Speaker 1: My welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe M. Cormickin.
Speaker 1: We're back with part two of our summer reading series
Speaker 1: this year because, as we told you last time, we
Speaker 1: ended up talking about our favorite books from this year,
Speaker 1: and then we ended up just going for how long
Speaker 1: do we talk? Like seventeen hours? It went on a while, yeah,
Speaker 1: because what we were talking about the books, but we're
Speaker 1: also talking about a lot of the ideas wrapped up
Speaker 1: in them, and in doing so, discussing some of the
Speaker 1: predominant themes of Stuff to Blow your Mind over the
Speaker 1: past year. Yeah, so we decided we had to split
Speaker 1: it into Here we are with part two. I think
Speaker 1: last time we talked about nonfiction. This time we're probably
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about fiction. All right, let's jump right
Speaker 1: back into the conversation. Okay, Robert, I think you had
Speaker 1: a couple of fiction books you wanted to talk about, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again these are both books that you may have
Speaker 1: heard me discussed at least in passing before, Because again
Speaker 1: I can't if I really like a work of fiction
Speaker 1: and it's going to boil out in everything that I
Speaker 1: do and until people were sick of hearing about it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And So the first book I want to talk about
Speaker 1: is Starfish by Peter Watts. From so my fiction pick
Speaker 1: last summer I think was Blindsite, but it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a book from two thousand and six. And
Speaker 1: and I read that one as well because you were
Speaker 1: talking about it. And uh, I think when you told
Speaker 1: me I had space vampires in it, I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I have to read this now. It's definitely got the
Speaker 1: best sci fi vampires of anything I've read. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: without it, without a doubt. So Peter Watts is a
Speaker 1: He's a Canadian sci fi author and former marine mammal biologists. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've certainly talked about him on the show before, and
Speaker 1: we've talked about Starfish as well. Um referenced in in
Speaker 1: a few of our Underwater episodes earlier this year. This
Speaker 1: is actually his first novel, uh and uh and I've
Speaker 1: never read it before. I've been working on an underwater
Speaker 1: sci fi podcast for How Stuff Works. And then I
Speaker 1: realized that Watts had written something more or less in
Speaker 1: the genre already. I thought, maybe I did. I think
Speaker 1: may maybe he did. Yeah, And so when I realized
Speaker 1: that it was that it was an underwater sci fi tail,
Speaker 1: as like, well, I've got to I've got to jump
Speaker 1: in and see what what Watts did with it. So
Speaker 1: it is a just a very um addictive novel. Um.
Speaker 1: So it it just to give a quick plot overview. Basically,
Speaker 1: you have a crew of psychologically damaged people who undergo
Speaker 1: cybernetic enhancement so that they can work on deep sea
Speaker 1: geothermal plants in the near future. Uh. And they're and
Speaker 1: they're doing this work, very dangerous work among some mysteriously
Speaker 1: gigantic deep sea organisms near dangerous hydrothermal vents. And they're
Speaker 1: also dealing with the uncertainty of their own psychology and
Speaker 1: an emergent biological threat that everyone is totally unequipped to handle.
Speaker 1: And that this thing is loaded with science, Like Watts
Speaker 1: is an author who just really uh he really packs
Speaker 1: a lot of scientific ideas. Sometimes it's more, you know,
Speaker 1: scientific hypotheses, but he packs a lot in So this
Speaker 1: particular book, for instance, is loaded with deep water biology, spreading,
Speaker 1: zone tectonics, and geology, quantum theories of consciousness, AI, molecular evolution,
Speaker 1: dream learning neuroplasticity as well as abuse and addiction psychology.
Speaker 1: Now I wonder something about it because I haven't read
Speaker 1: this yet. I became aware of it uh while back,
Speaker 1: and I've I've been wanting to read it, but I
Speaker 1: haven't gotten to it yet. So my question is are
Speaker 1: there characters that can be loved? Because blind Side, it
Speaker 1: was my fiction pick last year because of exactly what
Speaker 1: you're talking about, is just packed with thought provoking ideas
Speaker 1: and unique bits of world building. Um one of the
Speaker 1: most interesting books I've ever read, so much so that
Speaker 1: I almost had to like keep constantly putting it down
Speaker 1: to like write down thoughts I was having about the
Speaker 1: stuff in the book. But it was also a differ
Speaker 1: book for several reasons, one of the main ones being
Speaker 1: that like, the main character in in blind Side is
Speaker 1: extremely unsympathetic. I mean that's by design since his character,
Speaker 1: he's a character who essentially has no empathy due to
Speaker 1: an experimental brain surgery. This actually played a role in
Speaker 1: the plot and made for a very interesting narrator, but
Speaker 1: not a very sympathetic or lovable one. So does Watts
Speaker 1: throw us more of a bone in this story? As
Speaker 1: as far as like character as you can fall in
Speaker 1: love with. Well, I would say yes and no, because
Speaker 1: on one level, you do see that that same trend
Speaker 1: of of a lot of characters that are damaged or
Speaker 1: less human, perhaps in different ways, either due to something
Speaker 1: that has been done to them or something that they
Speaker 1: have voluntarily done through technological enhancement. But I would say
Speaker 1: that the protagonist Lenny Clark, she you do root for,
Speaker 1: perhaps more than some of the characters in blind Side,
Speaker 1: like she's she's a very damaged individual with and she's
Speaker 1: essentially transhuman at this point to the cybernetic enhancements and
Speaker 1: some other stuff. But in Starfish you are rooting for
Speaker 1: there is she is kind of an underdog, and I
Speaker 1: think that is one of the things that that pulled
Speaker 1: me in with Starfish, probably more than Blindside, is that
Speaker 1: I wanted I wanted her to succeed or to survive
Speaker 1: at the very least. Well, I'm going to read a
Speaker 1: quick passage from the book here just to get everyone
Speaker 1: a taste of some of the some of the biological
Speaker 1: uh science that is invoked in Let's Hear It. And
Speaker 1: in this we were following Lenny Clark as she is
Speaker 1: out swimming in the deep dark ocean quote. Everywhere else,
Speaker 1: living constellations punctuate the dark. Here, a string of pearls
Speaker 1: blink sexual advertisements at two second intervals. Here, a sudden
Speaker 1: flash leaves diversionary afterimages swarming across Clark's field of view.
Speaker 1: Something flees undercover her momentary blindness. They're a counterfeit worm,
Speaker 1: twist lazily in the current, invisibly tied to the roof
Speaker 1: of some predatory mouth. There are so many of them.
