Speaker 1: Yeah, Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey, guys, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Alison I don't know, like, the science editor
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. This is Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: science writer at how stuff works dot com. Today we're
Speaker 1: talking about science fiction. We're stepping outside the laboratory and
Speaker 1: we're entering the world of science fiction world that I
Speaker 1: know you're very fond of, Robert. Yeah, I've been a
Speaker 1: fan of a sci fi for for quite some time. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't pretend to be an expert on it. Therapy
Speaker 1: is plenty of classic sci fi books that I have
Speaker 1: not read, um, and we'll maybe get to one day.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I have a lot of love for sci fi,
Speaker 1: and I know that you have been looking to get
Speaker 1: more into sci fi. I have. Yeah, I've done a
Speaker 1: little reading. I've read Brave New World, I did a
Speaker 1: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy some stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: I do I am looking for some more sci fi reading. Cool. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're really gonna
Speaker 1: kick off talking about like why it, Matt, Like, what
Speaker 1: what is science fiction in relation to science? Which is
Speaker 1: our core topic here and you know what it means.
Speaker 1: And then we're gonna go through a few different titles
Speaker 1: that I'm particularly fond of that I might recommend to
Speaker 1: you or to anyone out there who's looking to get
Speaker 1: into sci fi. And these three titles are good if
Speaker 1: it gives you any contacts. I went to the library
Speaker 1: at the public library the other night and I was
Speaker 1: looking for these three books. I've done a little bit
Speaker 1: of reading on them, but I haven't fully read them yet,
Speaker 1: and I'm really looking forward to them. And anyway, these
Speaker 1: three books that Robert that made Robert's list are all
Speaker 1: checked out, so I think that's a good son. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think they're all they're all Hugo Award winners
Speaker 1: as well, Yes, yes they are. So yeah. We'll just
Speaker 1: kick this off with the Webster's definition for science fiction,
Speaker 1: um quote fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual
Speaker 1: or imagine science on society or individuals, or having a
Speaker 1: scientific factor as an essential orienting component. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: all about where, where where science touches society and how
Speaker 1: that impacts our view of the future. One interesting thing
Speaker 1: I found about science fiction is that you would think
Speaker 1: that it would be all about the technology, right, it
Speaker 1: would focus on the technology. But in a lot of
Speaker 1: science fiction, it seems that it always comes down to
Speaker 1: the individual. The individual still remains important determining uh, the
Speaker 1: future of the world or the future of interplanetary society.
Speaker 1: So I just thought that was interesting. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: like even the even the techiest um sci fi, you know,
Speaker 1: it tends to come down to human stories like how
Speaker 1: what is how would technology change what we fundamentally are?
Speaker 1: And what do they how do they illuminate what we
Speaker 1: fundamentally are a lot of times that means illuminating of course,
Speaker 1: our our strengths or our weaknesses, depending on whether you
Speaker 1: have more of a lighthearted uh sci fi romp or
Speaker 1: something just brutally dark. You know. An important distinction to
Speaker 1: make in all of this is hard sci fi versus
Speaker 1: soft sci fi? Right, um, and uh it comes out
Speaker 1: of questions of is this actual science? Is it is extrapolate?
Speaker 1: Is it it extrapolated from real um you know, studies, findings, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Or is the science just kind of magic? Um. It
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily make the science fiction good or bad. You
Speaker 1: have you know, really good hard sci fi, and you
Speaker 1: also have some really boring hard sci fi out there.
Speaker 1: Um but yeah, you're your Your hard sci fi is
Speaker 1: going to be more rooted in in the actual science
Speaker 1: of the thing, in realistic um visions of the future
Speaker 1: based on the current course of science of science. For instance,
Speaker 1: hard science fiction would be like Arthur C. Clark, especially
Speaker 1: his uh, his novel A Fall of Moon Dust Stu,
Speaker 1: which deals with moon colonization. Or Ben Bova has a
Speaker 1: number of books dealing with the colonization of mars Um.
Speaker 1: You know, these are these are all books that that
Speaker 1: at heart are dealing with the actual science. If you
Speaker 1: get into soft sci fi, I mean, the classic example
Speaker 1: would be something like Star Wars. Yeah, because mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's some books that try and explain the
Speaker 1: science of Star Wars, but any in fact, we have
Speaker 1: an article about the light Savers. But by and large,
Speaker 1: Star Wars is not concerned with how the science of
Speaker 1: anything works. It's about this about creating a you know,
Speaker 1: a big space opera, big romantic, melodramaic, melodramatic adventure with
Speaker 1: you know, superpowered individuals and super powerful factions and all this,
Speaker 1: um uh. And then also you have smaller works, say
Speaker 1: like The Time Traveler's Wife, which I haven't read, but
Speaker 1: but I understand that takes a sci fi element and
Speaker 1: use it as a plot device for a character driven exploration.
