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Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, do you think scientists make good science fiction authors? Oh? Sometimes?

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Speaker 1: I mean Carl Sagan was a scientist and he wrote

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Speaker 1: some really excellent science fiction. Yeah, you're right. I am

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Speaker 1: a big fan of contact. But what do you think

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Speaker 1: about the opposite? Do you think science fiction authors could

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Speaker 1: make good scientists? Well, I will happily read their papers

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Speaker 1: if they read my science fiction stories. That sounds like

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Speaker 1: a fair trade maybe, But do you think they could

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Speaker 1: do real science? Do you think that after being immersed

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Speaker 1: in the fictional world, you could actually sit down and

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Speaker 1: deal with real numbers. I'm not sure, but I think

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Speaker 1: they already contribute in an important way to actual science.

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Speaker 1: Do they discover new particles or new kinds of black holes?

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Speaker 1: Even better, they put crazy ideas into the heads of

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Speaker 1: scientists who read their fiction. I see, And then you

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Speaker 1: guys take all the credit, right, Yeah, well, maybe we

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Speaker 1: can allow them to name the new particles in that case,

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Speaker 1: or maybe it could be a joint Nobel prize, you know,

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Speaker 1: physics and literature. That's right, And I would a Nobel

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Speaker 1: Prize for the acceptance speech I give for my Physics

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Speaker 1: Nobel Prize. Hi am or handmade cartoonists and the creator

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Speaker 1: of PhD Comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist

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Speaker 1: and an aspiring science fiction want to be Does that

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Speaker 1: mean that you want to be science fiction, like you

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Speaker 1: want your life to be science fiction? Or you want

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Speaker 1: to write science fiction? Oh? I think all of the above.

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Speaker 1: I'd love to write science fiction, and I'd love to

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Speaker 1: live in the science fiction universe. I mean one of

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Speaker 1: the fun things about writing science fiction is imagining yourself

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Speaker 1: in that universe, teleporting places, shooting ray guns. I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's why people play with lightsabers. Right, I'm definitely I

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Speaker 1: count myself an aspiring jet pack owner. I'm still hoping

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Speaker 1: for that. But welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge

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Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of our Heart Media in

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Speaker 1: which we like to talk about the rules of the universe.

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Speaker 1: We break them down for you. We explain to you

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Speaker 1: how our universe works, what we're doing to figure out

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Speaker 1: what those rules are and whether they make sense at all.

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Speaker 1: And sometimes we like to talk about also the universe

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Speaker 1: that maybe doesn't exist, or we'd like to talk about

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Speaker 1: ideas that we don't know are true yet but that

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Speaker 1: they might be, or that at least it's making people

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Speaker 1: curious and it's tickling their imagination. And this is an

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Speaker 1: important part of understanding our universe is thinking about what

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Speaker 1: other kinds of universes could there be. How would the

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Speaker 1: universe look if the laws of physics were a little different,

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Speaker 1: or what would the laws of physics have to look

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Speaker 1: like in order to allow Horey to have a jet

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Speaker 1: pack and Daniel to have a lightsaber. So this is

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Speaker 1: an important part of actual intellectual exploration of our universe

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Speaker 1: is imagining new fictional universes. Yeah, because you know, I

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Speaker 1: guess science isn't just you know, hitting rocks together or

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Speaker 1: breaking rocks apart and looking at data. You also kind

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Speaker 1: of have to exercise your imagination, right and and consider

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Speaker 1: maybe what are possible crazy solutions that could explain what

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Speaker 1: we're seeing. That's right, And you know, I know you've

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Speaker 1: been out of academy for a while, but it's actually

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Speaker 1: a very small fraction of our time we spend banging

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Speaker 1: rocks together. Sometimes you rub them together to move beyond

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Speaker 1: the rock stage. Now, yeah, they're just you're still banging

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Speaker 1: rock standards, they're just getting smaller and smaller. It's all rocks.