Speaker 1: She feels a sudden surge in the water, as if
Speaker 1: something big is just passed very close. A delicious thrill
Speaker 1: dances through her body. It nearly touched me, she thinks,
Speaker 1: I wonder what it was. The rift is full of
Speaker 1: monsters who don't know when to quit. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how much they eat. Their vorocity is as much a
Speaker 1: part of them as their elastic bellies, their unhinging jaws.
Speaker 1: Ravenous dwarves attack giants twice their own size. And sometimes,
Speaker 1: when the abyss is a desert, no one can afford
Speaker 1: the luxury of waiting for better odds. But even a
Speaker 1: desert has oasis, and sometimes the deep hunters find them.
Speaker 1: They come upon the malnourishing abundance of the rift and
Speaker 1: gorge themselves. Their descendants grow huge and bloated over such
Speaker 1: delicate bones. My light was off and it left me alone,
Speaker 1: I wonder. She turns it back on, her vision cloud
Speaker 1: in the sudden glare, then clears. The ocean reverts to
Speaker 1: unrevealed black. No nightmares accost her. The beam lights empty
Speaker 1: water wherever she points it. She switches it off. There's
Speaker 1: a moment of absolute darkness while her eye caps adjust
Speaker 1: to the reduced light. Then the stars come out again.
Speaker 1: They're so beautiful. Lenny Clark rests on the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ocean and watches the abyss sparkle around her, and
Speaker 1: she almost laughs as she realizes, three thousand meters from
Speaker 1: the nearest sunlight that is only dark when the lights
Speaker 1: are on. That's great, man. Well, you know what it
Speaker 1: reminds me of Blindside. It reminds me of sort of
Speaker 1: the richness of like the the sci fi horror atmosphere
Speaker 1: that that Watts can create. Um, his his worlds are
Speaker 1: so rich. Yeah, and this book really you can you
Speaker 1: get a taste of it here. Like he is an
Speaker 1: author that clearly was Slash is in love with the
Speaker 1: biology of the deep ocean. And even though this is
Speaker 1: a slightly you know, there's some sci fi elements invoked here. Uh,
Speaker 1: it is a it resonates with a love for the
Speaker 1: the natural wonders of the deep. Robert, I know you
Speaker 1: were a fan of the recent games Soma, which you
Speaker 1: recommended to me. Do you think that maybe Starfish was
Speaker 1: an influence on Soma? I bet it was. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't even know Starfish existed until uh,
Speaker 1: you know, earlier this year really, but uh, but afterwards
Speaker 1: I started looking into it. I read somewhere that the
Speaker 1: the makers of the Bioshot games were also inspired by
Speaker 1: by Starfish, so that would make sense. So I think
Speaker 1: it has been highly influent influential in I mean, if
Speaker 1: I can't imagine making some sort of underwater sci fi
Speaker 1: horror at this point without of course being familiar with
Speaker 1: the Abyssum, the James Cameron film, Yeah, Deep Start six, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and at least finding out about Starfish and and realizing
Speaker 1: that it is an important to to to read in reference.
Speaker 1: All Right, if somebody were to make a Starfish movie,
Speaker 1: what director should it be? Oh? I don't know. You
Speaker 1: gotta have who's the most nihilistic director not there right now,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe I guess does Nolan count he's
Speaker 1: he has some nihilistic he's nihilistic, Well, no, but there's
Speaker 1: a there is a borderline sentimental. Okay, he's but in
Speaker 1: terms of I guess I'm thinking about the visual universe
Speaker 1: he tends to create. I feel like his his visual
Speaker 1: world is nihilistic, even if even if there's hope everywhere else,
Speaker 1: a lot of slate grays and stuff like that. I
Speaker 1: don't know. So for some reason he comes to mind
Speaker 1: um and also his it's it's so humorless, you know.
Speaker 1: I tend to find that Nolan's uh movies are they're
Speaker 1: they're not very fun. Usually I find that there. I
Speaker 1: find they are not fun and they are not certainly
Speaker 1: not funny. They're satisfying, they're they're they're beautiful, they're they're
Speaker 1: they're excellent films. Uh, but but you don't enjoy them.
Speaker 1: I enjoy them, but I don't enjoy them in the
Speaker 1: same way I enjoy other things. I don't know. For
Speaker 1: some reason, I'm thinking, I think Christopher Nolan might be
Speaker 1: the night be might be the director to to helm
Speaker 1: something like this Okay, it's time to take a quick
Speaker 1: break and then we'll be back with more summer reading.
Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back. All right. Well, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and hit my my final fiction uh selection for
Speaker 1: this year's summer reading. And this is one again that
Speaker 1: that if you have been listening religiously to the show
Speaker 1: or and certainly if you've if you read it, take
Speaker 1: pay attention to our social media. You've probably heard or
Speaker 1: seen me mention it before. But it is a two
Speaker 1: thousand nine novel by Terence Hawkins titled The Rage of Achilles.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, tell me about it? Okay, Well, Terence Hawkins
Speaker 1: he's the author of two books in various short stories.
Speaker 1: He was founding director of the Yale Writer's Conference, and
Speaker 1: he now runs the Company of Writers, which offers workshop
Speaker 1: and manuscript service to writers at all levels of experience.
Speaker 1: And incidentally, he also chimes in from time to time
Speaker 1: on our Facebook group the Stuff to Build Your Mind
Speaker 1: discussion module with with commentary and literary recommendations. But the
Speaker 1: Rage of Achilles, this this is a novel, and it's
Speaker 1: essentially a novelization of Homer's The Iliad, retold with modern
Speaker 1: language and invoking Julian Janes the Origin of consciousness in
Speaker 1: the Breakdown of the bicameral Mind. Okay, so, if your
Speaker 1: recall from our Bicameral Mind episodes, the Iliad was one
Speaker 1: of the pieces of evidence in literature from the ancient
Speaker 1: world that Jane's uses to show. Basically, he uses it
Speaker 1: to argue that people at this time, First of all,
Speaker 1: two main premises were not conscious and did not have
Speaker 1: an inner mind space. And number two, they had novel
Speaker 1: activities directed by hallucinations that they believed to be the
Speaker 1: voices of God's And so he basically he determines that
Speaker 1: this is the case for the people who produced the
Speaker 1: Iliad because he looks at the Iliad and he says,
Speaker 1: there's very little consciousness in the Iliad. You don't get
Speaker 1: people reflecting internal mind states. Instead, when people do things,
Speaker 1: it says that God made them do it. Yes. And
Speaker 1: I want to be clear here, I don't want to
Speaker 1: make it sound as if Hawkins wrote a novel that
Speaker 1: serves as a teaching tool for the bicameral mind. I
Speaker 1: think rather Hawkins uses um uses the bicameral mind as
Speaker 1: a means of understanding a lot of the decision making
Speaker 1: and divine inspiration that takes place in the story of
Speaker 1: the Iliad uh and It's and Also, to be clear,
Speaker 1: it's not an epic retelling of the Trojan War. It
Speaker 1: is just the Iliad itself, which only occupies a portion
Speaker 1: of the Trojan War. So this is definitely a book
Speaker 1: for mature readers. Hawkins doesn't shy away from the violent slavery, misogyny,
Speaker 1: and sexual violence inherent in the in the culture at
Speaker 1: the time. It's not ancient Greeks for great book, No
Speaker 1: no uh and and and all of it is also
Speaker 1: revealed again through very modern language. The characters speak to
Speaker 1: each other like they are modern humans, even if they
Speaker 1: in many of the cases do not have modern minds. Because,
Speaker 1: especially through the eyes of Odysseus, the reader is is
Speaker 1: forced to come to terms with the familiar yet alien
Speaker 1: nature of this kind of ancient world. So the book
Speaker 1: is grim, it's dark, it's violent, but not in a
Speaker 1: way that betrays its historical and literary roots. So that
Speaker 1: the book I found does a fantastic job of depicting
Speaker 1: what it might have been like to exist as a
Speaker 1: bicameral human and what it might have been like to
Speaker 1: live among them as a more modern human with a
Speaker 1: awoken consciousness. So the vast majority of the characters in
Speaker 1: the Rage of Achilles are highly susceptible to bicameral hallucinations.