Speaker 1: You know, so correct me if I'm wrong. But um,
Speaker 1: The Time Traveler's Wife is not really a book concerned with, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the physics of time travel and um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and along those lines, we also have, um, very optimistic
Speaker 1: sci fi. You have very pessimistic sci fi. And when
Speaker 1: it comes to these visions of the future, you also
Speaker 1: have your your very utopian visions of the future and
Speaker 1: your dystopic visions of the future. And you know that
Speaker 1: kind of speaks for itself. Star Trek. Star Trek is
Speaker 1: a classic example, yea of of a very uh, if
Speaker 1: not utopian, then very optimistic vision of the future. You know,
Speaker 1: it's rude to you know, it goes back to, you know,
Speaker 1: the excitement about the space race and then this idea
Speaker 1: that technology was just gonna get better and better and
Speaker 1: change the the the way that we live. Um. You know, you'll,
Speaker 1: I mean, even though there there's war and there's a
Speaker 1: there's destruction and death in in the and and certainly
Speaker 1: conflict in the in the Star Trek universe, Um, you
Speaker 1: still see like whole like all of Earth is united,
Speaker 1: is one people, whole systems of you know, of of
Speaker 1: aliens are united as one people, you know, and that's
Speaker 1: you know, and they even have this, uh, like the
Speaker 1: whole Prime Directive deal where they don't they don't mess
Speaker 1: with with rising civilizations that haven't achieved you know, space
Speaker 1: travel yet, you know. So they're they're already writing, you know,
Speaker 1: writing into this future that we will have learned from
Speaker 1: our past that we're not going to say, repeat the
Speaker 1: exploitation and decimation of the Native American um people, you know,
Speaker 1: on a cosmic scale, right, So they already have really
Speaker 1: cool stuff like green technology, and there is an element
Speaker 1: of morality threading the entire series. So let's look at
Speaker 1: some of the more pessimistic stuff. What about Avatar you
Speaker 1: put that, I would say that Avatar is not just
Speaker 1: like Super Dark, because you have some sci fi that's
Speaker 1: just basically saying humans are horrible and in the far future,
Speaker 1: we're just going to be even more horrible. Um, but
Speaker 1: Avatar still paints a rather bleak vision of humanity's future.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like humans have destroyed their own planet basically,
Speaker 1: I mean it's they talk to speak of it as
Speaker 1: a poisoned world, and they're headed off to another planet
Speaker 1: to exploit its resources and its native inhabitants. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: continuing the cycle that you know, we started in colonial days.
Speaker 1: And I was sorry, I see it. It's the distinction
Speaker 1: of colonization versus new colonization. I guess. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: kind of you know, it's it kind of comes down
Speaker 1: to the whole you know idea, you know, the terror
Speaker 1: of history. It's like our humans gonna just keep making
Speaker 1: the same mistake over and over again. And you're more
Speaker 1: optimistic visions involve us learning from our mistakes, and the
Speaker 1: more pessimistic or in my opinion, realistic ones involve us
Speaker 1: making the same mistakes over and over again. So let's
Speaker 1: get into some of the classics. Let's talking about H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells and Jules Verne. Yeah, yeah, these were these are
Speaker 1: two of the big guys. Um. You know, you can
Speaker 1: you can go back and find, you know, older works
Speaker 1: that are technically sci fi, but these are the real
Speaker 1: fathers of modern science fiction. UM. Wells, of course, is
Speaker 1: known for such works as the It's the Time Machine,
Speaker 1: Verne twenty leagues under the sea, so you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're they're writing. Especially Verne is right, wrote a lot
Speaker 1: about the future, predicting what the future was going to
Speaker 1: be like. And he was like a true tech like
Speaker 1: tech geek, Like he would probably have a podcast with
Speaker 1: with Jonathan Strickland today, you know, if you were around
Speaker 1: um or Jonathan would and him would be tweeting back
Speaker 1: and forth, because yeah, Verne was writing about you know,
Speaker 1: air conditioning, automomobiles, facts, machine electricity, traveling to the moon, submarines.
