Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / The SF Universes of Vandana Singh

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The SF Universes of Vandana Singh · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Orkay, if we're living in a simulation, whoa, whoa,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: whoa Wait, if what do you mean? Is it a
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: foregone conclusion that we are in a simulation? Just hear
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: me out. If we're living in a simulation, do you
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: ever wonder why why you're so paranoid? No? Why are
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the masters of this simulation doing this to us? Are
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: we part of some crazy experiment? Oh? Man, I hope
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: we're not like an experiment in a middle school science project,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: because I know how those go. Given how this year
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: has gone, I'm thinking it's probably some bitter grad students somewhere. Man,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I need it. It's all the follows the professor out
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: there right ignoring their grad students Blame the professor. It's
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: so easy. I am more handmade cartoonists and the creator
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: of PhD comment. I. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: and I'm always kind to anything in my simulated universes,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: in case, in case there's a point system, you mean,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: like a score, in case they're experiencing it. Right, when
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: you build artificial intelligence in your simulated universe, you don't know.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Maybe they really are alive, and when you pull the plug,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: maybe they really do die. I thought maybe you were
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: worried that somebody's watching the simulation and judging you. Well,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: if I'm in a simulation, that, yeah, maybe somebody will
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: punish me for treating my simulations badly. Karma. The universe
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: does work on karma, on some kind of point system.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I should teach the folks in my simulation to treat
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: their simulations well. Welcome to a podcast Daniel and Jorge
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio, in
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: which we talk about all the amazing things in our universe,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: the way it works, the way it doesn't work, the
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: things that we understand about it, and the things that
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: we don't understand about it, and all the hidden mysteries,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: all the things that we're hoping to understand, the future
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: revolutions in knowledge that will change the very nature of
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the universe as we know it. Yeah, we like to
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: talk about all the amazing things to discover out there,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and we like to talk about the things that are
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: especially a real and sometimes that's right. And in the
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: group of folks trying to figure out the universe is
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: of course you. Your curiosity helps power the human experiment
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: that is science, pushing forward on the boundary of knowledge
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and science fiction authors who are thinking about the ways
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: that the universe might be. Could it be this way,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: could it be that way? What kind of incredible technology
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: or science discoveries are waiting around the corner. Yeah, because
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, somebody needs license to do that.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: You know, just come up with random things and see
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: how it looks on the page without having to worry
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: about pesky things like the laws of physics. You think
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: there should be a license for that, Like you gotta
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: take a test see if you can come up with
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: good ideas. Otherwise you're not allowed to write science pictures.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: To make complete stop at the end of paragraphs or
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: do you signal plot points? That's important. If you can't
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: parallel park the ending, you shouldn't even get in the car. Yeah,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: but we like to talk about not just the big
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: ideas that's science to start thinking about, but even maybe
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the ideas that science fiction authors are thinking about way
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: way in the future and way way out in the
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: creative spaces that exists in between science theories. That's right,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: because there's a lot in common between science and science fiction.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: In science, we are playing detectives, we are trying to
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: figure out what are the rules of the universe? Are
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: they this? Are they that? Could they be this other thing?
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Does the evidence line up with one theory or the other?
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: And science fiction authors are doing the same thing. They're
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: wondering what would the universe be like if it worked
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: this way or that way? What would the human experience
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: be if we could do this thing or had this technology.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: It's really very similar and they build off of each other. Yeah,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: do they ever talk, Daniel, Do you ever have like
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: science science fiction conferences or do you just do it
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: in chat rooms online? That's what novels are for, right,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: They write their ideas down, we read them and we go, oh,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: I like it. I'm gonna go see if that's real,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: or I'm gonna go make that technology happen. I see.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: But there is a small overlap. There are practicing scientists
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: who are also published science fiction authors, and there are
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: successful science fiction authors who have a real training in
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: science history a career of doing science. And that's especially
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: amazing and impressive to me. Do you think they need
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: to put an asterisk maybe next to their fictional work,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: you know, just to be clear, because it could be
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: a little confusing. It's kind of like when you know,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: like a CNN anchor will be pitching their you know,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: government political thriller. I'm always like, well, you know, most
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: of the stuff put out by theoretical physicists is fiction anyway.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, very little of it corresponds to reality. So
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: I see it just lacks a plot and characters and
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: dramatic attention. Yeah, but you know, they don't know if
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: it's real. They're just like they're trying to build old
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: hypothetical universe. They're trying to see could this be reality?
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Could it work? And in the same way, at least,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: good science fiction tries to build a self consistent hypothetical
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: reality and asks what would it be like to live
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: in that reality? And also could it be ours? Interesting?
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, today we'll be continuing our series of
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: episodes in which Daniel talks to well known science fiction
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: authors about their work, about their process, about the science
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: in their work. And we like to talk about the
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: science of those stories here on the podcast. That's right,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: because we are curious about how the universe works, and
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: we wonder why does it work this way and not
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: the other way? And so for the masters of these universes,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: the authors of these crazy ideas. We like to hear,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: why did you build your universe this way? Or does
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: this really work with that? Or where do these ideas
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: come from? So to be on the podcast, we'll be
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: talking about the science fiction universe of Vandana sing the
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: That's right, and I really enjoyed reading her stories. She's
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: a bit of an unusual entry in our series because
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: she doesn't write novels. She's mostly an author of short
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: fiction novellas and short stories. But her stories are really
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: deeply scientific, Like each one is actually science fiction, not
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: technology fiction. It's like, imagine if the science of the
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: universe were this way, not what if we invented this
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: gizmo or had this technology? Wow, So do you think
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: that's like a step further than most science fiction, Like
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: most science fictions you're saying, just kind of makes technology up.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: But she's here like changing the laws of physics. Yeah,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: most science fiction really is engineering fiction. It's you know,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: could we build this thing? Could we figure out how
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: to make this kind of ship or that kind of
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: laser or whatever. But I think the most interesting and
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: fascinating kind of idea is, yeah, let's change the laws
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: of physics, or what if the laws of physics were
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: different from what we imagined. There's another author we've talked
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: about on the podcast before, Greg Egan, who writes really deep,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: fascinating ideas like that, And I think that dev and
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Dennising is in that same category. Interesting. You know, normally
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: I would argue for a name change to give engineering
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: its due, but I don't think I want the word
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: engineering associated with fiction. You know, maybe let's just keep
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: it at science fiction. That's right. I don't want my
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: bridge designed by somebody who also writes fiction. And you don't, right,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: or like you don't want your doctor, your medical doctor,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: to also be you know, a fantasy author. Right, here's
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: your prescription and here's my littist fiction. Hoops, wait, I
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: switched them up. Which is which Again, it's about really
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: handsome and beautiful magical healer that uses quantum stones to
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: cure your diseases. But trust me, this medicine, Wilwards, Oh boy,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: quantum stones. But anyways, she is an interesting author of
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: science fiction because she is also a scientist. She's a
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: professor of physics, that's right. I know her because I
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: found her stories and I read and then I enjoyed them.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Then I went to track her down to see if
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: she'd be willing to appear on the podcast, and I