Speaker 1: Odesseus says, our main window into modern consciousness, along with
Speaker 1: the Trojan Prince Paris, and when faced with pressing challenges
Speaker 1: or cognitive dissonance, the gods speak to these these people,
Speaker 1: to the bicameral characters, and even manifest visual the So
Speaker 1: in keeping with Jane's theory, these these hallucinations are produced
Speaker 1: by the of course, the non dominant hemisphere, and perceived
Speaker 1: by the dominant voices within the mind wrapped within the
Speaker 1: trappings of an outer pantheon, and the hallucinations range from
Speaker 1: helpful to chaotic. For instance, the Achaean king Agamemnon experiences
Speaker 1: his desire to claim achilles slave Brescius as a divine command,
Speaker 1: and this endangers the entire siege, but it also but
Speaker 1: he also rallies his men when Zeus speaks through him.
Speaker 1: And then we have Achilles himself, who turns to buy
Speaker 1: cameral visions of his mother for guidance. His mother, of course,
Speaker 1: to the mythical fetis. And yet the very act of
Speaker 1: locking eyes with a horse on the battlefield threatens to
Speaker 1: transform into a chaotic hallucination. For Achilles Hawkins is a
Speaker 1: is A is a great writer, and he has there's
Speaker 1: so many passages in this book that really capture this
Speaker 1: uh far better than than I can summarize. H For instance,
Speaker 1: there's a part where Agamemnon speaking to Odysseus after Odysseus
Speaker 1: has has presented some ideas, and he says, do you
Speaker 1: ever have any thoughts of your own? Or is it
Speaker 1: always gray eyed athena um talking in there um? The
Speaker 1: the idea that like any kind of inspiration, any kind
Speaker 1: of like I guess you would say, sort of. You know,
Speaker 1: major moments in cognition, they are not your own. They
Speaker 1: must be the God speaking through you. And indeed those
Speaker 1: with a bicamraal mind would be would be perceiving it
Speaker 1: as such. It's a wonderful exploration of the concept. And
Speaker 1: I love the idea of novels based on the idea
Speaker 1: of the bicameral mind, because that that satisfies both of
Speaker 1: my impulses. On one hand, I don't believe it's a
Speaker 1: correct interpretation of history. I don't believe it's a correct
Speaker 1: explanation of what consciousness is or what past human consciousness
Speaker 1: was like. On the other hand, I think it's such
Speaker 1: an interesting idea to explore, and so fiction seems like
Speaker 1: a perfect realm for it, Like you don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to believe it was ever true, but you could explore
Speaker 1: it as a sort of alternative reality. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: love to read more that that that used the bi
Speaker 1: cameral mind is a way of of making sense of
Speaker 1: of the magical and the divine. Uh. Here's here's another
Speaker 1: wonderful passage from the book. No one will speak to Achilles.
Speaker 1: No one in his right mind would. All day he
Speaker 1: has sat at the foot of Patroclus's unlit pire. The
Speaker 1: only company he will tolerate is that of the priests
Speaker 1: who flank it, droning away in the language that the
Speaker 1: Achaeans spoke when their minds first awakened in the north,
Speaker 1: when the ice rivers were still fresh memories to their grandfathers,
Speaker 1: whose own grandfathers had been no more than puppets in
Speaker 1: the hands of the gods, hunting and breeding with no
Speaker 1: more consciousness of purpose than the animals they slaughtered. So again,
Speaker 1: this captures a time when the bicameral mind would be
Speaker 1: giving way to the modern mind, and you would be
Speaker 1: in this this chaotic, uh realm between where you have
Speaker 1: you have more and more modern thought. But then you
Speaker 1: have these bicameral visions and these bicameral experiences. And then
Speaker 1: a few few people such as Odysseus in this novel,
Speaker 1: who do not know what it is to have a
Speaker 1: bicameral vision and just exists outside of it, just have
Speaker 1: to nod along when everyone else is talking about what
Speaker 1: the gods told them today. Yeah, I've got to give
Speaker 1: this one to read. I recommend it. Uh. Now, there
Speaker 1: is another book by Terence Hawkins I want to mention briefly,
Speaker 1: and it's a titled American Neolithic. Came out in fourteen.
Speaker 1: It's a near future dystopian novel in which a tribe
Speaker 1: of Neanderthals have survived into the modern world, and it
Speaker 1: features some really thought provoking depictions of how this might work,
Speaker 1: how Neandertal biology and cognition um I would differ from ours,
Speaker 1: and how their eradication factors into human culture. Uh So
Speaker 1: I have to read. Uh one one of my favorite
Speaker 1: passages from this and this is told by the protagonist
Speaker 1: who is in Neandertal, who has survived into modern times.
Speaker 1: Quote you, for whom we have always been the other existence,
Speaker 1: buried deep in your racial memories, since the time when
Speaker 1: glaciers girdled the world and the contest between man and
Speaker 1: animal was yet to be decided. We haunt your legends
Speaker 1: as we hunt your dreams, misshapen versions of yourself, bad
Speaker 1: copies formally Cobalds or Grimlin's now more locks and orcs. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's creepy. So the idea that we we've got all
Speaker 1: these humanoid monsters in our fiction, and that this is
Speaker 1: coming from deep instincts we have about about other types
Speaker 1: of human shaped creatures that very close relatives of ours
Speaker 1: that existed, you know, a few as recently as several
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. Yeah, yeah, there was there was another.