Speaker 1: You know. In all this, um Wells was new Slatch either, right,
Speaker 1: he was learning about time travel, of course, he was
Speaker 1: learning about lasers and visibility, interplanetary war, um, even wireless
Speaker 1: communications and answering machines. And just to give your perspective,
Speaker 1: H G. Wells was alive of from eighteen sixty six
Speaker 1: to ninety six. Yeah, and one thing I ran across
Speaker 1: when I was brushing up again on him was that
Speaker 1: people pointed out that if Mary Shelley hadn't written Frankenstein, um,
Speaker 1: then Wells may have actually like hit all the the
Speaker 1: key like sci fi plot elements, you know, and just
Speaker 1: you know, nailed them ahead of time because he was
Speaker 1: just he was just on a frenzy towards the end
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, just like Book a Year, you know,
Speaker 1: and each one is you know, a classic today. But
Speaker 1: it's also worth mentioning again that, yeah, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,
Speaker 1: in addition to being you know, horror, is definitely a
Speaker 1: key early sci fi work. Yeah. The important thing with
Speaker 1: any of this, uh, any science fiction is that is
Speaker 1: not what it tells you about the future, because obviously
Speaker 1: none of it's going to be completely correct, um, but
Speaker 1: but what it tells you about the time which was published,
Speaker 1: you know what, what were their thoughts in the Victorian
Speaker 1: age about about their modern technology, about what the future
Speaker 1: was gonna was gonna hold for everybody? Um right, So
Speaker 1: Wells and vern we're both concerned about humanity's path back
Speaker 1: then and where I might leave in the future. They
Speaker 1: were thinking that maybe it's going to be a stagnating
Speaker 1: world like that of the Morlocks and the Eloi. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: one where um we're basically the the the class divisions
Speaker 1: and industrialization would lead to an age where um, you
Speaker 1: had you know, these these dreamy little elf people living
Speaker 1: on the surface world doing nothing with their lives and
Speaker 1: in their society while these monstrous, you know, troll like
Speaker 1: creatures actually think they were more spider like in the
Speaker 1: in the book, but it's hard to get the image
Speaker 1: from the film out of your head. But but one
Speaker 1: of these monsters toiled underground to keep the surface system alive.
Speaker 1: And and of course Verne wrote us, you know, several
Speaker 1: books dealing with the future of warfare, and you know,
Speaker 1: they're pretty pretty bleak in that regard that, you know,
Speaker 1: we have all this amazing technology and we're going to
Speaker 1: continue to use it to destroy one another. So what
Speaker 1: were some of the outdated concepts that both Verne and Wells. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are things where you know, you read them today
Speaker 1: and um and and they just doesn't make you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't jive as well, like you know, say, well
Speaker 1: that's that's not the way it turned out at all, um.
Speaker 1: Sort of like if you you know, you know, it's
Speaker 1: sort of like if you've watched you know, two thousand
Speaker 1: and one a Space odusy and you're like, whoa hold on,
Speaker 1: our space stations don't look like that. Um. But but
Speaker 1: generally the older the sci fi, the bigger the chance
Speaker 1: that the science is really won't keep by today's standards. UM. So,
Speaker 1: like vern said, you have to give them credit for trying. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're working with with the best that they had.
Speaker 1: I mean, sci fi written today, even like the most
Speaker 1: cutting edge sci fi you know, is it gonna hold
Speaker 1: up in you know, a hundred years. Maybe maybe not.
Speaker 1: This stuff holds up because I mean both of these
Speaker 1: guys were great writers and uh and had something important
Speaker 1: to say, you know. And that's when we keep going
Speaker 1: back to him. So like Verne's Journey to the Center
Speaker 1: of the Earth, Um, it has some outdated ideas about
Speaker 1: the Earth's interior um and uh, and you know, and
Speaker 1: he's trying to to educate the reader about about you know,
Speaker 1: what extinct creatures existed in which geologic age, you know,
Speaker 1: and not all that holds up today. Um, it's you know,
Speaker 1: but it's it's but it's fine because he was he
Speaker 1: was writing for the modern you know, his modern audience,
Speaker 1: and it clues us into how they were thinking back
Speaker 1: in the you know, the Victorian era. UM. Likewise, the
Speaker 1: time Machine, there is great sequence in the end where
Speaker 1: the time traveler UM goes just travels like ridiculously far.
Speaker 1: Then he's already ridiculously far ahead because what the Time
Speaker 1: Machine takes place in uh eighty m eight hundred and
Speaker 1: two thousand, seven hundred one, you know, so which is
Speaker 1: great because so many time travel movies like they go like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is what the future is gonna be like in
Speaker 1: N and you know, I'm like, oh, we didn't have
Speaker 1: flying cars in NT seven, so you know, wells had
Speaker 1: it right. He's like like, all right, they when you
Speaker 1: finally get to the year eight hundred, eight hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: you know, then you can correct me. But but no,
Speaker 1: he had this this vision of the like the earth
Speaker 1: when the sun finally stopped, you know, stops burning, and
Speaker 1: the earth just stops in its tracks and and everything dies.