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Speaker 1: It's rocks all the way down is that we're there

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Speaker 1: you go. What's I mean? Isn't a proton kind of

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Speaker 1: a rock? Really? I guess that makes me a rock

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Speaker 1: and roll physicist. Oh, there you go. That sounds like

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Speaker 1: fiction as well. Well, I said, I wanted to be

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Speaker 1: a writer, So there you go. Anyway, we like to

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Speaker 1: talk about these fiction universes and to understand how they

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Speaker 1: work and to get in the minds of the people

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Speaker 1: who create them. It's right, and so we have the

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Speaker 1: series of episodes in which we or at least Daniel,

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Speaker 1: interviews famous or well known or popular science fiction authors

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Speaker 1: and asked them about their world and about the physics

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Speaker 1: of it and how they came up with all of

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Speaker 1: their amazing ideas. That's right, because when I read a

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Speaker 1: science fiction novel, part of the joy for me is

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Speaker 1: figuring out what are the rules of this universe? What

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Speaker 1: did they create? How does it work? And that's also

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Speaker 1: the joy of physics. We are literally living in the

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Speaker 1: universe where nobody is telling us the answers, and we

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Speaker 1: have to play detective and figure out what are the rules?

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Speaker 1: How does this work? And so it's the same joy,

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Speaker 1: but just encapsulated in a novel, and usually in a novel,

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Speaker 1: it's more satisfying because you get some answers. Also, your

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Speaker 1: career doesn't depend on reading the science fiction novels, so

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Speaker 1: it's probably more relaxing, that's right. And there are fewer

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Speaker 1: rocks involved in the novels. That's why they're called asteroids. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So to be on the program, we'll be tackling the

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Speaker 1: science fiction universe of Alistair Reynolds. Right. So Alistair Reynolds,

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Speaker 1: he's pretty well known, right as a science fiction or

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Speaker 1: is he more he's more sort of in the hard

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Speaker 1: science fiction genre. He definitely writes hard science fiction, and

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Speaker 1: he's sort of best known for his space operas. He

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Speaker 1: writes stories that take place across an entire galaxy and

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Speaker 1: eons and eons of time, and usually you're buried deep

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Speaker 1: into the future upon layers and layers of crazy history. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And so to the end, the question that's kind of

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Speaker 1: interesting you and then you asked him, I imagine in

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Speaker 1: the interview is can you write realistic science fiction about

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Speaker 1: life in space? Like? Do do these books really portray

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Speaker 1: what it's like to be in space and to move

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Speaker 1: around in space? Because being in space is tricky, It

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Speaker 1: is tricky indeed. And for this set of books that

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Speaker 1: we're talking about in today's podcast, it's a trilogy starting

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Speaker 1: with a book called Revenger. It takes place in a

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Speaker 1: solar system sort of deep in the future, and he

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Speaker 1: really thinks carefully about how you would navigate that solar system,

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Speaker 1: how you would go from place to place, the fuel

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Speaker 1: needs involved, how you would turn your guns to aim

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Speaker 1: at another ship, how you would even know whether those

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Speaker 1: ships are there. It's really fascinating and you can hear

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Speaker 1: that he is really thinking carefully about the physics, and

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Speaker 1: that's no coincidence. Yeah, Apparently he is inspired by, you know,

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Speaker 1: stories of pirate ships and nautical stories, and he wanted

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Speaker 1: to bring that into the science fiction universe. That's right.

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Speaker 1: And he himself is a physicist, or was a working physicist.

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Speaker 1: He is a PhD in astrophysics, and he studied binary

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Speaker 1: stars at the European Space Agency and then started writing

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Speaker 1: on the side. So he comes into science fiction with

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Speaker 1: a deep understanding of the science behind it. Hopefully his

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Speaker 1: Jesus wasn't fictional. Imagine shred wasn't. I hope he kept

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Speaker 1: a careful wall between his fiction and nonfiction. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: he's won a bunch of awards in England and for

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Speaker 1: his novels, and some of his stories have been adapted

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Speaker 1: also to television. I actually I have seen a couple

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Speaker 1: of them, Realiz, think who it was? That's right. There's

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Speaker 1: a whole series on Netflix called Loveday and Robots that

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Speaker 1: adapts a bunch of fun short stories, and several of

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Speaker 1: them are his. Yeah, and this is one of your

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Speaker 1: favorite writers, right, Daniel. I mean you're you're definitely fanboying

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Speaker 1: here when you talk to him. Yes, that's right. He

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Speaker 1: is one of my favorite writers. And one reason is

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Speaker 1: that the physics of it is so good. It's so

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Speaker 1: insightful and interesting and so real and so carefully thought out.