Speaker 1: There was this this slightly inhuman other that we that
Speaker 1: we wiped from the earth, and we keep recreating them
Speaker 1: in uh, in all of these fantastic forms. It's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a wonderful of poetic idea like it, though,
Speaker 1: I I also like the idea that it implies, like
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens, like us, we were maybe the bad guys actually,
Speaker 1: like we demonize them, but we do so unfairly, like
Speaker 1: we were really the aggressive main ones that wiped them out. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: this is an idea that is explored in a book
Speaker 1: that we haven't read yet, but we've both discussed reading.
Speaker 1: Um uh, what what is the title? The Descendants The
Speaker 1: Inheritor The Inheritors? Yes, by William Golding, the author of
Speaker 1: Lord of the Flies. Oh yeah, and I've actually read
Speaker 1: like the first chapter of it, and I'm very intrigued
Speaker 1: to pick it up again later because it is the
Speaker 1: story of Neanderthal annihilation from the point of view of
Speaker 1: the Neanderthals. Man humans like us can be scary. We're
Speaker 1: the worst. All right, Well, it looks like it's time
Speaker 1: for me to talk about some fiction, now, Robert, last
Speaker 1: time you got to pick a classic, you picked Carl
Speaker 1: Sagan's classic nonfiction work. So I'm gonna pick a classic
Speaker 1: work of fiction that I just read for the first time. Okay,
Speaker 1: what do you have? This is The Haunting of Hill
Speaker 1: House by Shirley Jackson nine. It is a Gothic horror
Speaker 1: novel first published in fifty nine, with the most classic
Speaker 1: of han a house setups. Right, So, you've got a
Speaker 1: haunted house, it's got a malevolent ghostly presence reported over
Speaker 1: the generations, it's got tragic history. And then there's a
Speaker 1: kind of stuffy professor who's interested in the paranormal, and
Speaker 1: he hires several psychically sensitive people to come live in
Speaker 1: the house with them and study the hauntings that occur there. Now,
Speaker 1: this has been made into a couple of movies, and
Speaker 1: believe it or not, I've actually not seen either one
Speaker 1: of them, or there there at least two. There might
Speaker 1: be more. There's one supposedly terrible adaptation from that I
Speaker 1: haven't seen, with Liam Neeson, Catherine's Aida Jones, and Owen Wilson,
Speaker 1: directed by the guy who made Speed Twister and Speed
Speaker 1: two Cruise Control. Oh. I actually saw this one, but
Speaker 1: I can't remember a single thing about except I think
Speaker 1: it's like a beheading scene or something that's not in
Speaker 1: the book. Um. I've heard it is radically different from
Speaker 1: the book, but I haven't seen that. I kind of
Speaker 1: want to watch it maybe this weekend. It's time for
Speaker 1: some some trash ghost movies. Uh. There's also supposedly a
Speaker 1: movie version from the sixties that is better, but I
Speaker 1: haven't seen either one. But if you've never read this
Speaker 1: book and you're in the mood for a good old
Speaker 1: fashioned haunted house story, this is a really fabulous read.
Speaker 1: It's that kind of mid century New Yorker style of
Speaker 1: prose writing. So it's thoughtful, really funny actually, but also reserved,
Speaker 1: and um, I have to admit, for me, at least
Speaker 1: genuinely scary. At least I thought so maybe you'll write
Speaker 1: in so I didn't think it was scary. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're a cry baby. But I thought it was scary.
Speaker 1: And I'm not alone. Stephen King wrote an introduction to
Speaker 1: the book in which he wrote that quote. It seems
Speaker 1: to me that the Haunting of Hill House and Henry
Speaker 1: James Is The Turn of the Screw are the only
Speaker 1: two great novels of the supernatural in the last hundred years. Interesting.
Speaker 1: It's a bold pronouncement. But you know, I do agree
Speaker 1: that when a when a ghost story is done well,
Speaker 1: it can be so terrifying. A ghost story, though, is
Speaker 1: is like a lot of things in art, is typically
Speaker 1: not done well. Uh yeah, you're right about that, and
Speaker 1: and it is genuinely horrifying. And I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: that can be genuinely horrifying two people like us who
Speaker 1: are horror fans and who are largely desensitized to the
Speaker 1: most piercing aspects of horror like I think I may
Speaker 1: have contemplated this on the podcast before, but I just
Speaker 1: want to bring it up again because this is such
Speaker 1: a perplexing question to me. Why are ghosts the scariest
Speaker 1: of all monsters? I feel like this must be measurably
Speaker 1: true because I'm you know, we're both horror fans. I've
Speaker 1: asked a lot of my friends who are horror fans
Speaker 1: about this. We've had this conversation a bunch of times.
Speaker 1: Once you're used to horror books and horror movies, vampires, werewolves,
Speaker 1: hell beasts. They're great, They're great fun. We love them,
Speaker 1: but they're not really scary anymore, are they. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you find yourself really worrying at night in the
Speaker 1: dark about vampires or anything like that? I I certainly don't.
Speaker 1: Now the ghost I think one of the reasons it
Speaker 1: can be so so effective is that it's something that
Speaker 1: really doesn't have to obey the rules. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: you can get into you do have treatments of it
Speaker 1: that have a lot of rules and throw in some
Speaker 1: ghost fighting, pseudoscience and some proton packs and you have
Speaker 1: a different situation. But I feel like the best, the
Speaker 1: most effective ghost stories are the ones in which the
Speaker 1: protagonists are the protagonist are totally out of their element
Speaker 1: and do not know how to deal with the threat.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the reasons that UH that
Speaker 1: the at least the initial incarnations of the Ring movies,
Speaker 1: both the original Japanese and the and and I would
Speaker 1: also classify the original UH English language remake. They both
Speaker 1: succeed in presenting a supernatural threat that does not seem
Speaker 1: to obey law. I mean, it oldbys certain laws, but
Speaker 1: but once you've you've awakened it, there's no stopping I think.
Speaker 1: I think there's something about that. Yeah, the ghost in
Speaker 1: the Ring is terrifying to me in a way, I
Speaker 1: mean less so now that I'm so used to it,
Speaker 1: like it's kind of a joke. That was the other
Speaker 1: great thing about it is that it felt so fresh
Speaker 1: at the time. Yes, when I first encountered it, it
Speaker 1: was truly terrifying to me. And I think part of
Speaker 1: it has to do with it it's non corporate reality,
Speaker 1: like that it doesn't have a specific body that's bound
Speaker 1: to a place. You know that it can kind of
Speaker 1: appear anywhere. Um, as soon as you give a monster
Speaker 1: a body. I mean, I love monster designs, all those
Speaker 1: those beast designs are great, but it immediately becomes a
Speaker 1: thing that's like, Okay, I could run from this, I
Speaker 1: could fight this with a ghost. It. In fact, with
Speaker 1: ghosts in most stories, ghosts are not even really a
Speaker 1: physical threat. They're not gonna grab you and bite you
Speaker 1: and tear you asunder and harm harm your physical body.