Speaker 1: And it's very bleak and beautifully written. But of course,
Speaker 1: uh it's it's based on outdated models of celestial mechanics.
Speaker 1: It still works, though, I highly recommend high highly recommend
Speaker 1: via Time Machine. What about the movies, um, you know
Speaker 1: there they can be fun, but you know, it's you know,
Speaker 1: each work of sci fi is is rooted in its day,
Speaker 1: you know, and sometimes when you have like an older
Speaker 1: work of sci fi and it's produced in an other time,
Speaker 1: you end up with sort of a mixture of those
Speaker 1: those things, so it's kind of a kind of deluded
Speaker 1: in my opinion. So today we're gonna start off with
Speaker 1: three sci fi books that I personally am going to
Speaker 1: read and we hope you will too if you haven't already. Um,
Speaker 1: And we picked these three books because they are award
Speaker 1: winners and stuff like that, but they're also held up
Speaker 1: as classics in the pantheon of science fiction, and I
Speaker 1: really like each of them, so I can speak to them,
Speaker 1: you know. The first one that made our list was
Speaker 1: Dune by Frank Herbert. I'm just going to read you
Speaker 1: the first line in case you've never read it. In
Speaker 1: the week before their departure to Aracus, when all the
Speaker 1: final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy in
Speaker 1: Old Crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so begins Dune, Herbert's novel, and it won the
Speaker 1: Hugo Award in nineteen sixty six, and it went on
Speaker 1: to also win the very first Nebula Award. June has
Speaker 1: had a bunch of sequels and even a prequel written
Speaker 1: by Herbert's son Brian. Oh. Yeah, like a string of
Speaker 1: prequel like the her kids are just going crazy with it.
Speaker 1: So June follows paul a treatyse the son of a
Speaker 1: powerful family kind of think of for our future equivalent
Speaker 1: of the Montagues or Capulets, and this powerful family is
Speaker 1: just gaining control of the desert planet Aracus. And Oracus
Speaker 1: is important because of course it's a source of milange,
Speaker 1: and this is a drug that's pretty helpful for interplanetary travel,
Speaker 1: psychic powers and other stuff. Yeah, crucial I would say,
Speaker 1: like it's basically it's kind of it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the Middle East of this universe, you know, with with
Speaker 1: its oil, the planet that has the the the the
Speaker 1: element that makes the whole system work. You guys might
Speaker 1: remember us mentioning milange and doing on our podcast about
Speaker 1: what drugs astronauts are one, didn't it come up on that?
Speaker 1: But milange is not one of the drugs at Astronauts.
Speaker 1: It's not, it's not. It is actually fictional And so
Speaker 1: Herbert's Soon is a hugely complex story, and it's one
Speaker 1: that has generated a serious fan base and some serious
Speaker 1: book sales. The Library Journal says June is to science
Speaker 1: fiction what the Lord of the Rings is to fantasy.
Speaker 1: So why are we talking about doing today? Why didn't
Speaker 1: it make our short list of three? Well? Um, well,
Speaker 1: first I should point out that this is doing is
Speaker 1: very much a space opera. Um. It's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's grand, it's epic, it's you know, it's I really
Speaker 1: like that term space opera. Yeah, I mean it's you know,
Speaker 1: the first couple of times you hear it, you kind
Speaker 1: of think of people singing in space, right, A large
Speaker 1: woman with a hat with horns. Yeah. I don't take
Speaker 1: their any hats with horns in this, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of grows on you. Uh not to say
Speaker 1: that there's there aren't some some scientific ideas thrown around
Speaker 1: in here. Um. For instance, Herbert was inspired by um,
Speaker 1: by some some ongoing efforts to reclaim some some desert
Speaker 1: land in the US. And so there's a there's a
Speaker 1: good bit of ecological content in the in the books.
Speaker 1: It's very well thought out and you know, very scientific
Speaker 1: and perhaps accidentally, Um, you're going back to the milange.
Speaker 1: There's the whole business where they take the pilots of
Speaker 1: these of these huge spaceships take it because space is
Speaker 1: so dangerous that and especially traveling at really high speeds.
Speaker 1: It's so dangerous. You have to be able to see
Speaker 1: a little bit in the into the future to UM
Speaker 1: to successfully navigate, you know, UM and Interrestlingly enough, there
Speaker 1: have been some reports that the that the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: actually looked into into the possibilities UM of using psychics
Speaker 1: in their space program early on. I did a blog
Speaker 1: post about it though. Yeah. But but for the most part,
Speaker 1: um Done is more concerned with larger ideas like what
Speaker 1: what is the long term future of humanity and space?