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: discovered not only does she have a PhD in theoretical
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: particle physics, so wow, she knows her stuff. She's a
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: professor of physics. Like right now when I spoke to her,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: she had just finished teaching a class, So she's a
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: practicing physicist today as well as a practicing science fiction author. Wow,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: you have now two members in your club, Danniel of
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: physics Professors. Wait, now, don't you have several? Aren't there
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: several of you? There are several. Yeah, we have Greg
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Benford here at u c I. He's a pretty well
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: known science fiction author and until recently an active member
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: of our department. There was Alistair Reynolds. He worked at
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: E s A doing astrophysics before leaving that actually to
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: pursue science fiction writing and becoming massively successful. So yeah,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: there's a good number of folks who have done this crossover.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: And so we'll get into her stories. And as you said,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: she's a little bit different that she write short stories.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: So today we'll be talking about two of her stories
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: in this episode, and they're titled Sailing and Tarsa and
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Perry Peteria. Now, Daniel, how can we read our work? Well,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: she's got collections of short stories out. These two stories
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: appear in a collection called Ambiguity Machines. She also has
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: another collection which is really wonderful, which even the title
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: is fantastic. It's called The Woman Who Thought She Was
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: a Planet. Wow, that is pretty intriguing just from the title. Yeah,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: and it's not like somebody went to the buffet and
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: over eight and then felt like a planet. It's a
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: much deeper, interesting dive into what aliens could be like.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: So I totally recommend both collections. I thoroughly enjoyed both
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: of them are interesting. All right, so let's talk about
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: the first of these stories. But you said that there's
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: a general theme about these stories that she writes. Yeah,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: the general theme in all of her stories is that
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: the universe contains mysteries, that what we see is not
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: everything that is, and that scientists can crack this open
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: and reveal deep new truths about the universe. And this
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: is definitely a concept up that resonates with me. I mean,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: you just look back into the history of science and
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: you see, like the revolution of quantum mechanics where we
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: revealed that the universe works completely differently from the way
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: our intuition works, or relativity that tells us that nonsensical
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: things like different people can have different accountings of events
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: and both be correct. You know, these moments where we
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: shake the foundations of our understanding and our intuition and
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: realize that the way we're looking at the universe is
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: more a product of how our brains work and how
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: we've developed than the fundamental truth. Those are exciting moments
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: in science, and I think that those lie ahead, and
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: it's really fun in her stories to see her speculate
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: about potential future revolutions or how we might reveal new
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: truths about the universe. Interesting. Now, are her stories and
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: kind of about those moments of discovery or do they
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: sort of assume those moments and then you know, figures
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: out how the world would be like if we made
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: those discoveries. Yeah. Both. She explores both kinds of things
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and other kinds of relationships with it. Sometimes they're about
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: the scientists who are making those discoveries, and sometimes it's
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: about how the world is different deep into the future
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: after you've made that discovery and you have to sort
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: of unpack it for yourself to realize, Wow, my universe
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: is different from the one in this story. What is
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: the difference? What is the thing that they figured out
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: that makes their world different. So she's explored from a
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: lot of different angles. Right. So the first story is
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: called Sailing the n Tarsa and it's kind of about
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: some an interesting concept that I've never heard about. It's
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: called invisible particles. Yeah, it's about invisible particles. So in
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: this story, we live in the universe far in the
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: future where science has discovered something fascinating that the universe
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: is filled with invisible particles we hadn't been aware of previously.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: And more than just that, these invisible particles have currents,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: so they are flying through the universe, carrying with them
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: vast amounts of energy because they're flowing through the universe.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Now are they invisible? And also like they can't interact
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: with electro magnetic energy or you just can't see them,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: but you can interact with them. You can't see them,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: and we can't use current ideas about physics or our
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: technology to interact with them, which is why they went
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: undiscovered for so long. And you know, this is really
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: reminiscent of where we are today in science, though we'll
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: dig into that more in a moment. You know, you
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: can imagine, for example, before we knew about new trinos,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: our universe is filled with new trinos passing through us.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Like you hold your hand out and there are billions
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: of new trinos passing through your fingernail at every moment,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: carrying vast amounts of energy. But because we can't interact
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: with them very much, we hardly notice. They don't bounce
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: off our thumbs, they don't push us, they don't give
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: us cancer. And so in this story, the scientists have
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: found some new kind of particle previously unknown to humanity
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: or to science that's flying through the universe and they
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: can't really interact with it. But you know, to just
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: discover this kind of particle, you have to be able
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: to interact with it, otherwise it might just exist and
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: you don't even know about it. Right, So in this story,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: they have figured out some way to interact with this
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: invisible particle, some way to discover it and then take
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: advantage of it to harness it. How do they take
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: advantage Well, she doesn't get into the gory details of that,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: but they build something which in the story is called
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: alt matter, some new kind of matter which can interact
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: both with us and with these invisible particles. And if
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: you fashion it into big sheets, for example, then it
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: can capture the momentum of these particles. It's like sailing
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: through the universe on light, but instead it's capturing the
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: energy of these previously invisible particles. And so they are
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: you saying, there are currents, like over here, it's flowing
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: this way, and over there it's this invisible matter is
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: flowing the other way. Precisely, it's like you discover that
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: you're on an island and the water around you is flat,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: but there are currents of air. And if you just
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: build a sale, you can get pushed from one island
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: to the other. But you have to build something which
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: can capture the momentum of the wind. So here the
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: wind are these previously unknown invisible particles, and if you
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: build something which can interact with them, something which captures
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: their momentum, then you can capture the momentum and transfer
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: it to your spaceship. For example, go with the flow
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: of the universe. Yeah, the invisible flow. Yeah. And it's
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: fascinating because you know we have this idea of a
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: solar sale, like that you could fly through the universe
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: on light that comes from the sun. You build a
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: big reflective sheet and when photons hit it, they bounce off,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: and that gives you momentum and you fly forward. We
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: have a whole fun podcast episode about that. But the
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: big problem with that is that you can't really travel
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: between the stars that way very easily, because once you
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: get far from the star, there's not much light anymore. Right, Yeah,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: you run out of solar wind. Yeah, you run out
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: of solar wind. But if the universe is filled with
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: these currents of particles and you know where those currents are,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: then you can ride those currents between the stars. So
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: in the story, this creates this new opportunity to build
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: small ships that don't have to carry a lot of
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: fuel but can get between stars pretty efficiently. Right, And
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: so this lets humanity in this story sail between stars
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: because now we have like this kind of like free
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: source of energy almost that we can used to get
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: to other stars because it's hard to like bring all
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: the fuel with you. Yeah, it's like the development of
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: a sailboat, you know, beats a rowboat every time because
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: you can just chill out and have the wind push you,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: and you can sail across the ocean without having to
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: bring folks that are going to row you across the ocean.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: So it suddenly makes your ships have a much, much
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: greater range. Yeah cool, all right. So then in the story,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, they discover this technology and these invisible particles,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: but it's not the first time that they send people