Speaker 1: They attack your mind. But as far as I know,
Speaker 1: here's one aspect of hauntings that's never really explored, and
Speaker 1: that is that the idea that a ghost could lower
Speaker 1: your rent. Well, I know that that it would you know,
Speaker 1: reduce your property taxes or something to that effect. Like
Speaker 1: this seems like prime territory for exploitation. With with with
Speaker 1: with haunting fiction, uh, the idea that the presence of
Speaker 1: the ghost would actually make the the haunted location more
Speaker 1: desirable to individuals willing to put up with it. Wait
Speaker 1: a minute, is this is not part of the plot
Speaker 1: of The Frighteners, is it? I don't know, I've never
Speaker 1: seen The Frighteners. Uh, I haven't seen it in a
Speaker 1: long time. I'm vaguely recalling something like this, like a buddy.
Speaker 1: Oh maybe maybe he's just like, uh, there's a human
Speaker 1: character who's got ghost buddies and he uses them for
Speaker 1: hauntings and then maybe he charges for exorcisms. I think
Speaker 1: maybe that's what it is. But it struck me in
Speaker 1: the in the moment that there could be some kind
Speaker 1: of real estate scam where you like, you know, you
Speaker 1: rent out of property and then you get your ghost
Speaker 1: buddies to haunt it and so you can get your
Speaker 1: rent lowered. Yeah, if only ghosts actually existed and we're
Speaker 1: you know, verifiable through science. Yeah. So there is, of
Speaker 1: course the fact that ghosts don't exist, but there are
Speaker 1: some great insights about our psychology. I think we can
Speaker 1: gain from thinking about why ghosts are so particularly terrifying.
Speaker 1: So one example that I want to talk about briefly,
Speaker 1: the e book version of Haunting of Hillhouse that I have,
Speaker 1: has an introduction by Guiermo del Toro, and so he
Speaker 1: writes about the way that the horror and the story
Speaker 1: comes from the way the house itself in the book
Speaker 1: behaves like a predator in the wild. And he also
Speaker 1: points out how the novel praise on our ancestral fears
Speaker 1: of being alone, being separated from the herd. He writes,
Speaker 1: calling it quote a fascinating piece of nature documentary. Hill
Speaker 1: House is the lion pouncing in slow motion on the smallest,
Speaker 1: weakest gazelle in the herd. And he's talking about a
Speaker 1: particular character who the House praise on in the book.
Speaker 1: But then he points out how the book accentuates the
Speaker 1: terror by driving home that our vulnerability and being alone
Speaker 1: isn't just present when we're physically alone, because we're always
Speaker 1: alone with in our own minds, and the very fact
Speaker 1: that you can't share your consciousness with other people means
Speaker 1: that we're always subjectively separated from the herd, no matter what,
Speaker 1: vulnerable to the predations of ghosts. Interesting. Yeah, I like
Speaker 1: this treatment of the of the ghost, the haunting, the
Speaker 1: poulter Geist as a predatory force because we do see this.
Speaker 1: I feel like what this motif is U is used
Speaker 1: well and some of our best haunting fiction. You know
Speaker 1: that it's not just the ghost is just trying to,
Speaker 1: you know, warn you about the perils of not believing
Speaker 1: in Christmas or what have you. Like that it is
Speaker 1: it is a nasty customer that just wants to hurt you.
Speaker 1: So what you say, I mean just bringing up the
Speaker 1: ghosts in Christmas Carol. I mean that does play on
Speaker 1: another big part of the ghost law, right, which is
Speaker 1: that ghosts are very often on a mission. They're concerned
Speaker 1: with something in some way. They want to teach you
Speaker 1: a lesson, or get you to do something for them,
Speaker 1: or get you to you know, avenge some wrong on
Speaker 1: their behalf or something like that. So many stories in
Speaker 1: this way. Um. I don't want to spoil anything about
Speaker 1: the Haunting of Hillhouse, but it's a great kind of
Speaker 1: reprieve from a lot of the corny plot wrap ups
Speaker 1: that you often see in ghost stories. Nice. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I've never read it. It's it's it's been on my
Speaker 1: list for a very long time. So maybe this Halloween
Speaker 1: it you should read it this October, Robert, I would
Speaker 1: love to see what you think. Uh, you know, speaking
Speaker 1: of October, I believe it was last October we had
Speaker 1: an episode of Stuff to Play in Mind come Out.
Speaker 1: This is what I did with Christian where we we
Speaker 1: took various ghost stories from around the world and tried
Speaker 1: to get break them down and figure out like what
Speaker 1: what do they reveal? These individual stories reveal about the
Speaker 1: human condition or you know, cultural elements. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: was a pretty fun exercise. So I feel like it's
Speaker 1: possible that we could we could we could bring that
Speaker 1: model back out again this October and and see what
Speaker 1: we could find. You know, maybe, I think I think
Speaker 1: last last time, most of the ghosts ended up revealing
Speaker 1: something kind of horrible about colonialism. Um, maybe we could
Speaker 1: find some examples of of ghost lore that reveal more
Speaker 1: about human psychology. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean the ghost
Speaker 1: archetype is kind of a master key to the lock
Speaker 1: on the human mind, where you open it up and
Speaker 1: rummage around with all the on all the images and
Speaker 1: fears we've got in there. It's sort of like a
Speaker 1: perfect cipher for for what's deep down in there suppressed.
Speaker 1: How about the film Ghost Shark? Does Does that exist?
Speaker 1: It does exist? I haven't yet. I gotta see it
Speaker 1: does exist. That's good. Now does it still eat people
Speaker 1: even though it's a ghost? I don't know. Maybe it
Speaker 1: eats your ghost. Maybe it has to work with another shark,
Speaker 1: like real shark eats you, and then ghost shark eats
Speaker 1: your ghost. That's what I'm hoping for. Maybe I'll also
Speaker 1: find out about this this Halloween. I don't know how.