Speaker 1: Because this is like a far future world we're dealing
Speaker 1: with where I think the the Earth no longer even exists,
Speaker 1: you know, so it's just the you know, the far
Speaker 1: future colonies that's sprang from Earth. You know. He gets into,
Speaker 1: you know, concepts of like like what would religion be
Speaker 1: like in the future in a post Earth future? Um,
Speaker 1: you know, what's what's the rate? How to sexuality figure
Speaker 1: into it? Uh, you know, gender issues, etcetera. So it's
Speaker 1: a great adventure story that hits a lot of pretty
Speaker 1: serious issues concerning the human race. Also, the main character
Speaker 1: overdoses on space drugs and he writes a giant sin
Speaker 1: or him to save the universe. How could you not
Speaker 1: love that? Pretty gnarly. Yeah, you gotta you gotta love that. Um, Now,
Speaker 1: did you like the rest of the series. Um, I
Speaker 1: love the first book. And the great thing about the
Speaker 1: first book I should mention too, is like the first
Speaker 1: time I read it, I read it like in high
Speaker 1: school or junior high and loved it because it's a
Speaker 1: great sci fi adventure, you know. But but then I
Speaker 1: actually reread it last year and um, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's been a decade or so and I'm a different
Speaker 1: reader now and it speaks to me on a whole
Speaker 1: different level. So it's I mean, I think it's the
Speaker 1: mark of a great, great book that that. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: the second book is good, but not as good and
Speaker 1: in the third book it was in the fourth book
Speaker 1: all right, you know, I enjoyed some things about them,
Speaker 1: but they kind of get progressively um dents and progressively dry,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, this is just my opinion. A
Speaker 1: lot of people share this opinion. Some people love everything.
Speaker 1: My dentist actually like everything done related, and which is
Speaker 1: awesome because again he can talk about it and I
Speaker 1: can garble about it when I go to see him.
Speaker 1: But but now I'm not a fan of the later books.
Speaker 1: Have you seen David Lynch's Dune? Yeah? Yeah, that's uh,
Speaker 1: you haven't seen it? I have you? No, I have
Speaker 1: not seen it. I mean it's it's not I love it,
Speaker 1: but not as a as an accurate betrayal of of
Speaker 1: how I see the book in my head. Um. So,
Speaker 1: it's got some great costumes in it. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Staying runs around in his underwear stabbing people. So again,
Speaker 1: what's not to love? Um, there's a great John Hodgment
Speaker 1: quote about the film. Can you read that for us?
Speaker 1: I must remind you this was the David Lynch version
Speaker 1: of Dune in which everyone was sexy and deformed at
Speaker 1: the same time. Yeah, so I love I love that quote.
Speaker 1: That pretty much sums up the film. In other news,
Speaker 1: they've tried a couple of different adaptations of Dune, haven't they. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was like a scythe By mini series version of
Speaker 1: it that I think I watched part of it, but
Speaker 1: it didn't really speak to me. When we were researching
Speaker 1: this podcast, I read that French director Pierre Morrell, director
Speaker 1: of Taken and From Paris with Love, I've never heard
Speaker 1: of either of those films of you. Uh yeah, one
Speaker 1: familiar with him. I haven't actually seen them, so I
Speaker 1: can't really say much on you know, whether I think
Speaker 1: it's great or not. But but if if he's out
Speaker 1: there listening and has some casting ideas, I think that
Speaker 1: he should get Eddie Murphy to play the entire Harconan
Speaker 1: family a clumps, you know, where it's like different fat
Speaker 1: suits for different members of the family. So Morrell seconded
Speaker 1: to your opinion about Lynch's do not being perhaps treated
Speaker 1: the story. Morrell commented to MTV News, Like many people,
Speaker 1: I was not fully satisfied with David Lynch's movie in ur.
Speaker 1: I do respect David, and I think his interpretation and
Speaker 1: vision were interesting, but not what we fans expected. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it was. And it's also it's very much
Speaker 1: a film actation stuck in its time and and speaking
Speaker 1: each Dune was written in six and I mean this
Speaker 1: is so in many ways, this is the book that's
Speaker 1: really like sci fi coming out of the sixties. You know,
Speaker 1: all these fantastic elements that we just talked about. So
Speaker 1: if you haven't read it, by all means, consider reading Dane.