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Speaker 1: And you know, then on a personal note, it's just

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Speaker 1: it's nice to see somebody who was a physicist make

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Speaker 1: this amazing transition into being not just a published science

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Speaker 1: fiction writer, but I well known, well respected, multi award winning,

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Speaker 1: international best selling science fiction writer. So hey, a guy

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Speaker 1: can dream, right, You're like somebody got out. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: cannot dispute that with my reaction. I finished his first

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Speaker 1: book that I read, and I thought, Wow, was an

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Speaker 1: amazing book. And then I read the about the author

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Speaker 1: at the end, and I was like, oh my gosh,

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Speaker 1: this guy could have been me or I could be

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Speaker 1: this guy. Yeah, so it sounds like the physics in

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Speaker 1: these books are really cool. And again, the series is

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Speaker 1: called Revenger, the Ander Trilogy. The first book is called Revenger,

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Speaker 1: which is not the sequel to The Avengers. It should

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Speaker 1: be it should be the Avengers reboot. And so let's

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Speaker 1: dive into his world. What is this world like? It's

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Speaker 1: is it in the future, the near future? Millions of

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Speaker 1: years into the future, so it takes place in our

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Speaker 1: Solar system, but then millions and millions of years in

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Speaker 1: the future, and it's so far in the future that

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Speaker 1: the sense of history is sort of lost, Like you're

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Speaker 1: deep into the future, but you don't really know how

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Speaker 1: the universe that he puts you in has been assembled,

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Speaker 1: and it looks very different from our Solar System, Like

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Speaker 1: did something happen that caused all the history books to

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Speaker 1: disappear or what. It's just sort of like, it is

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Speaker 1: so so far. It's just so far in history. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and humans have left the Solar System and then come

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Speaker 1: back and recolonized it multiple time. What do you mean

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Speaker 1: they left and then they came back. Yeah. Well, this

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Speaker 1: is a sense of mystery in this book is that

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Speaker 1: you don't know the full story. You just hear dribs

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Speaker 1: and drabs, and the characters themselves don't know the full story,

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Speaker 1: Like do we know how many times humans have colonized Europe?

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Speaker 1: We know there were waves and waves and waves from Africa.

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Speaker 1: We don't know the full story, even though it was

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Speaker 1: sort of us who did it right. And in that

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Speaker 1: same sense, you imagine millions of years into the future,

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Speaker 1: you might lose the history, lose the written records of

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Speaker 1: why humanity went to the stars and why everybody died

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Speaker 1: out in the Solar System and why they came back.

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Speaker 1: And so this is that sort of to the extreme.

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Speaker 1: That sounds pretty interesting. And you're telling me that they

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Speaker 1: disassembled the planets in the Solar System. Yeah, so the

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Speaker 1: Solar sistem is unrecognizable. The only thing you might recognize

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Speaker 1: is the Sun, which is still there. But they have

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Speaker 1: taken apart all of the planets and use them to

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Speaker 1: build like a bunch of habitats, and so you have

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Speaker 1: like lace worlds and little dicen spheres and all sorts

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Speaker 1: of structures you can live on. But they've turned the

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Speaker 1: eight planets into like hundreds or thousands of essentially space

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Speaker 1: station like many planets. Yeah, sort of like many planets,

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Speaker 1: but you don't but a planet is very inof Asian, right,

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Speaker 1: you don't really need the core of it. And so

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Speaker 1: they mind, I guess all of the materials from the

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Speaker 1: Solar System and build all these crazy different shapes and

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Speaker 1: structures for people to live. Oh, you can create more

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Speaker 1: like surfaces to live on if you break the Earth

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Speaker 1: into pieces exactly, take the Earth and sort of like

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Speaker 1: unwrapid unroll it. You can get a lot more service area,

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Speaker 1: and then people can be creative, right, and you can

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Speaker 1: have like lots of weird layers, or you could you know,

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Speaker 1: just live on the inside of a spear, or you

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Speaker 1: could have a tube or a ring. Right, you could

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Speaker 1: have all sorts of crazy stuff. I guess my question

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Speaker 1: right away is how did they deal with the gravity then? Right,

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Speaker 1: because if you have a smaller planet, the gravity is less,

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Speaker 1: So how do you walk around? Yeah, so some of

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Speaker 1: these things have many black holes at their centers. Of course, obviously,

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Speaker 1: what do you mean they made a black hole? They

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Speaker 1: captured a black hole? Well, you know, humanity in this

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Speaker 1: story sort of just living on these found structures. They've

