7: It gets complicated so fast, And that's where I personally
• 41:29
  Speaker 7: prefer that we err on the side of too much
• 41:32
  Speaker 7: rather than too little. Like it's always better to give
• 41:34
  Speaker 7: too many rights than not enough.
• 41:36
  Speaker 6: It's not historically, how exactly exactly historically we've we've really
• 41:41
  Speaker 6: fallen on that, and so I'm hoping that going forward,
• 41:44
  Speaker 6: you know, we don't make that same mistake.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: So I asked you earlier your thoughts on whether Star
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Wars was fantasy or science fiction, because I was also
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: very curious about the physics of your interstellar travel. I
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: love that you invented a new way to do this.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: You know, I've read so many scientific novels. I felt
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: like I'd seen everything for how to get from Star
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: to star in less than a zillion years. So I
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: love that you have a new idea. And my question
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: is how much of the science did you develop that
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: of these family fields and famatons. Did you do a
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: whole like physics background only the tip of the iceberg
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: ended up in your novel, or did you want to
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: leave it a little bit fantastical.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: For the family fields. I gave it some thought.
• 42:24
  Speaker 7: I kind of took what I know about physics and
• 42:27
  Speaker 7: my own physics background, and figured, you know, we could
• 42:30
  Speaker 7: have something operating on scales different than what we can
• 42:33
  Speaker 7: measure today, and we can certainly have physics that we
• 42:36
  Speaker 7: aren't aware of today a thousand years from now.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: I guarantee you.
• 42:39
  Speaker 7: That we will right like that, you know, I will
• 42:42
  Speaker 7: put bet money. I like my science to fit my story,
• 42:47
  Speaker 7: so it's a very symbiotic relationship. And so I wanted
• 42:50
  Speaker 7: alloy pilots to be able to fly through interplanetary scales
• 42:55
  Speaker 7: of space, right and ultimately even intertellar and have a
• 42:58
  Speaker 7: way to gain momentum from these famiti fields, right. I
• 43:02
  Speaker 7: wanted it to be an energy source so that they
• 43:04
  Speaker 7: didn't have to use fuel, so that there wasn't a
• 43:06
  Speaker 7: need to mine consume and pollute, right, Like, I wanted
• 43:10
  Speaker 7: to break that cycle. And I'm sufficiently aware of current
• 43:14
  Speaker 7: physics at least the solar power and light isn't going
• 43:18
  Speaker 7: to be enough, right, So I came up with these
• 43:21
  Speaker 7: fields that have gradients. And what I liked about that
• 43:25
  Speaker 7: was that in my mind, you know, sort of like
• 43:28
  Speaker 7: when we draw space time and we draw curvatures, that
• 43:32
  Speaker 7: it's an easy way to give readers something to grab
• 43:35
  Speaker 7: onto that these pilots are going, you know, upslope or downslope, right,
• 43:40
  Speaker 7: So it's something that we can relate to as human
• 43:43
  Speaker 7: readers as Okay, when we go down we get faster,
• 43:46
  Speaker 7: and when we go up we go slower.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: So we have this in.
• 43:49
  Speaker 7: Other physical fields. It's just that we don't necessarily always
• 43:52
  Speaker 7: talk about it in those terms. So I decided, yes,
• 43:55
  Speaker 7: there are there are gradients, there are things that they
• 43:57
  Speaker 7: can measure. So I think I a lot of that
• 44:01
  Speaker 7: in the book. But I tried to do it in
• 44:02
  Speaker 7: a more fun way rather than like, and now I
• 44:04
  Speaker 7: will give you a physics lecture I made up.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: You know, are you implying physics lectures are not fun?
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: Is that what you just did?