Speaker 1: That's our first book, and moving on to our second book,
Speaker 1: Neuromancer by William Gibson the sky above the port was
Speaker 1: the color of television tuned to a dead channel. And
Speaker 1: with that you're starting along with Case the protagonist. You
Speaker 1: would call him a protagonist, right, yeah, yeah, definitely. In
Speaker 1: Computer Cowboy, William Gibson's heavyweight contribution to the world of
Speaker 1: SCIPI back Neuromancer One. Not just a Hugo and a
Speaker 1: Nebula ward. It also snagged the Philip K. Dick Award,
Speaker 1: and it herald the beginning of a new science fiction genre,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the reasons why we're talking about
Speaker 1: it today. Yeah, this is the cyberpunk book. Everything that
Speaker 1: came after it from you know, from from you know,
Speaker 1: from any any cyber punk book you might read. To
Speaker 1: the Matrix, you know, his matrix is just chocked full
Speaker 1: of neuromancer gimmicks, you know. Um, And it's so this
Speaker 1: is a this is you know, a great dystopian work.
Speaker 1: Most cyberpunks pretty dystopian, and I should define cyberpunk womb
Speaker 1: at it. The idea of cyberpunk is that it deals
Speaker 1: with ubiquitous technology. You know, when when technology high technology
Speaker 1: is available to at pretty much every level of society,
Speaker 1: and how that again both changes who we are and
Speaker 1: illuminates things about who we are. So, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: Matrix is a good example of cyberpunk that people might
Speaker 1: be able to relate to. Yeah, I mean, Matrix only
Speaker 1: goes so deep really with the cyberpunk stuff. But it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely something that everybody's gonna be able to recognize.
Speaker 1: And Gibson was the forefather. Yeah. Yeah, and it's and
Speaker 1: it's a lot of cyberpunk. Is follows some more elements
Speaker 1: in Neuromancer, and then it's kind of noir theme. There's
Speaker 1: kind of you know, it's always like some sort of
Speaker 1: a you know, sort of a shady you know, shady characters,
Speaker 1: sort of rogue characters, you know, on the margins of society,
Speaker 1: um um, you know, mysterious benefactors, you know, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So they tend to be you know, kind
Speaker 1: of kind of action adventure mystery kind of deals. So
Speaker 1: we'd recommend this just because cyberpunk is an integral part
Speaker 1: of science fiction today. Yeah, and its and it's you know,
Speaker 1: like I say, it's rooted with questions about technology and
Speaker 1: how it changes you know, who we are. Plus it
Speaker 1: has some called beat elements and our elements Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was definitely. He was also inspired by by Bye
Speaker 1: Beat Um the Beat era, So you can really, especially
Speaker 1: in this book, you really get a lot of that. Um.
Speaker 1: And now one one thing to keep in mind is
Speaker 1: that it is one of the more violent and sexy
Speaker 1: books by William Gibson. So um, you know it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of edgy and not for you know, every reader. Um.
Speaker 1: Though each each William Gibson book after this kind of
Speaker 1: gets a little tamer and a little more contemplative, um
Speaker 1: and actually a little less sci fi like the last
Speaker 1: two books that that Gibson has put out. I think
Speaker 1: there were Pattern Recognition and Spook Country, right, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: those are both set just in the modern world for
Speaker 1: the most part. It's really interesting. Yeah. And Gibson's even
Speaker 1: even said that that he basically doesn't have to write
Speaker 1: sci fi anymore because the technology has reached the has
Speaker 1: reached the point where it's you know, the future is
Speaker 1: now movies. Um. It seems inevitable. Yeah, that they've they've
Speaker 1: continued to be talking about a neuromancwer film. Um. I
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot of faith in it. Whatever
Speaker 1: they put together, um, and inevitably, whatever they put out.
Speaker 1: People are going to be like, oh, this is just
Speaker 1: like this is a matrix trip off man. So so
Speaker 1: let's get to the third book on our list today,
Speaker 1: which is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Carts. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: book had me at the first line, I can hardly
Speaker 1: wait to go back to my desk and read it
Speaker 1: and then podcast research. Okay, so the line is I've
Speaker 1: watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and
Speaker 1: I tell you he's the one. How can you not
Speaker 1: be intrigued to find out what the heck this book
Speaker 1: is about. Yeah, it's similar to to Doing in that respect,
Speaker 1: which also dealt with the one. And that's the beginning
Speaker 1: of Enders Game. So Enders Game is published in like
Speaker 1: we said, by Orson Scott Card and it was the
Speaker 1: first in the Enders Game series. So the plot basically,
Speaker 1: every parent likes to think because or her child is
Speaker 1: a genius, myself included, but Ender Wiggins actually is. And
Speaker 1: that's good because humanity is hanging by a shred, as
Speaker 1: it tends to in science fiction, and it's hanging by
Speaker 1: shred because it has had these attacks from aliens called
Speaker 1: buggers and enders the world government's hope and as such,
Speaker 1: the government starts ruthlessly training him to save the planet,
Speaker 1: and the training takes the form of the game's reference
Speaker 1: in the title, Did I do that Justice Robert? Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much. I mean it's really the idea is that
Speaker 1: that aliens attack and the only reason that we were
Speaker 1: able to survive is because we had one guy who
Speaker 1: was just an amazing leader, like one guy that just
Speaker 1: stood above everybody else. And then then everybody starts wondering, well,
Speaker 1: these guys are gonna attack again, and who's gonna lead us?