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Speaker 1: discovered them. They think humans made the millions of years ago,

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Speaker 1: but they no longer have the technology to create them,

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Speaker 1: so they don't really understand them either. So they know

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Speaker 1: there are black holes at the center of them. He

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Speaker 1: never really explains how they were made, because again that's

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Speaker 1: attributable to the ancient lost art of black hole manufacturers. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so they're using a black hole there, and so it

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Speaker 1: all takes place in our solar system just in the future. Yes,

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Speaker 1: our Solar system, very far into the future. But most

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Speaker 1: of these things feel more like space stations or space

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Speaker 1: ships than real planets. I mean, you can walk around

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Speaker 1: on them, but none of them are as vast as

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Speaker 1: a planet. It's almost like, you know, if you took

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Speaker 1: all the continents on Earth and broke them up into

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Speaker 1: little islands, it's like a giant archipelago. Yeah, exactly, and

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Speaker 1: then you have to figure out how to get from

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Speaker 1: one to the other. And that's another whole fascinating aspect

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Speaker 1: of his universe. This is where the like the sailing

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Speaker 1: analogy comes in, like the nautical aspect of its space,

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Speaker 1: nautical mechanics. Yeah, it's a lot like space pirates. They

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Speaker 1: get around from one of the other using solar sales

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Speaker 1: because it's very inefficient to use like rocket propulsion. You

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Speaker 1: need a huge amount of fuel to get around, and

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Speaker 1: so they take advantage of the energy of the sun.

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Speaker 1: And they have these small ships. Each one is you know,

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Speaker 1: like the size of a current human airplane, like a

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Speaker 1: modern jetliner, and to get that thing around you'd need

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Speaker 1: like square and kilometer after square kilometer of solar sail.

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Speaker 1: So these ships are tiny, but then surrounded by these

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Speaker 1: huge sales that capture the energy of the sunlight and

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Speaker 1: use that to get around the solar system. Oh and

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Speaker 1: they're not solar panels, right, They actually like they bounce

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Speaker 1: off the energy of the sun. That's right. They're much

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Speaker 1: more like sales than panels. They don't absorb the energy

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Speaker 1: and then store it in a battery. They actually like

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Speaker 1: reflect those photons and use that to get a little kick.

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Speaker 1: And there's also a battles out in space right between

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Speaker 1: these sailing chips. Yeah, yeah, there are a lot of

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Speaker 1: these battles, and they have these railguns that they shoot

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Speaker 1: at each other, and a lot of it is about

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Speaker 1: staying silent, staying hidden. You know, not announcing your location,

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Speaker 1: and so they try to keep as dark as possible

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Speaker 1: so nobody can see where you are, and stay as

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Speaker 1: quiet as possible. They try not to like let their

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Speaker 1: railguns get too hot, because then they glow and other

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Speaker 1: people can spot them. And it really gave me the

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Speaker 1: feeling of reading nautical fiction from like the eighteen hundreds.

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Speaker 1: It's all about like turning about and getting your cannons

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Speaker 1: pointed in the right direction and making sure you're up wind,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of this very strategic thinking limited by

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Speaker 1: the physics of ships. In this case, it's limited by

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Speaker 1: the physics of sun jammers, which is what he calls them.

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Speaker 1: But I guess you're hanging out in space, don't you

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Speaker 1: have when you have like a lot of energy, you

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Speaker 1: couldn't need to have some a little bit of rocket

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Speaker 1: boost there here and there you would need to. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's much easier to use solar sales to get like

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Speaker 1: further away from the Sun. It's much more difficult to

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Speaker 1: get closer to the Sun. And so they do have

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Speaker 1: rockets also which they need to refuel, but they use

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Speaker 1: that sparingly because you know, while there's always sunlight to

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Speaker 1: capture just like there's always wind on a sailboat, you know,

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Speaker 1: the the engine for their rockets needs fuel and that's

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Speaker 1: a limited quantities cool. And there's a lot of mystery

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Speaker 1: as well. There's like ancient technology that they keep discovering. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's been like eight or ten layers of occupation from humanity,

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Speaker 1: and the previous layers put a lot of their fancy

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Speaker 1: tech into these like locked boxes which opened regular intervals,

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Speaker 1: like every thousand years or every hundred years. They will

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Speaker 1: open up and you can like crawl in there and

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Speaker 1: try to grab some treasure and then crawl out before