• 44:13
  Speaker 7: I imply that they're not necessarily fun to read in
• 44:17
  Speaker 7: the middle of a science fiction novel, my caveat. But
• 44:20
  Speaker 7: you know, even still, I've had readers comment that there's
• 44:23
  Speaker 7: too much terminology and that it's too complicated in science
• 44:27
  Speaker 7: because I think when you start throwing around where it's
• 44:29
  Speaker 7: like fields and gradients, some people are already like, I
• 44:34
  Speaker 7: don't know what these mean, and now I'm confused, versus
• 44:38
  Speaker 7: readers who you know, maybe have some understanding and familiarity
• 44:42
  Speaker 7: with those concepts. Right, So obviously it depends on the audience.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Well, I find that most science fiction is really technology fiction,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: like here's some new widget, or here's some new what's
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: it that does this thing? Very few actually dig into
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: the science and really write science fiction. And in your book,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: I felt like I was in another universe that was
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: in a universe where the science was fundamentally different from
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: our universe, and that was exciting to me. I was like,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: I want to know more, and how does this work?
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to dig into this and stuff, and
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: so yeah, I wanted more. I wanted math.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: I did want math.
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: I thought you hit the right the right tone, So like,
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: I don't I'm not a physicist. I know a little
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: bit of physics, and I thought you explained it well
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: enough that I thought, for a moment, gosh, I don't
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: remember you said specifically. I thought, I don't remember Daniel
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: ever talking about family fields, which makes me think that
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: maybe this is a thing in this world that doesn't exist.
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: But I'm going with it, and like anyway, I thought
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: it very nicely blended into the world. I believed it.
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: I wasn't sure, but I didn't need that.
• 45:42
  Speaker 7: That's awesome, And I will tell you, Kelly, You're not
• 45:44
  Speaker 7: the only one to think that I wasn't inventing physics
• 45:47
  Speaker 7: for this book, to which I made a little like
• 45:50
  Speaker 7: oh no face, like somebody going out there like, why
• 45:54
  Speaker 7: can't we build family spaceships today? Because I'm not real.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Sorry, you don't know, it's not real, right, That's.
• 46:04
  Speaker 7: True, It's true, it could, And I will admit I
• 46:07
  Speaker 7: was inspired by dark matter and dark energy and that
• 46:10
  Speaker 7: something needs to be accelerating our universe outwards.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: So why not Fama de fields? You know?
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about your process of
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: writing the book. Are you a plotter or a panther
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: or somewhere in between.
• 46:21
  Speaker 7: These days, I'm definitely one hundred percent plotter. I learned
• 46:25
  Speaker 7: my lesson with my first novel that a loose outline
• 46:27
  Speaker 7: isn't isn't necessarily the best idea for me and for
• 46:30
  Speaker 7: the way I like to write, mostly because I hate revising.
• 46:34
  Speaker 7: I much prefer the drafting stage, and so the more
• 46:38
  Speaker 7: you can plan out, the better.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: I will say that actual.
• 46:43
  Speaker 7: Plot as a plotter is my weak point. I'm much
• 46:46
  Speaker 7: better at world building. I enjoy it. I love thinking
• 46:50
  Speaker 7: about my characters and their interactions and story and themes.
• 46:55
  Speaker 7: And then when it comes to the actual like nitty
• 46:57
  Speaker 7: gritty what happens next, and just steal liberally from other stories,
• 47:02
  Speaker 7: and then because of all the other stuff, it changes
• 47:05
  Speaker 7: enough that it becomes my own plot. But I found that, yeah,
• 47:09
  Speaker 7: I'm not very good.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: At inventing my own plot.
• 47:11
  Speaker 7: Maybe that will change with experience, but for now, I
• 47:15
  Speaker 7: encourage all artists to steal liberally from other artists as
• 47:18
  Speaker 7: long as they then, let's say, chisel away until it
• 47:22
  Speaker 7: becomes their own.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: My husband is an artist, and he agrees with that completely.
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: He says it all the time. So I heard you're
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: working at a sequel. Can you tell us anything about that?