Speaker 1: You know when that happens. So, yeah, they begin this
Speaker 1: just systematic search that I think he made the comparison
Speaker 1: to the search for the Next Dolly. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like that, except the world of science fiction. So while
Speaker 1: I was reading up on enders game, I came across
Speaker 1: or Sin Scott Cards Amazon review turns out he was
Speaker 1: a playwright to Oh yeah yeah, so Card rights in
Speaker 1: the end, a storyteller tells the tale that he believes
Speaker 1: in and cares about, and the natural audience consists of
Speaker 1: those readers who are also willing to believe in and
Speaker 1: care about that jail. So Card is actually a bit
Speaker 1: on the defensive here because he's taken a lot of
Speaker 1: flak as your wont to do on Amazon reviews. Um,
Speaker 1: some for his choppy prose style. I guess, um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I can't really get on the on boat
Speaker 1: with the with slamming him for for his writing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I really enjoy his work. But but yeah, he's
Speaker 1: come under sharp criticism for a number of things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he had this pretty funny quote at the end
Speaker 1: of his lengthy Amazon review and he says, if America
Speaker 1: can forgive Bill Clinton, surely there's room for a bit
Speaker 1: of forgiveness for the imperfections of a few bad writers
Speaker 1: now and then we'll see. And I wouldn't necessarily call
Speaker 1: him a bad writer. And you have to read the
Speaker 1: whole review to get the context. But I thought that
Speaker 1: was a funny yeah, to say, yeah, well this, I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly this want to you know, Hugo Award and a
Speaker 1: Nebula Awardia and actually the sequel one. I believe the
Speaker 1: next year. I want a Hugo Award as well. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it deals with some some pretty weighty issues. You know,
Speaker 1: how about our future in the cosmos? How would how
Speaker 1: would might we respond to some sort of alien attack? Um?
Speaker 1: And I know it's a fantastic notion, but when you
Speaker 1: when you talk to a cosmologist like that's that's really
Speaker 1: an issue, Like Stephen Hawkings talks about this, you know,
Speaker 1: how you know, if there is alien life out there,
Speaker 1: how's it going to how are we going to attempt
Speaker 1: to communicate with it? How can we possibly um, you know,
Speaker 1: deal with it? And if it's anything like us, then
Speaker 1: God help us, you know, because it's probably gonna eradicate it.
Speaker 1: And there's also some cool stuff with with with with
Speaker 1: time as well, the the the world leader that everyone
Speaker 1: is afraid, you know, what are we gonna do when
Speaker 1: he's dad? They go so far as to put him
Speaker 1: in a spaceship and spend it scent it at high speeds,
Speaker 1: and the time dilation allows him to live much longer
Speaker 1: than he normally would, so he's still there to to
Speaker 1: teach whoever the chosen one is when they come along.
Speaker 1: So it's more Lord of the Flies than Harry Potter. Definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's the only like the only thing about it
Speaker 1: that I could, you know, the only reservation I would
Speaker 1: have in recommending it to some people might be you've
Speaker 1: got to be ready for some pretty pretty heart wrenching
Speaker 1: scenes because endure is you know, it doesn't indur just
Speaker 1: has a rough time. But it's a it's a it's
Speaker 1: a great read. And I would definitely recommend this one
Speaker 1: to to any female book readers out there who well,
Speaker 1: because and this is this is a there's a large
Speaker 1: generalization on one hand that uh that women prefer more
Speaker 1: character driven books, and certainly this is yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is and this is very character driven. Side I um,
Speaker 1: you know, because you really care about Ender and you
Speaker 1: really want, um want things to work out for him. Um,
Speaker 1: And on like a personal level, I have I know
Speaker 1: a number of I have a number of female friends
Speaker 1: who love this book to death, And then I love
Speaker 1: this book to death too. If you're a guy out
Speaker 1: there and you're like, well, I don't want to read
Speaker 1: a book that girls like or whatever, then um, I
Speaker 1: would highly recommend um Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
Speaker 1: because that is the most violent, um and brutal and
Speaker 1: outrageous sci fi book that I think you could hope
Speaker 1: to read. And it has a lot of cool science
Speaker 1: fiction in it, but it's very much a guy's book.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about a couple of other great science
Speaker 1: fiction authors that you may want to check out. Besides Gibson,
Speaker 1: Herbert and orson stop card, there's of course Isaac Asimov,
Speaker 1: I Robot, Arthur C. Clark, whom you already mentioned, and
Speaker 1: then Philip Kate, Dick Ray Bradberry, and then there's u Ursula,
Speaker 1: Kay Lagoon question Mark and I think that's how you
Speaker 1: pronounced that. Correct me if I'm wrong, And and there
Speaker 1: there's a whole list of other authors. I'm sure we're
Speaker 1: leaving some off the list and you're going to be
Speaker 1: furious about it, and by all means, let us know,
Speaker 1: because I'm always interested to hear who everyone's favorite authors
Speaker 1: are and uh and who indeed I should be reading.