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Speaker 1: you get stuck. And so there's like a lot of

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Speaker 1: these devices around the player role in the story that

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Speaker 1: nobody understands their science. They're like left over from a

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Speaker 1: previous layer of civilization and it's like found treasure. And

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Speaker 1: so a lot of the book, which is just really

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Speaker 1: good storytelling, is like sailing around from these treasure islands

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Speaker 1: a treasure islands, capturing things, stealing them from other people,

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Speaker 1: and then of course getting revenge on your revenger. So

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Speaker 1: they find old technology and they can still make it

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Speaker 1: work or it just works, you know, like it just

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Speaker 1: turns on and you can use it. Yeah, it just

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Speaker 1: turns on. You can use it, and you know, some

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Speaker 1: of it is inert and they don't understand why, but

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Speaker 1: a lot of it they can just use. You know,

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Speaker 1: they have like special armor that makes you invisible and

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Speaker 1: they don't know why. And they have you know, technology

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Speaker 1: that lets them see things that are far away. And

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Speaker 1: they also one of the coolest bits is how they

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Speaker 1: communicate from ship to ship is that they find these

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Speaker 1: skulls of alien beings from the deep past, non humans

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Speaker 1: so humans. Just to clarify, everyone in the book is human,

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Speaker 1: so they're just super future humans. They're super future humans.

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Speaker 1: There are a few aliens also, just a few characters

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Speaker 1: who are aliens. So in the book we have met

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Speaker 1: aliens and can communicate with them. And also we have

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Speaker 1: the skulls of ancient long extinct aions and these skulls

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Speaker 1: have this property that they can like communicate between each other.

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Speaker 1: The dead skulls can talk. They can they have some

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Speaker 1: sort of like telepathic ability. And if you like wire

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Speaker 1: into it and attach you know, your head to these

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Speaker 1: skulls with wires and somebody else does it in the

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Speaker 1: same way, like on the other side of the Solar System,

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Speaker 1: then you can communicate back and forth using this sort

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Speaker 1: of like you know, hopped up neural telepathy. Wow, And

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Speaker 1: it's sort of awesome because it's like piggybacking on what

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Speaker 1: these aliens maybe could have done and we don't really know,

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Speaker 1: and like, are there tendrils of those aliens brains still

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Speaker 1: in their skull? Why does it work at all? And

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Speaker 1: it just barely works. It's very difficult. Yeah, but it's

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Speaker 1: sort of like you know, using a hand radio. You

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Speaker 1: don't really understand it. You sort of connect your brain

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Speaker 1: to it, you tweak the knobs, you see who else

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Speaker 1: is out there? And so I think that he's trying

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Speaker 1: to capture not just the sense of like sailing on

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Speaker 1: the open seas, but also like limited communication abilities. Alright, wow,

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Speaker 1: that's a lot of a lot of interesting ideas here,

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Speaker 1: and so let's dive into the physics of it, whether

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Speaker 1: or not some of these things are possible or impossible

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Speaker 1: or maybe in our near future. But first let's take

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Speaker 1: a quick break. All right, we're talking about else. There's

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Speaker 1: Reynolds science fiction trilogy Revenger, and the incredibly interesting ideas

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Speaker 1: in it, including alien skulls that can make you telepathic somehow,

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Speaker 1: somehow like a Ham radio, Like if you put a

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Speaker 1: Ham radio on your head, that's right, or if you

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Speaker 1: had like an Internet connection in your brain. I wouldn't

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Speaker 1: recommend that, though you probably get hacked by Russians. I

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Speaker 1: think I think people's phone spend so much time near

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Speaker 1: our heads that it's probably might just as well be connected.

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Speaker 1: We're basically there. Yeah, all right, So what's the physics

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Speaker 1: of this series? Daniel? So, first of all, there's planet disassembly.