• 47:32
  Speaker 7: I can. There's already pre orders up, so I'm definitely
• 47:35
  Speaker 7: committed to this sequel. Without giving too much away for
• 47:39
  Speaker 7: readers of Menu, I will say that whereas book one
• 47:45
  Speaker 7: is largely a space adventure, as I'm sure they could
• 47:48
  Speaker 7: tell from our conversation, book two concentrates more on adventure
• 47:53
  Speaker 7: around the globe and my very loose elevator pitches. It's
• 47:57
  Speaker 7: a bit around the world in eighty days and a
• 48:00
  Speaker 7: bit Greta Thunberg's you know, eco challenge to travel with
• 48:05
  Speaker 7: minimal footprints, and I kind of mash those two together
• 48:08
  Speaker 7: into this world, and there's a time skip, there's a
• 48:12
  Speaker 7: different set of characters that book two focuses on. So
• 48:15
  Speaker 7: it's not really a direct sequel so much as you know,
• 48:18
  Speaker 7: part of the series set in this world.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: And when can we have that in our hands? Do
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: we know yet?
• 48:24
  Speaker 7: No, because this author is going to be late. We
• 48:29
  Speaker 7: were supposed to have it in the world sometime in
• 48:32
  Speaker 7: February of twenty twenty four, but I'm not super happy
• 48:37
  Speaker 7: with my manuscript and I would like to be before
• 48:39
  Speaker 7: I get it out there, so it'll it'll probably be
• 48:43
  Speaker 7: if I had to guess summer, summer or early fall
• 48:47
  Speaker 7: twenty twenty four hopefully, But like I said, you can
• 48:50
  Speaker 7: pre order it today. So if you love book one
• 48:55
  Speaker 7: that much, you know, definitely show your support for book
• 48:57
  Speaker 7: two because publishers like to see that maybe there will
• 49:00
  Speaker 7: be a book three.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: I love that you're already selling copies even though it's
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: not finished, right, it's finished ish, finished ish, Like everything
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: every part of my life is finished.
• 49:12
  Speaker 7: Is yes, I've gotten to write the words the end.
• 49:15
  Speaker 7: So there is a manuscript. It's just you know, it
• 49:18
  Speaker 7: needs a little bit more than spit and polish.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: Let's say, all right, well, thanks very much for joining us.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: Tell us where people can find a copy of me Room.
• 49:26
  Speaker 7: Hopefully anywhere books are sold. In most of the English
• 49:31
  Speaker 7: speaking world and some parts of the non English speaking world.
• 49:35
  Speaker 7: You can find it on audio, ebook and trade paperback.
• 49:39
  Speaker 7: I will always encourage people to go to bookshop or
• 49:42
  Speaker 7: their local indie bookstore just to support, especially if you're
• 49:45
  Speaker 7: buying print books. I will also say, if you're going
• 49:48
  Speaker 7: to buy it for your kindle, starting on May first,
• 49:52
  Speaker 7: it's going to be on discount. I think it's part
• 49:55
  Speaker 7: of Asian and Pacific Islander Month in America, so at
• 50:01
  Speaker 7: least in the US you'll be able to get it
• 50:03
  Speaker 7: a little bit cheaper if ebook is your jam.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks very much for coming on. We
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: really enjoyed chatting with you about all these hard questions.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, and you know I love hard questions.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: All right, that was super fun interview, Kelly. What do
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: you think about that?
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: I had so much fun and I can't wait for
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: the next.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Book me too. I'm just glad that there are people
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: out there thinking about other universes and what it's like
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: to be human in them and the politics of it,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: and then setting out compelling stories that entertain me for hours.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: I'm just glad I live in the universe where science
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: fiction exists.
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: Me too.
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: And I'm also glad that there are authors who can
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: have positive takes on how humanity is going to move
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: forward eventually.
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: I like positive books.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: And she was also realistic. She wasn't promising she was
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: going to finish the next novel anytime soon.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: Right, Yes, like that about her too. I'm sure my
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: editor would like me to channel set a little.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: Bit more in the future, all right, And thanks to
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: all of our listeners for coming along on this ride
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: into another universe. We have a lot of fun in
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: these episodes. And I hear that a lot of you
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: enjoy listening to them. So thanks again everyone for listening,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: and thanks Kelly for joining us today, Thanks.
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: For having had a lot of fun.
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: Bye everyone, all right, everyone tune in next time. Thanks
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.