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: on into space. Yeah. So this is like the core
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: nuggetive the idea, right that she's really thought deeply about
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: how to build an alternative universe, and then she thought
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: about what would that be, Like what story can you
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: tell in that universe? And the story takes place at
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: a time just after this discovery, and so previously humanity
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: has sent some big slow ship an arc to some
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: other star before they have this technology, and they haven't
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: heard back from it, and they wonder like, is it alive,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: did it crash? Did survived? Are they they're building things
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: happily or is it totally dead? So they send a
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: pilot in the ship equipped with these matter sales to
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: catch up to it and to figure out what's going on.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: And so most of the story is her journey and
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: wondering what happened to this art. It's like they send
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: out a huge rowboat out first, and then they're like, wait,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: we discovered sailboats. Let's go tell them, or let's catch
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: up to them, or what's the purpose. Can't they just
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: talk to them on the radio. Well, you know, light
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: speed is very slow, but this is just to send
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: somebody out to investigate, to say what happened to make
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: a connection. Can't the radio back? They haven't heard anything back,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: So I see they're not picking up the phone. Yeah,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: nobody's responding, and so the next step investigation is, you know,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: send some out there and see what happens. Maybe they're
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: transmitter broke or maybe they're all dead. Case it's about
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: the cable, guys. What you're saying, and he's going out there.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: The Internet is down on Alpha Centauri. Somebody go fix it.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Somebody's got to do it. All right, let's get into
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: the signs of sailing the entarsa and then these invisible particles.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. All right, we're
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: talking about this science fiction universe of Vandana Singh, and
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: we're talking about a couple of her stories, and this
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: first one it's called sailing the Atarsa and Daniel. You
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: were saying that they discovered invisible particles that have been
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: there in the universe that we had no idea about.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: It sounds really familiar. It does sounds familiar. It sounds
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: a lot like dark matter. Right. We know that the
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: universe is filled with all sorts of stuff we don't understand,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: and we know that there are kinds of matter that
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: we are not familiar with. We know that dark matter
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: is out there from how it's gravity affects the rotation
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: of galaxies and the structure of the universe and the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: shape of things very very early on, and all sorts
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: of other evidence. So we know it's there, but we
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: don't know what it is. So there really are currents
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: of invisible particles out there. Now. This idea of currents
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: is interesting to me because I remember that he told
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: me dark matter is cold, meaning it's not moving very much.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: That's right. Dark matter is pretty slow moving and heavy
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: in order to be consistent with how the universe forms.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't have to be totally stationary. Most likely
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: it's sort of like floating in diffused clouds and not
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: really going very far. But there might still be dark streams.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: There might be still be motion of the dark matter,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: and you know, those speeds could be significant on cosmological scales.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: You know, you can be moving pretty fast compared to
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: the think that's the title of your next novel, Daniel,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: dark winds. And even if dark matter is totally stationary,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: we actually do expect to feel a dark matter wind
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: because the Earth is moving right right. Dark matter is
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: stationary with respect to the galaxy. We're moving around the
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: center of the galaxy and we're moving around the Sun.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Even if dark matter is rotating the same speed around
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: the sider of the galaxy as we are, then you
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: would expect to be going sort of headways into the
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: dark matter as you go around the Sun, and then
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: the other direction through the dark matter. And so you
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: would feel a differential dark matter wind at different parts
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: of the year. So it would be sort of like
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: popping a parachute when you're in the middle of a
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: speedboat or something. Yeah, exactly, it could be. And so
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: if we discover dark matter and we find some way
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: to interact with it, and that's key, it might be
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: possible to take advantage of it. Because it's very massive,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: it has an enormous amount of energy just in being there.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: We might find some way to take advantage of it
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: to propel ourselves. But the key quest in there is
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: like to catch it? How to catch it? Yeah, because
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: we don't know how to interact with dark matter. All
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: we know is that dark matter feels gravity, and we
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: have no other way to see it. We have all
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: these experiments that are trying to interact with dark matter
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: in some other way. Maybe there's a new force, maybe
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: they use the weak force. So far none of those
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: have been successful. So even if dark matter is real,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: even if dark matter is out there, even if dark
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: matter is in a wind, the only way to make
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: this story real would be to be able to build
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: these alt matter sales, these things which somehow can interact
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: with our matter and the dark matter. And that's a
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: huge question mark, I guess maybe how would you see
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: it even plausible? Like would you have to like what
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: do you think it could be? Like you discover a
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: new kind of element maybe that interacts with it somehow,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: or or a new kind of particle that interacts with
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: both us and dark matter? Is that any way possible? Absolutely,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: we think that there might be some new particle like
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: a dark photon which could interact with dark matter and
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: our kind of matter. But the problem is that we've
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: been looking for that for a long time and we
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: haven't seen it, which means that if it does exist,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: it's pretty weak. And so this whole concept of sailing
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: on dark matter requires dark matter to push our matter,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: because we want to push ourselves and our ships, which
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: are made of our kind of matter, and so we
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: don't want that to be too weak. But it could be.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: It could be that it's very weak, but it happens,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: and then you just need to build like incredibly vast
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: sales in order to capture it. The way you could
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: try to capture neutrino energy, because neutrinos interact with us,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: but they're also again very very weak. So even though
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of energy pumped out by the Sun
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: in terms of neutrinos, we can't really capture it because
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: we have no way to interact with those neutrinos at
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: a high level. And yeah, we know neutrinos are going
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: by really fast, right, those we do know for sure
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: they have a lot of energy, that's right, They do
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: have a lot of energy. Mostly they're fast because they
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: have very low mass like neutrinos are almost massless, so
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: it doesn't take a lot of energy to make them
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: go really really fast. And that's actually how we know
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: the neutrinos are not the dark matter, because we think
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: the dark matter is heavy and slow moving, and neutrinos
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: are not that. But the underlying concept here that the
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: universe could be filled with invisible stuff and if we
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: crack those mysteries, then we might potentially give ourselves incredible
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: new powers. That is totally true that I think is
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: our situation. I think people will look back in a
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: hundred years or five hundred years and say, wow, look
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: how clueless those folks were. They had no idea everything
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: that was around them and all the things they can
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: do with right, And it has happened in the past
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: a lot too. Write Like you know, before physics in
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: the last century, we didn't know there was so much
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: energy in the nuclei of atom, for example, or we
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: didn't know that you can use quantum tunneling to take
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: photographs of atoms and small things. Absolutely, nuclear energy is
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: the perfect example because as you say, it's a vast,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: vast source of energy. Turns out all the matter around
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: us is very dense with energy, and it's not that
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: hard to crack it open. And so yeah, absolutely we
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: had no idea, Right, we had no idea. You understand
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: the way a matter works, in the way the universe works,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: then you can bend it to your will. So yeah,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: there's a payoff for basic science research and science fiction writing,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: science fiction writing and both. All right, let's talk about
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: her second story that you picked for this episode. It's
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: called Perry Peta da am I pronouncing that right? Yes?