Speaker 1: How does a ghost shark attack your mind? It doesn't
Speaker 1: seem with teeth teth. Well that's a good attack. Also,
Speaker 1: while I'm talking about ghosts and horror, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to mention another book that is. It's not on the
Speaker 1: list because I haven't finished reading it yet, but I
Speaker 1: love it so far. It's a book of horror short
Speaker 1: stories I've been reading for a while now called After
Speaker 1: the People Lights Have Gone Off from fourteen by the
Speaker 1: author Stephen Graham Jones was a great horror writer that uh,
Speaker 1: I've just been getting into recently, and I really enjoy
Speaker 1: some of the stories in there. Yeah, I'm very excited
Speaker 1: to check out some of his fiction at some point
Speaker 1: as well. Um, especially his tales that speak to the
Speaker 1: Native American experience. Oh yes, some of the stories do
Speaker 1: deal with those themes. One of my favorites in the
Speaker 1: collection that I've read so far as a short story
Speaker 1: called Brush Dogs, which is I believe set on the
Speaker 1: on a Blackfeet reservation in Montana, and it's a great story.
Speaker 1: It's really haunting. Deals again with I don't want to
Speaker 1: say explicitly with ghosts, but it's got a very ghostly
Speaker 1: aura about it. Alright, Well, on that note, we're going
Speaker 1: to take a break, but then we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back. Well. This leads us to the
Speaker 1: final selection for today's episode. In this one, it is yours, Joe. Alright,
Speaker 1: My final pick for this year is a fiction book,
Speaker 1: and it is The Three Body Problem by Sit Cheen
Speaker 1: Lieu or I guess actually would be inverted in the
Speaker 1: Chinese Blue Ching. Oh, this is a great one. I've
Speaker 1: read this one as well. Yeah, and so this is
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if I didn't pronounce his name perfectly. I
Speaker 1: know my Chinese pronunciation is not great. But so this
Speaker 1: one was first published in Chinese around ten years ago,
Speaker 1: published in an English translation by Ken liu In. And
Speaker 1: I saved this one for last because I struggled to
Speaker 1: decide whether or not to include it, specifically for the
Speaker 1: reason that so much of the pleasure of this novel
Speaker 1: is the slow gradual revelation and development of its themes
Speaker 1: and what's going on in the plot. And thus it's
Speaker 1: kind of, unfortunately one of those books that's just chock
Speaker 1: full of stuff to talk about but in talking about
Speaker 1: it with somebody who hasn't read it, you inevitably kind
Speaker 1: of spoil or at least undercut a few wonderful surprises
Speaker 1: of the plot. So for this entry, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about what I love about the book generally. Then
Speaker 1: I'll give a warning before we discuss a few more
Speaker 1: specific things. So listeners who haven't read the book plan
Speaker 1: on reading it and want it to be a complete
Speaker 1: surprise to them can hop out if they need to.
Speaker 1: But I'm not doing that just yet. So first of all,
Speaker 1: I want to say that this is my favorite kind
Speaker 1: of science fiction book in that it's one that deals
Speaker 1: not just with the future or with technology futuristic technology,
Speaker 1: but with scientific concepts themselves, and makes the problems of
Speaker 1: scientific discovery crucial to the advancement of the plot. So
Speaker 1: the science is not near mcguffin, it's not mere like
Speaker 1: plot element. It is. It is part of the backbone
Speaker 1: of the entire work right in a way. It's about
Speaker 1: science um and so it won't spoil much to say
Speaker 1: this because it's there in the title. The book deals
Speaker 1: with themes like predictability, unpredictability, and chaos, and so there's
Speaker 1: this idea of the three body problem in physics. That's
Speaker 1: what's referenced in the title. It's a classic problem that
Speaker 1: goes something like this. Let's say you have two objects
Speaker 1: interacting with one another in space, and you know Newton's
Speaker 1: laws of mechanics, and you know the starting position of
Speaker 1: the two objects, you know their velocities, and you know
Speaker 1: their mass. If you know all those things, you can
Speaker 1: create a robust solution that will predict their behavior and
Speaker 1: easily predict their positions at any given point in the future.
Speaker 1: They orbit a center of gravity in a very clear
Speaker 1: and simple way, and you can create a closed solution
Speaker 1: that will show you where they'll be at time t
Speaker 1: But if you add a third object to the mix,
Speaker 1: suddenly chaos and unpredictability takeover. And the objects are still
Speaker 1: perfectly governed by the laws of physics. It's not like
Speaker 1: a ghost win in there and did anything crazy. But
Speaker 1: but their interaction suddenly can't be predicted in a concise way,
Speaker 1: and they'll appear to change orbits and positions sort of
Speaker 1: crazily as each object repeatedly gets pulled in surprising directions
Speaker 1: by the other two. If you want to see what
Speaker 1: this looks like, you can look up the three body
Speaker 1: problem or three body orbit online and there are lots
Speaker 1: of videos that simulate it so you can see it.
Speaker 1: But just imagine what it would look like if you
Speaker 1: try to put three objects orbiting each other in space.
Speaker 1: I mean, they just go all over the place. And so,
Speaker 1: in keeping with these themes of predictability and unpredictability, it
Speaker 1: also deals with the ways that we can't predict which
Speaker 1: of our ideas in science and technology will be most
Speaker 1: applicable and in what ways. So there, I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff in this book about people
Speaker 1: sort of working in the dark and not knowing what
Speaker 1: they're working towards before realizing how their work becomes crucial.
Speaker 1: And that's the theme I like a lot. Now I
Speaker 1: have to I have to mention that I didn't read
Speaker 1: it so much as I listened to it. I had
Speaker 1: the audio book version of this, and the audio book
Speaker 1: is terrific. Uh. I love a good audio book presentation,
Speaker 1: and this is certainly one of those. I think you
Speaker 1: mentioned that the reader does the detective character in a
Speaker 1: real gruff way or something. Yeah, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: kind of a gruff voice like this, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of like an old time Yeah, and he does. He
Speaker 1: has some other very interesting voice choices later on as well. Um.
Speaker 1: I was actually listening to the audio book version and
Speaker 1: my wife was reading a hard copy of it, and
Speaker 1: I have to say, this is one of those books
Speaker 1: where if if you were, say, a hundred pages ahead
Speaker 1: of someone else, like you are of radically different thoughts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have radically different thoughts. It's almost like you're in
Speaker 1: a different book when you start trying to compare notes
Speaker 1: on what's happening. Oh man, I loved it. I loved
Speaker 1: how you would you'd get into these parts of the
Speaker 1: book where you're just like, what is going on? What
Speaker 1: does this have to do with anything? Uh? Specifically, there
Speaker 1: is a crucial virtual reality video game in the book
Speaker 1: that when when you start getting into these sections of
Speaker 1: the book, I just remember thinking like, how on earth
Speaker 1: does this have anything to do with with the broader plot?