Speaker 1: And I'm excited to start delving into science fiction more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which one do you think you're gonna pick up? Ender's Game?
Speaker 1: Absolutely cool? Yeah, I think you'll do that one. I
Speaker 1: wonder if I can get away with reading my desk
Speaker 1: in the name of the podcast. Yeah, totally. You should
Speaker 1: like buy a copy. This is part of my job
Speaker 1: as science editor, after all, don't you think so? If
Speaker 1: you want to learn a little bit more about science fiction,
Speaker 1: type in science fiction on the search bar on our
Speaker 1: homepage and you might get some cool articles like science
Speaker 1: fiction musicals and how sci fi doesn't work, or even
Speaker 1: top five sides Born Superpowers. And now we have a
Speaker 1: little listener mail Yeah, break up in the mail bag.
Speaker 1: We had to uh folks right in about the Virtues
Speaker 1: of venom podcast we recently did, and one of whom
Speaker 1: was Mike. He works at a university lab in he's
Speaker 1: working with venomous snails that live in the ocean and
Speaker 1: hunt fish, mollusks, worms, and other snails. And Mike writes
Speaker 1: that they're doing basic level research trying to develop drugs
Speaker 1: for neurological disorders, and he points out the cone snail
Speaker 1: as one of the venomous creatures that we might have
Speaker 1: been interested, and he sent us a pretty cool video
Speaker 1: of a cone snail eating a fish. Oh wow, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna watch that when I get back to my desk
Speaker 1: and a half lunch. In fact, there's a whole cone
Speaker 1: snail channel on YouTube in case you're not Yeah, so
Speaker 1: check that out. I'm gonna subscribe to that. We also
Speaker 1: heard from Jack who wanted to drop us a line
Speaker 1: from the Home of the Terrifying venomous Platypus and Jack
Speaker 1: writes that he grew up in North Queensland, Australia, near
Speaker 1: the James Cook University, which is at one of the
Speaker 1: leading universities and marine stinger jellyfish research. Jack writes, in
Speaker 1: regard to the panny host comments, in case you guys
Speaker 1: don't remember, we talked about people wearing panty hose to
Speaker 1: protect themselves from being stung by a jellyfish. So Jack rites,
Speaker 1: in regards to the panny host comments, while you joke
Speaker 1: about it, it is kind of true. In the battle
Speaker 1: day is surf life, savers and even members of the
Speaker 1: public used to wear a penny hose on their legs
Speaker 1: and cut the gusset out of a second pair to
Speaker 1: make a kind of penny hose top. I think it's
Speaker 1: the thing at the top of the penny hose. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. There might be an awesome thing. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It could be an awesome thing to um Jack rights.
Speaker 1: These days, several companies have started producing what are known
Speaker 1: as stinger suits, essentially a land nylon body suit, and
Speaker 1: you can find these if you do a little Google
Speaker 1: image searching. So you go to Australia, you just wear
Speaker 1: this thing all the time, right you go to Australia,
Speaker 1: you get one of these teletubby wetsuit things right at
Speaker 1: the airport. Just yeah, just as if you're right into
Speaker 1: it and you get off the plane. Well, that's that's
Speaker 1: really cool, cool to know. Yeah, Australia, Land of venomous Creatures.
Speaker 1: Jack also alerted us to a venomous creature that we
Speaker 1: didn't mention, the stone fish. You should check it out.
Speaker 1: Maybe you should write a blog about us, stone fish.
Speaker 1: So thanks for writing us, guys. You know, feel free
Speaker 1: to shoot us, shoot some feedback or some little tidbits anytimes.
Speaker 1: We live here in Femia, so send us an email
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Speaker 1: regular basis. Thanks for listening, guys for more on this
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