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I think so, parapatea. It's a crazy story. And as
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: you'll hear in my interview with her crazy name for
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: a story, she even admits that this story is a
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: little bit nutty, but I loved it because it had
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: an idea in it I had never heard before. I'm intrigued.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: What's the idea? So the idea starts with one that's
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: fairly familiar, which is, what if our universe is a simulation?
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: So instead of being real, instead of everything we're discovering
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: and learning and seeing and experiencing being the product of
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: like actual physical things bouncing into each other, it's just
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: a simulation fed to us by some hute or somewhere,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: meaning that we don't actually interact with things. It's just
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: something that is made up by another set of actual
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: physical things in somewhere else. Yeah, exactly. And there's lots
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: of variations of this this, you know, from the matrix
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: where you're a brain in a vat plugged into a
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: computer simulation, or a deeper idea where your brain itself
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: is part of the simulation, and all sorts of variations
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: on that. But she came up with what I thought
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: was a really clever innovation on this idea, and that's
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: that the aliens are a little bit lazy. What do
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: you mean, I mean that they haven't quite finished the job.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: And so in her version, we are scientists in this simulation.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: We're trying to uncover the rules of the universe, which
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: turned out to be just you know, the source code
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: of the simulation. But they didn't quite finish the job.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: They haven't quite figured out how does this universe work?
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: You know, they have like a few functions that they
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: didn't quite rite or are a little bit sloppy. What
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: they pay attention as we the scientists in the simulation
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: try to figure it out. And when a scientist in
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: the simulation has a good idea thinks maybe the universe
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: works this way and comes up with some clever mathematical formulation.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: If the aliens like it, they make it real. What
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: and to you're the plot is like we are in
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the simulation figuring out what's happening, and the universe is
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: changing around us, like there's an update and then suddenly
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: everything is different. Yes, there's an update. And so if
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: you have a good idea, not only could you discover
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: that it's real, you could have been responsible for making
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: it real. Oh weird, it's pretty weird and nutty, and
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: you know, it gets into all sorts of hilarious stuff.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Like she talks about these anecdotes about people predicting particles
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: and then they're observed, and sometimes that just takes a
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: few years, and sometimes it takes like fifty years, Like
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: there's fifty years between predicting the hats boson and discovering it.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: And she's like, well, maybe it took the aliens a
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: little while to write that code. You know, it could
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: be hard, and it's like for sure that it wasn't
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: there before, Like somehow our scientists know for sure that
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: this feature wasn't in the software before, but now it is, Yeah,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: but now it is, and it's pretty fun. And it
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: takes place from the point of view of one of
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: these scientists, and she's thinking about the way the world works,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: and she starts to suspect that maybe this is the
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: way the world works. And then it goes into all
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: these deep layers because if she has come up with
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: this idea that this is how the universe works and
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: it's true, then has she is she responsible for making
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: this be the way the world works? Has she invented
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: the aliens by thinking of them? And so there's all
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: sorts of like philosophical layers there. What do you mean
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: she can invent the aliens like she thought aliens simulating
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: this was a good idea, and so somehow the aliens
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: made the aliens. Yeah, exactly. And then at the end,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: maybe she goes a little crazy. I don't want to
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: spoil it, but she wonders if she is actually one
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: of the aliens creating this universe. And so anyway, it
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: goes into fascinating little wrinkles of ideas. But it's definitely
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: a bit nutty. Nia would say, whoa, whoa, But it's
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: not something I've heard of before, you know, I think
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: of theoretical physicists as just proposing ideas and experimentalists figuring
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: out if they're true or not not, like theorists are
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: responsible for their ideas becoming true. I see, well, so
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I guess what you're saying. It's our universe is kind
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: of like the beta version? Is that possible? Like can
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: you make a universe that's not self consistent? Like that's
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: prone to bugs. It's a fascinating idea. There are some
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: issues with it, right as you say, don't you need
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: to work out all the details before you turn the
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: thing on? Well, you know, sometimes you turn something on
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: and you leave things fuzzy, right, You're like, I'll figure
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: that part out later, and then you flesh it out
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: when you get there. And you could imagine doing a
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: simulation is sort of like different levels of reality, different greeniness.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Like maybe the universe five thousand years ago, before we
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: were better at looking and stuff was a little fuzzier,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: you know. And as our technology developed, the aliens like
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: added more pixels to the universe, and as we develop
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: space telescope are like, oops, we better put something in
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: those other galaxies around than just having smudges. Let's brain
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: storm quick is the universe finite or anything. I don't
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: know what are the humans thinking. Whatever they do, you know,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: we'll follow that, like, let's invent the speed limit to
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the speed of lights, therefore they can't look out that far.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: All right? That sounds good, exactly exactly. It's awfully realistic,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: because you know, maybe these folks are just a bunch
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: of bitter, procrastinating grad students and they just haven't worked
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: out the details yet, I see. Or they're like, what
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: if we make it free to play? But then you
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: have to pay to get extra stuff in it? Oh? Man,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: I hate in universe purchases. That's a bummer. Another fascinating
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: angle is what if this is true? But what if
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: there are multiple intelligent species out there? What if some
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: other race of aliens are trying to figure out the
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: universe and they're coming up with different ideas, So like
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: their galaxy is now following a different set of laws
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: of physics than our galaxy. What happens if we ever
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: meet them? You know? It's confusing? Oh wow, So that happens.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Do we meet other aliens in the simulation? We do
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: not not in this story, but she speculates about what
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: that would mean. Does this mean we're the only intelligent
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: people in this simulation. Doesn't mean that the universe would break.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: It would like crash if we ever met other intelligent
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: aliens and top physits with them. It's a pretty fun
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: investigation of this idea. Are we like the customers or
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: we just like the fish in the fish bowl? I