Speaker 1: But then it connects in I think a brilliant way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is like a it's a it's a virtual depiction
Speaker 1: of an alien world that's threatened by by by by
Speaker 1: these periods of like burning and freezing. Right, they're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what are the celestial mechanics with multiple
Speaker 1: suns that are that are just burning out the world
Speaker 1: in in a way that directly echoes the Chinese myth
Speaker 1: of Ho Yee the the archer who shoots the surplus
Speaker 1: suns out of the sky. And a number of other
Speaker 1: mythological and historical figures are also referenced in this virtual world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's a legendary Chinese emperor in one of
Speaker 1: the yes yes uh in one of the simulations, but
Speaker 1: also some Western figures as well as I recall. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, like I don't remember who all they are,
Speaker 1: but like like Einstein and Socrates and Jesus show up
Speaker 1: or something. There's a tremendous sense of unpredictability with this book.
Speaker 1: I mean, part of it just be due to the
Speaker 1: originality of the book itself, but I also wonder how
Speaker 1: much of it is the fact that most of us
Speaker 1: probably do not read a lot of Chinese literature, more
Speaker 1: certainly Chinese science fiction, so you know, we're not as
Speaker 1: keyed into what some of the trends are. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think I'm embarrassed to say this, but I think
Speaker 1: this might be the first modern Chinese novel. I have read.
Speaker 1: I don't. I want to think of another, but I
Speaker 1: can't that that is a huge blind spot in my reading.
Speaker 1: I guess I should read more, but yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the only one I can think of. Yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I've I've read some older works by by various Chinese writers,
Speaker 1: but this is this is the only work of contemporary
Speaker 1: science fiction that comes to mind, for sure. And but
Speaker 1: it's certainly not the only translated Chinese science fiction work
Speaker 1: out there. There are there are a number of other
Speaker 1: ones of note. Oh yeah, of course. Well, so, Robert,
Speaker 1: maybe I think we should transition to a slightly more
Speaker 1: spoil ery discussion. So if if you're planning on reading
Speaker 1: the book, you don't want anything spoiled, maybe you should
Speaker 1: hop out now. But but before you go, if you
Speaker 1: are leaving early, let me just remind you that there
Speaker 1: will be a complete list of all of these books
Speaker 1: and links to where you can buy them or obtain
Speaker 1: them or find out more information about them. Uh. They'll
Speaker 1: all be on the landing page for this episode. It's
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind dot com. Yeah, Now, if
Speaker 1: you do want to stick around, we hope you will.
Speaker 1: You don't plan on reading this book or you've already
Speaker 1: read it, or maybe you just don't mind having a
Speaker 1: few kind of like themes talked about at greater length.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about some of the ideas explored
Speaker 1: in this book. So first of all, we can talk about,
Speaker 1: now that we're over the gap, the fact that this
Speaker 1: turns out to be a disastrous first contact novel. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: first contact between an alien civilization and Earth, and that
Speaker 1: it ultimately ends with the alien civilization taking a hostile,
Speaker 1: colonizing position towards Planet Earth looking at us within v
Speaker 1: s eye. Yes, And when I when we've talked about
Speaker 1: how it's a different book at later on, that it
Speaker 1: is in the early goings, I have to point out
Speaker 1: that you start with what seems like it's going to
Speaker 1: be a very historically based novel, take place in the past,
Speaker 1: but you do reach a point where it's just page
Speaker 1: after page from the the aliens point of view. And
Speaker 1: if you're listening to the audio book, their voices sound
Speaker 1: like the moon and nights on what's this show? The
Speaker 1: adult swim show, U Aquaritine hungerful. Yes, this is the
Speaker 1: voice that sort of sounds like this. This is the
Speaker 1: voice of the aliens. That's great. It works. The aliens
Speaker 1: have a calm malevolence that is not mean spirited, but
Speaker 1: but is perfectly aggressive and cruel in a way that
Speaker 1: mirrors one of my favorite lines from a sci fi
Speaker 1: horror movie. Did you ever see the you know, the
Speaker 1: late seventies invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland?
Speaker 1: And then I've never seen that one. Oh well, now
Speaker 1: I have to spoil something for you. There's just a
Speaker 1: great line where where one of the characters who still human,
Speaker 1: is talking to the uh, the people who have been
Speaker 1: turned into aliens, and he says something like, we hate you,
Speaker 1: and one of the aliens says to him, we don't
Speaker 1: hate you. It's just a brilliantly chilling thing to say.
Speaker 1: I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can definitely see
Speaker 1: the echo of that in the In This War. But yeah.
Speaker 1: So so there's there's this attack coming, and a lot
Speaker 1: of what the book ends up being about is the
Speaker 1: ways that the Aliens have have sent a sort of
Speaker 1: information based advance force to try to cripple Earth's ability
Speaker 1: to protect itself from the alien invasion before they actually
Speaker 1: get here. And so that's where where a lot of
Speaker 1: the fascinating ideas of the novel come in. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: about what could an advanced alien civilization do to stop
Speaker 1: Earth from being able to protect itself before they get
Speaker 1: to us. And so one of the things that they
Speaker 1: come up with is they're like, we gotta stop science
Speaker 1: from happening on Earth because they're afraid it's going to
Speaker 1: take a long time for them to get to us.
Speaker 1: And what if while they're in transit, we make a
Speaker 1: lot of advances in particle physics and stuff and drastically
Speaker 1: increase our technological capabilities. Yeah, I mean it is the
Speaker 1: absolute best thing that we have as a culture, Like,
Speaker 1: it is the thing that has produced the modern world,
Speaker 1: and it is the thing with the with with probably
Speaker 1: the most unity among all human endeavors exactly. So they
Speaker 1: come up with this plan to be because so they
Speaker 1: want to colonize Earth, but they can't like send a
Speaker 1: big heavy spaceships fast enough to get to us. So
Speaker 1: instead they create a supercomputer inside an extremely tiny particle
Speaker 1: that can be sent at at super fast speed towards Earth,
Speaker 1: like with the speed approaching that of a photon. Right
Speaker 1: that the idea exactly, so it gets here ahead of
Speaker 1: when they could actually get here with all of their
Speaker 1: heavy stuff, and it gets to Earth first. And mainly
Speaker 1: what it goes about doing is trying to drive all
Speaker 1: of the world's leading scientists and particle physicists and everybody
Speaker 1: to despair and insanity. And it does this by making
Speaker 1: them doubt the existence of scientific laws, like trying to
Speaker 1: give them is. So they do the same experiment twice
Speaker 1: and get different results. So it seems like the laws
Speaker 1: of science are either breaking down or clearly we didn't
Speaker 1: understand everything to begin with, and this the ladder of
Speaker 1: science is no longer the sure way to ascend anywhere.