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: don't know, that's a deep question. Are we the customers
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: or the captives? Right? Since we can't leave the simulation,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: I would say we're more like captives than customers. But
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: then again, we wouldn't exist without the simulation, so you
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: know we kind of benefit from it in an existential way. Yeah,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: that's a dangerous argument. I think historically that's the pretty
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: slippery slop. All right, Well, let's talk about the science
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: of it. And you said, Daniel that this is like
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: a quantum simulation. What does that mean? How is that
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: different than a regular simulation. Well, I think she's latching
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: onto the sort of the uncertainty and the fuzziness of
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: quantum mechanics. She's focusing on this idea that if you
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: haven't looked at something, maybe it's left undetermined, and you know,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: we're familiar with that, where like an electron couldn't go
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: left or could go right based on some fixed laws
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: of physics we just haven't looked yet, and so the
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: universe hasn't decided if it's gone left or right. She's
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: taken that one step deeper and saying, well, what if
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: the laws themselves are not fixed until we think about
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: them clearly? Right? What if the quantum mechanical nature the
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: universe extends to the definition of the laws. Interesting. Well,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: I have a lot of questions for her. I'm sure
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: you had a lot of questions for her, Daniel, So
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: you talked to her on the phone. I did. I
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: called her up and we chatted about this. We had
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: a great time, and we talked a lot about whether
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: we can understand the universe and what we'd be like
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: to talk to aliens. And you know, I really enjoyed
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: her writing. Not only is it really clever and full
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: of new ideas I hadn't seen before, which is something
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: I'm always looking for in science fiction, but it's also
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: just beautifully written. It's like lyrical in this way. And
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: what was really fun is that speaking to her, she's
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: also very lyrical, just you know, extemporaneously. Everything she says
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: is sort of poetic. So it was really a pleasure
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: you to talk about. And so again you can find
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: our work in collected editions of our short stories and
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: the one collection is called Ambiguity Machine, that's right, and
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: the other one is called The Woman Who Thought She
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Was a Planet. Wow, that is a great title. All right. Well,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: here is Daniel's interview with science fiction author Vandana Singh.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: So it's my great pleasure to introduce to our podcast
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: Professor Vandana Singh. Please say hello to our audience. Hi everyone,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: it's a pleasure and an honor to be here. Well,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: thanks very much for joining us and for talking to
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: us about how you build the science of your universes.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: But before we dig into the stories that we're talking
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: about today, we want to get to know you a
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: little bit better as a science fiction author. So first
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about your background. How you
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: got into science fiction writing. Well, I've always been really
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: fascinated by the physical universe and by the non human
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: and you know, I was raised in a sort of
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: what you might call a Renaissance like atmosphere in India
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: where I grew up, So you know, we read literature,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: We appreciated poetry, um, you know, science, learning of all
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: kinds was encouraged, including science, and particularly my brother and
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I were really interested in the sciences, and there was
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: no literature that seemed to speak to all of these
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: things at once except for science fiction, and so I
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: got interested in it at an early age because it
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: seemed to have an unbroken kind of gaze in terms
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: of not worrying about disciplinary boundaries. And also the other
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: thing is that it evoked for me a sense of wonder,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: which science also does, which physics also does, And in fact,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: that was my primary reason for going into the sciences
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: because of that sense of wonder. So science fiction allowed
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: me to play with ideas in a way that no
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: other literature can. I guess that's how I ended up
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: writing it. But first, you took a detour to doing
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: actual hard science, didn't you. Yeah, yeah, I did. My
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: background is in theoretical particle physics. I studied the mysteries
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: of quarks and why nature seems to forbid quarks from
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: being lonely, which is otherwise known as cork confinement. And
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm not in particle physics anymore, but I
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: do teach physics, and I think about physics all the time,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: so that definitely informs my stories, as does my more
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: recent academic work on climate science and prodigog wonderful. All right, See,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: have a real hardcore science background, but a long love
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: for science fiction. So let me ask you some questions
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: about sort of the science fiction universe. You're familiar, of course,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: with transporters in Star Trek. My question for you is,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: do you think that transporters in Star Trek actually move
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: you to another location? Or that they kill you, disassemble you,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: and recreate you, effectively cloning you somewhere else. You know,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: that's lovely question. I love that question. I think it
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: points to, you know, the kinds of answers we might
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: give to that question points to how we think about
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: mind and matter, and whether mind is an emergent phenomenon
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: due to the interactions of matter, due to the complexity
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: of those interactions, or whether the two are separate. And
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: I tend not to be a mind matter dualist, but
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: I have thought actually about and I'm a fan of
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Star Trek, especially the next generation at Deep Space nine,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: so I have thought about that question. I think that
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: they both possibilities, and since one of the things we
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: learned from physics is that anything that is possible will happen.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: If not in our universe, then in another. Then I
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: think I think that probably both things happened. Perhaps one
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: thing happens in this universe and another happens in another universe.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: That's a fascinating idea, never even thought of before. All Right,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: But and philosophy aside. Somebody builds one. They invite you
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: to take a trip to the moon or two Mars
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: by stepping in this transporter. Are you willing to do it?
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Would you actually step into such a transporter? No? I
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: don't think I would, because I mean, in part because
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: whenever possible for me, the journey is just as important.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: So the fun of actually going in a spaceship with
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: outweigh the rapidity of arrival the other way. All right, Well,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: while we're talking about future technology, what technology that you
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: see in science fiction would you most like to see
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: actually become reality? That's another great question, and it's a
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: deep question which I'm I know I won't be able
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: to do justice too, but I'll try. I think that
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: we cannot look at technology as being good or bad
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: without looking at the social context of technology, like who
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: benefits where does it arise from what needs? Does it satisfy?
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Who gets their pockets fattened by it? And so on
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: and so forth. So it's a complex question. And in fact,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: I think if I may posit a technology that doesn't
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: exist today, which is a technology that helps us appreciate
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: interconnections between human and human and between human and nature
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: in a way, that is that is actually better than
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: social media, because social media does some extremely harmful things.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: But something that can get give us a sense of,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: even imperfectly, what it's like to be, saying, orangutan in
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: a Southeast Asian forest, or what it's like to be
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: a forest, you know. So so if there was something
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: like that, I think I would really really enjoy seeing
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: that in the near future. All Right, I have a
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: lot more questions for Professor Saying, but first let's take
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: a quick break. All Right, this is Daniel, and we
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: are interviewing Professor seeing other fascinating short stories. So my
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: next question for you is what's your personal answer to
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: the Fermi paradox? Like, if the universe is so vast
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: and filled with livabole planets, why haven't aliens contacted us yet?
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: How do we know they haven't? Um? Right, um. And
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: the other is that they probably have better things to
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: do well. As we know, our broadcasts have been going
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: out into space, probably mostly since I don't know, the
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: end of the Second World War or something like that,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: and they haven't maybe they haven't had enough time to
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: get far enough away that that people are listening, or
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: and maybe on the basis of listening to the broadcast,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: the aliens don't think that they're worth contacting. Maybe we
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: need to improve our our TV and radio programming. But
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: can you imagine hearing some alien messages and decoding them
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: and thinking they seem boring? I don't want to reach
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: out to them. I mean, I'd like to talk to
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: aliens no matter what. They're terrible TV programming choices are right,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: And I agree with you there, because you know, that's
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: why we have things like setting, for instance, or metting,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: which is messaging extraterrestrial intelligence. I think that it may
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: have something to do with culture in one sense that
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: not all cultures, even on Earth, are necessarily interested in
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: reaching out to see who's out there. Maybe it's a
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: cultural thing. Maybe it's a question of technology as well,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: because as you said, the gulfs of space are indeed
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: very vast and um. And then it could be that
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: the messages they are sending, if they are sending messages,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: are just so in you know, so convoluted and so
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: different that we can't even tell their messages. I mean,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I remember my dog giving me a look
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: several times to indicate as far as I could tell that,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: don't you get what I'm what I'm trying to say here,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, why are you humans so stupid? You know? So,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know if all we know, perhaps the messages
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: are all around us and we just don't know how
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: to how to pick them up. Maybe the aliens are
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: after all, very alien, but well be yeah, wonderful. Then
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: I'd like to turn to the topic of today's podcast,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: which is a couple of the stories that you wrote. Specifically,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: are we really enjoyed the two stories Sailing the Antarsa
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: and Parapatea? And I noticed something of a theme between
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: these and and tell me if I'm misreading this, but
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: I have sense that both of these stories have something
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: to do with an invisible universe around us, that there
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: are things about the universe that we have not yet discovered,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: or that we grand realizations we could make about the
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: nature of the universe that challenge our assumptions and are
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: sort of parochial experience for hundreds or thousands of years
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: as humans. You said it beautifully, and I think that's
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: that's exactly what motivated me to write those two stories,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: and in fact, that comes from what motivates me to
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: be in the field of the sciences, which is this
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: unending sense of wonder because there really is no end
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: to what we discover and what we learn. I think
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: that I think that's very true. I agree with you there,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: And so do you think that there are still I mean,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: in our universe and our reality, huge mysteries, remaining things
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: that science will crack open that will change our entire
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: relationship with the universe. I think they are out there,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: and I think that that's what makes science so exciting
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: as a process of discovery, but also as a process
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: as a way of being with the universe and seeing
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: the universe. I'm reminded of a series of long conversations
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: I once had with the George suthersion of weak interactions
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: fame particle physicists, and also did a lot of work
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: in quantum optics. Came up with the idea of tacons,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: and for him too, inhabiting the universe was simultaneously a
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: process of discovering things that were otherwise or earlier invisible
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: to us, and also a way of being where you
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: simply enjoyed being part of such a fascinating universe. It
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: gave you a sense of kind of belonging to something
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: as vast and wonderful as the universe we inhabit. So
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's so much out there that we
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: don't know, and that are schemes as they are at present,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: cannot embrace because always the model is a model, after all,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: it's not a substitute for the phenomenon that we are studying.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: And so you know, we go in with certain conceptual structures,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: and if you think of those conceptual structures as fishing
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: nets in the vast c of the unknown, then you
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: know we're going to catch some things with them, but
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: we're not going to catch everything with them. And so
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: you know, that's why I think that philosophy is also
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: important to science, because if we change our conceptual structures,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: which the history of science tells us has always been done,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: then we may catch other things. So to me, this
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: is endlessly fascinating because what we discover about the universe
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: seems to be an interplay between our conceptual structures, which
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: come from our our human and cultural backgrounds in part,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: and between the stuff of the universe. So I think
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: there's a lot out there, probably right around us, is
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: stuff that we we simply don't even can't even detect
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: or let alone imagine. I'm sure that future scientists will
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: look back at our ignorance and they will laugh at us,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: clueless we were how much information, how many clues there
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: were swimming around us that we couldn't even imagine understanding,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: You know, the way caveman and cave women looked up
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: at the stars and had no idea how much information
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: about the universe was being literally beamed at them. But
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: this is a fascinating concept in your story Parata, where
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: the characters are discovering that the universe is perhaps a
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: fascinating quantum simulation by aliens. But then you flip it
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: at the end you think, well, actually, maybe it's all
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: just in my head. Tell me about your thought process there. Well,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: that story is such a nutty story, love, But I'm
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: so glad that you did, you know, especially coming from
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: a fellow physicist, because I wanted to have some fun
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: with these concepts, and you can't do that in an
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: academic paper, right. You have to behave when you're writing
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: an academic paper. But the cool thing about science fiction
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: is that you don't have to behave, right. So, so
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: I imagined, and you know, I love Rube Goldberg machines.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: I love the notion of having a complicated way to
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: do something simple. And so I imagined a universe that,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: you know, where there were these aliens that are somewhat clueless,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: that rely on the intelligence and the imagination of various
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: species to help finish the construction work of the universe,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: because much of it is an illusion, illusion cast by
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: these aliens. And and then at the end, you know,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: not to give away too much of it, but at
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: the end, the notion is, the possibility is that we
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: are among those aliens, and that while we are trying
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: to understand the universe, we're also co constructing it. And so,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: you know, I just I just wanted to have some
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: fun with this notion. You know, also because if you
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: if you look at the history of particle physics in particular,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: there are all these fun predictions that occur as people
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: build their conceptual structures, right, like the omega particles and
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: things like that. So I wanted to think about it
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: as you know, aliens waiting to see. Okay, so this
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: scheme works. Oh so they've they've come up with that particle,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: but let's bring it into being, you know, and uh,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: you know, so I just it's just so fun in
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: one way. But fun is also a serious business. Um,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: so it's both. Well. One thing I really enjoyed about
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: the stories is that they had ideas in them I
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: had never seen before. And that's to me what's fascinating
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: about the universe is that potentially nature has in its
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: ideas we haven't yet considered. And so you described earlier
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: this process of discovering nature by building up our conceptual
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: phishing nets and then using them to trawl. And you know,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: you can imagine that's an iterative process. As our ideas shift,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: we we discover new things. But my question to you
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: is do you think it's possible for humans to understand
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: the universe? Like first positive that there is a theory
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: of everything, an explanation for the universe that is simple
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: and compact. Is it possible that we are capable of
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: understanding it at its deepest level. What do you think
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: it's more likely that it's beyond our capability. That's a