Speaker 1: Another truly genius move that I think is there in
Speaker 1: the plot, and I can't maybe this has been done
Speaker 1: in another science fiction work that because it's so obvious,
Speaker 1: I feel like somebody should have thought of this, But
Speaker 1: this is the first story I can think of really
Speaker 1: exploiting this plot to its fullest. And the idea is
Speaker 1: the aliens figure out how to exploit existing ideological and
Speaker 1: political fractures within human kind to work the human population
Speaker 1: against itself on their behalf. Isn't there isn't there a
Speaker 1: series of I remember seeing these in bookstores when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, but they're like alternative timeline books where
Speaker 1: alien showed up during World War Two. Oh, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's happened. I bet it's probably explored in that in
Speaker 1: those works for sure, and and others as well well.
Speaker 1: I mean, so one of the things you often see,
Speaker 1: it's it's a common point of of of the plot
Speaker 1: in like Independence Day and stuff like, you know, all
Speaker 1: these alien invasion movies, is suddenly we all realize that
Speaker 1: we must set aside our petty differences and uh and
Speaker 1: join together if we're going to face off against the aliens.
Speaker 1: And there is some of that in this, in this
Speaker 1: we should mention. This is also the first book in
Speaker 1: a series. I haven't finished reading the other books yet,
Speaker 1: but I've started the second one. Um, and so there
Speaker 1: is eventually some solidarity in banding together in the face
Speaker 1: of the aliens. But one thing the aliens figure out
Speaker 1: they can do is that, you know, if there is
Speaker 1: a if there is a frustrated faction that already hates
Speaker 1: part of humanity, you can play to their biases and
Speaker 1: play to their in flat or them and get them
Speaker 1: on your side. And this is something that actually even
Speaker 1: you know is commonly used in in human colonization, international
Speaker 1: relations and all that exploiting factions within a target group
Speaker 1: in order to play them, play them against each other
Speaker 1: along their existing fractures. You don't have to make new fractures,
Speaker 1: they're already factions within any given group of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm instantly reminded us some examples from from Soviet history.
Speaker 1: You know how how you end up dividing up these territories.
Speaker 1: Make sure that you have a territory that has locked
Speaker 1: into it to rival groups so that they're always fighting
Speaker 1: each other and not fighting the the occupying power. You
Speaker 1: know what. George Washington, the first president of the United States,
Speaker 1: he had a lot of really lucid thoughts about this.
Speaker 1: In his farewell address in seventeen, he was warning about
Speaker 1: the nature of political parties. He was essentially saying, like,
Speaker 1: don't get going with political par parties, because they will
Speaker 1: be the death of you as a nation. So Washington's
Speaker 1: talking about internal party factionalism, you know, fighting amongst each other,
Speaker 1: and he says it serves always to distract the public
Speaker 1: counsels and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community
Speaker 1: with ill founded jealousies and false alarms. It kindles the
Speaker 1: animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.
Speaker 1: It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which
Speaker 1: finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the
Speaker 1: channels of party passions. Thus, the policy and the will
Speaker 1: of one country are subjected to the policy and will
Speaker 1: of another. And if you just replace Planet there for
Speaker 1: country there, you've got what happens. Uh in the novel.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you was thinking about George Washington,
Speaker 1: but it's a perennial insight. I guess, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so. Since we're having our spoiler laden discussion here,
Speaker 1: one thing that I wanted to mention from the second
Speaker 1: novel in the series, the one that comes after The
Speaker 1: Body Problem, is this great moment that I haven't finished
Speaker 1: this novel yet, but there's a part where the particle
Speaker 1: that the Aliens have sent ahead, the supercomputer AI that
Speaker 1: they've sent ahead that's about the size of a particle
Speaker 1: and is flying around the Earth trying to prepare the
Speaker 1: Earth to be invaded. There is a great scene where
Speaker 1: it first learns that human beings, unlike the aliens who
Speaker 1: sent it, have the ability to lie. Because the aliens
Speaker 1: are not they're not individually deceptive because they don't communicate verbally,
Speaker 1: they essentially share thoughts with one another in a detectable way,
Speaker 1: and thus to think something is to have that thing
Speaker 1: be perceptible by another member of your species. And so
Speaker 1: thus you can't misrepresent your thoughts. If you have a thought,
Speaker 1: someone can see it on you, And so they don't
Speaker 1: really have a concept of lying. And when the supercomputer
Speaker 1: sent by the Aliens as they're on their way to
Speaker 1: invade first becomes aware that human beings have the power
Speaker 1: to say something that is not what they really think,
Speaker 1: the supercomputer processes for a moment and then it says,
Speaker 1: I am afraid. Alright. So so just to sum it up, um,
Speaker 1: humans versus aliens humans advantages, we have science disadvantages. Um,
Speaker 1: we have we fight with each other, fight with each other,
Speaker 1: and have political disunity. And then kind of a pro
Speaker 1: and a con. Uh, there's the whole lying thing because
Speaker 1: we lie to each other all the time, which doesn't
Speaker 1: help our case. But then we can also lie to
Speaker 1: the aliens if we're on talking terms with them. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend three Body Problem if you're in the
Speaker 1: mood for some thought provoking science fiction. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: there you have it. I feel like we've presented quite
Speaker 1: a grab bag here of fiction, nonfiction, a little children's
Speaker 1: literature thrown in as well. Uh. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: I'll make sure that we have links to all of
Speaker 1: these books on the landing page for this episode. It's
Speaker 1: stuff to bow your mind, because inevitably you're gonna ask, well,
Speaker 1: how do you spell that author's last name? What was
Speaker 1: that book you mentioned? Maybe we didn't say the title
Speaker 1: clearly enough. We'll have it all listed here, and then
Speaker 1: you can continue your research into which books might best
Speaker 1: suit your palette. And the other cool thing is that
Speaker 1: you know this is just the beginning of a discussion
Speaker 1: really because inevitably, uh, many of you have read these
Speaker 1: books as well, or some of these books, and you
Speaker 1: have thoughts on them that you would like to share
Speaker 1: with us or perhaps share with other listeners, say at
Speaker 1: our Facebook group on stuff Toble your Mind discussion module.
Speaker 1: And then perhaps you have all new recommendations for us
Speaker 1: books that you that you you're thinking, well, if you
Speaker 1: like this, then you'll definitely like this. Yeah, please send
Speaker 1: them our way. Obviously we don't have time to read
Speaker 1: all of the books that you recommend to us, but
Speaker 1: a lot of times we do find out about books
Speaker 1: that we end up reading from listener recommendations, so so
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