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: great question. I love your questions this, they are so
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: thoughtful and so deep. Well, I think we have to
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: look at what we mean by understanding before we can
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: jump into the question. And often what we mean by
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: understanding is can we find an analogy that works for us,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: that allows us some predictive power and some explanatory power.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: And if we can find those analogies, then we say
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: we have understood that phenomenon. But I think that the
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: analogies that we usually look for are things that we
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: are familiar with at our microscopic scales, as we know.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: And also they come also from a socio cultural impulse,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: which I know as scientists is hard for us to
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: admit to. But I mean, I think I think that
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: it's it's true because when we even conceptualize the notion
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: of one grand theory that explains everything, you know, the
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: idea of the prime mover, you know, the origins of that,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: other cultures might not might think instead of a grand
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: unified theory. Instead of that, they might think of an
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: unfolding tapestry or a weaving, So you know, our metaphors
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: would be different, Our analogies may be different, coming from
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: different backgrounds, and whether nature respects those analogies or those
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: particular fishing fishing nets, we don't know until we throw
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: that net out into the ocean of nature, right, So
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: I think, because what we find and how we conceptualize
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: them relate to what our conceptual nets look like, the
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: process of understanding is unending, you know. I mean, just
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: think about the difference between Newtonian gravity and Einstein's conception
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: of gravity, which are so drastically different describing the same phenomenon,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: and of course one has a wider domain of validity
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: than the other. But nevertheless, the things that we might
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: find casting one net versus another would be differ things,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: and we would conceptualize them in different ways. So I
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: really think that firstly, there is no theory of everything.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: They may instead be a tapestry in which we weave
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: in different threads and the threats keep changing as we
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: angle and look at them in different ways, and so
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: moving dynamic tapestry, which I think would be more useful
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: as a fishing net than a theory of everything, because
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: we know, for instance, that a theory of everything, at
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: the at least how I've seen back when I was
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: a grad student and we talked about grand unified theories,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: is that we know already that they don't explain and
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: they cannot predict what happens on our scale in the
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: sense of you know, what exactly is the snow flick
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: going to look like? We know that, And that's because
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: the universe is complex, right, And complexity as a science
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: is a relatively new phenomenon, even though it has its
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: roots in pan curae in the eight hundreds, and yet
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: much of the development has happened in the twentieth century,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: which is one reason why we don't understand climate change
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: as a phenomenon as well as we could have, because
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: it does not subject itself to reductionism as well as
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: you know, other more idealizable systems and physics too. So
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: I think that you know, just as science has moved
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: through the ages and emerges with certain notions, think about
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: the ancient Greeks and geocentrism and heliocentrism, and then you
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: know Newtonian physics and and then the incomplete revolutions of
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: quantum physics and relativity and then complexity science. I think
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: that already the theory of everything is not the theory
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: of everything, um so, so I don't really believe that
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: there is one. I think there's something much more profound
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: than that, that hopefully we'll find our way towards. Wow,
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: that's a very poetic and I also wonder imagine that
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: we stumble our way towards that peper understanding. If we
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: ever do meet a race of intelligent alien physicists, they
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: will naturally have different ways of approaching this problem and
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: building up their own tap history. Do you imagine that
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: it would be possible to relate our thoughts and our
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: ideas to alien theories of everything? Do you think there's
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: one universal concept we all sort of fault awards, or
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: that we could have equivalently effective but totally conceptionally different frameworks.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: I think that's a lovely thought experiment, because I think
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: it would be extremely difficult if the aliens were really
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: very different from us, to understand their conception of the universe,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: and I think it would be very interesting to find out.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw the movie Arrival, of Course,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: which is based on Ted Chiang's amazing story. The story
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: of your life, and which I think it really helps
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: us to see how difficult it would be to communicate
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: with aliens in general, let alone about science, and it
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: would be it would be interesting to look for things
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: that may be universal. But again, even things that among
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: human cultures that we thought were universal turn out not
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: to be so universal. So I think it would be
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: very interesting, and I think it would be a long
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: process of building a hybrid world where the aliens and
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: us could understand each other, you know, because we have
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: our kind of bubble world of conceptual frameworks and they
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: have their world of conceptual frameworks. And for the two
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: to intersect, we would have to work at it, and
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: we'd have to kind of deliberately try to come up
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: with commonalities, ask the other for interpretation, try to interpret
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: the interpretations because the same thing, you know, I wonder,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: you know, whether there's a universal interpretation for the Pythagorean theorem.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Maybe not, you know, triangles could mean something totally different
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: to some other you know, alien culled. Sure, And I
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: can't tell if I'm hoping to discover that our understanding
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: is universal or that it's totally parochial and there's a
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: completely different way of looking at the universe. I don't
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: know which would be more fun. Yeah, I know, Well,
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: I think I'd be a little disappointed if our understanding
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: was really universal, because that means that, you know, there's
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: less for us to learn, and so it's it's always
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: it's always good to be surprised, I think. So, I
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: think it would be fun to discover new horizons through
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: trying to look, however, imperfectly at the universe from an
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: alien lens. Wonderful. Well. One of the things I really
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: enjoyed about your stories, other than the incredible creativity, was
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: your portrayal of physicists in action. Way too often in
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: science fiction, the scientist is just there to motivate the
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: sort of mindless pursuit of knowledge at the expense of
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: everything else, you know, the Jurassic Park sort of thing.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: And so I really appreciate your portrayal of scientists as curious,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: intellectual explorers, you know, pushing forward and the boundary of
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: knowledge because of their own personal desires to understand the universe.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: What do you think about the portrayal of scientists in
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: science fiction, and since you sit in both communities, what
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: do you think about the interplay between these two groups,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: the science fiction authors coming up with crazy ideas not
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: having to behave well in papers, and then the actual
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: scientists trying to push forward the boundary of knowledge. It's
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: a very interesting interplay. I think that the portrayal of
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: scientists in popular fiction has gotten better. It's definitely better
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: in science fiction than it is in popular fiction in general,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: where we still have this ridiculous notion of the scientists
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: as this white male guy with crazy white hair. You know,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: Poul Einstein would probably be spinning in his grave, because
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: we know that scientists are humans, and scientists are more
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: complicated than that, and that they come from all kinds
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: of backgrounds, and also science these days, we know, especially
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: in our era, is in teams rather than the loan
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: scientists trying to break the boundaries of the unknown. Although
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: in many of my portrayals I do portrays scientists on
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: their own thinking about things, partly because theoretical physicists still
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: kind of work that way and that's my background. But
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: I think that in science fiction, at least, that interplay,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: that portrayal is getting better. It's getting more diverse, partly
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: because the field is getting more diverse. We have a
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: lot more African American writers. We have writers from all
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: over the world whose works are being translated or who
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: are writing in English and getting hurt by people around
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: the world. So the conception of a scientist is becoming
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: more complex, as it should be. I think that also
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: reflects real science. We know that in the physical sciences
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: there's still a massive amount of gender imbalance in many countries.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: Actually in India and some other countries India and Iran.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: When I looked up the figures last some year ago,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: the numbers were much better with regard to undergraduate degrees
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: in physics than they were in the United States. So
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: but you know, it's still not reflect the demographic of
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: the population. And that's also true for people who are
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: underrepresented minorities in the sciences. Physical sciences are the worst
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: in that respect. So the more portrayals we have of
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: actual scientists working and you know, living complex human lives
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: and working on complex scientific questions from different backgrounds, bringing
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: their different lenses to the problem, the better it is
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: for all of us because the field will inevitably be
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: in read enriched by that diversity. I totally agree. And
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: how do you feel about the diversity in science fiction?
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm very thankful that it's growing. I live
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: in Massachusetts and I go regularly to a science fiction convention,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: or well at least semi regularly, which is focused on
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: the literary aspect of science fiction called reader Con, and
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: it's really wonderful. Many years ago, when I first started
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: going there, and that was in the early two thousand's,
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: I was one of the few brown faces out there,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: you know, and I was one of the few women
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: writing hard science fiction. And at that time it and
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: even now to some extent, my work is not recognized
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: as hard science fiction because my style is different and
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: I bring in the poetic and philosophical and wondrous aspects
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: of it. But at that time, it was a lonely
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: experience going to a science fiction convention, and now it's
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: very different. And I'm very grateful, in particular to African
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: American writers for just really helping change science fiction from
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: the inside um as well as two writers from multiple countries. Recently,
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: there was an international online science fiction convention called future
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: Con where you got to hear science fiction writers from
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: all over the world. So people are writing in Argentina,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: they're writing and they've been writing in China for a
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: very long time. They have the largest circulation science fiction
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: magazine anywhere in the world in China, and then you
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: know people writing from Eastern Europe, from Brazil, and it
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: was really really exciting to see that diversity happening and
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: to be able to be influenced by their stories as
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: well as the stories of the canonical science fiction writers.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: So I think it can only be to the good
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: to have so many different voices coming in, and particularly
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: Afro futurism and indigenous futurisms and indigenous people's conceptualizations of
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: their universe, which increasingly is contributing to our scientific understanding,
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: which I think is very exciting. So it's a very
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: exciting time to be a science fiction writer, for sure. Wonderful.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: I totally agree, and I really enjoy reading stories from
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: all over the world in different voices, and just the
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: way we talked about, aliens might have different ideas about physics,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: different humans have different ideas about what we might explore
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: in the universe. So it's been a lot of fun
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: for me as well. So thanks very much for joining
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: us today. Before we let you go, do you have
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: projects coming out soon that our readers can look forward to?
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: I wish I had a positive answer to that. Right now,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: I'm figuring out how to teach online labs, so immediately,
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: I don't have anything major brewing, but I always have
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: stories kind of simmering on the back burner. Hopefully I
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: will have some new novelas this year. I have a
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: story coming out in the Salt Asian Book of Science
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: Fiction that's coming out from Goal Lens Hatchet, India, and
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: so that is something to look forward to. Well. Congratulations
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: on balancing academia and science fiction and your success in
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: both worlds. And thanks again very much for joining us
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: on the program today. Thank you so much. It was
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: a pleasure. All right, pretty cool. She had a lot
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: to say, and you're right, she does sound really lyrical. Yeah,
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: she's really well spoken. And as a person of color
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: and a woman in a mostly male and white field,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: both physics and science fiction, I thought you had a
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: lot of interesting things to say about increasing diversity in
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: those communities. I didn't think I heard you talk about
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: actual physics, like, did you guys also a nerd out
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: and talk about the actual particle theories not just science
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: fiction stories. No, not so much. She has a PhD
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: in theoretical physics. That's her background, but recently she's actually
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: shifted more to working on climate change because she thought
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: that's actually more relevant for humanity. But you know, Grant
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: is probably true. Yeah, I guess if you're writing science fiction,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: you kind of want your audience to be there in
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: the future. That's right. It's purely selfish and cynical. I'm sure.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, what do you make of this idea
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: of you know, scientists writing science fiction, Like, do you
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: do you feel like it's another part of your brains
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: or do you feel like it's the same brain that's
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: coming up with these ideas? Is what do you think
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: is happening inside? I think it's a harmonious combination. I
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: think science takes creativity to solve a problem, you have
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: to think about a new direction. When things aren't making sense,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: you're like, all right, well, I'll have to go back
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: to the basic building blocks and think about what am
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: I misunderstanding, What idea am I missing? What new perspective
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: would let all this evidence fit together in a way
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: that makes sense. And that's a lot of the creativity
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: behind in my opinion, good science fiction, science fiction that
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: has like a clever new idea in it, something we
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: hadn't considered before, a new way of looking at the universe,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: or a new way the universe might actually be so
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: to me, That's probably why I enjoyed both science and
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: science fiction, because they have this element of like creatively
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: exploring the universe right desperately trying to get out of
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: this one or to make it, to understand it more.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: Can I speak to the manager, please? Can I speak
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: to the lazy aliens who are totally occlusion this and
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: making it up as we go. I have a few ideas, right,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: I got some notes, I got my ideas. All right. Well,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed that interview, and we hope you
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: check out her work. Vandana Sings science fiction stories collected
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: in the Ambiguity Machine and also the Woman who Thought
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: she was a planet. Thanks for joining us, See you
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: Jorge explained. The Universe is a production of I Heart Radio.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: Or more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit the I
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: your favorite shows.