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Speaker 1: They break apart the planet, and is that possible? Could you, like,

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Speaker 1: can I split Jupiter into two? You know, I think

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Speaker 1: it really is possible. I think that it's a problem

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Speaker 1: that's technologically very difficult. It's you know, engineeringly difficult, as

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Speaker 1: you would say, But physics wise, there's no reason why

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Speaker 1: you can't. I mean, think about the solar system is

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Speaker 1: just a bunch of raw materials and use that to

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Speaker 1: build whatever you like. It would just take a huge

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Speaker 1: amount of energy and planet to like break the even

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Speaker 1: the Earth, which is a small planet. How would you

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Speaker 1: even break it apart? Yeah? Well you would start by

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Speaker 1: building you know a lot of solar panels and use

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Speaker 1: that to capture the Sun's energy and then use that

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Speaker 1: energy to mind more raw materials off the planets. Probably

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Speaker 1: you would start with mercury because mercury is very close

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Speaker 1: to the Sun, so there's a lot of energy there

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Speaker 1: and has low gravity. Hot property has low gravity, so

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Speaker 1: it's easy to build stuff on the service and launch

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Speaker 1: it into space. And it's metal rich, it's like solid

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Speaker 1: iron core, has a lot of oxygen on it. And

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Speaker 1: so you start by disassembling mercury and using it to

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Speaker 1: build like essentially a dice and swarm. Remember we talked

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Speaker 1: on the show once about a dice and sphere, like

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Speaker 1: a huge superstructure that envelops the entire Sun. This is

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Speaker 1: basically like that, except instead of one big superstructure, which

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Speaker 1: is kind of implausible because it would break up, you

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Speaker 1: build a lot of smaller and so they did this

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Speaker 1: the ancient humans. Apparently the ancient humans did this. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they disassembled but not just mercury, also all of the planets.

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Speaker 1: There are no original planets left over. What it's a

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Speaker 1: completely different solar system completely, yeah, exactly, you know, and

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Speaker 1: they redesigned it. You know, you come, you buy a

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Speaker 1: house and you redo the kitchen. They redid everything. They

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Speaker 1: stripped this thing down to studs. Oh I see. So

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Speaker 1: it's not like they took Jupiter and broken. It's more

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Speaker 1: like they they just like minded, they like broke, you know,

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Speaker 1: little by little, they took chunks and put it into

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Speaker 1: other parts of the Solar System. And the hardest thing

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Speaker 1: I think about the physics is that the Solar System

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Speaker 1: is mostly hydrogen. Like, of course the Sun is mostly hydrogen,

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Speaker 1: but even the other planets is mostly Jupiter. Jupiter is

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Speaker 1: the most massive anything, and it's mostly hydrogen in some

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Speaker 1: helium heavy metals like the kind of things we find

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Speaker 1: on Earth and mercury are much more rare, and so

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Speaker 1: you don't want to build your superstructure or your swarm

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Speaker 1: out of hydrogen. And so I think that's the limiting factor.

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Speaker 1: The amount of surface you can build is not just

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Speaker 1: limited by the mass of the stuff in the Solar System,

387
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Speaker 1: but the amount of heavy metals you need to make it.

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Speaker 1: Oh I see, So maybe there there aren't another four.

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Speaker 1: Do you think he did he actually count how many

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Speaker 1: how much metal there is in the Solar System? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think he did a bit of careful accounting, And

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Speaker 1: I'm imagining that he used the hydrogen to form those

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Speaker 1: black holes like if you can't build something out of it,

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Speaker 1: and you need to make a black hole, Well, a

395
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Speaker 1: black hole is just a big pile of stuff that's

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Speaker 1: gotten compressed down into a small area. So take Jupiter

397
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Speaker 1: and turn it into a black hole or a few

398
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Speaker 1: black holes, and you could put those at the center

399
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Speaker 1: of your little structures and they would provide enough gravity. Oh,

400
00:20:46,040 --> 00:20:49,080
Speaker 1: that's why you would do it, just to have more gravity. Yeah,

401
00:20:49,119 --> 00:20:51,159
Speaker 1: if you want gravity on these structures, then you need

402
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Speaker 1: a lot of mass. And if you have a lot

403
00:20:52,680 --> 00:20:55,280
Speaker 1: of mass you can't use to actually build the structures, right,

404
00:20:55,359 --> 00:20:57,600
Speaker 1: all this hydrogen and helium, then you might as well

405
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Speaker 1: use it to make the black holes, I guess would

406
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Speaker 1: give you like earthlike gravity in a small asteroid kind

407
00:21:04,600 --> 00:21:07,240
Speaker 1: of yes, precisely, because it's much more dense than Earth,

408
00:21:07,280 --> 00:21:09,159
Speaker 1: and so you can get Earth like gravity. And you

409
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Speaker 1: wouldn't want all the Jupiter in one black hole because

410
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Speaker 1: that's way too much gravity, right, the gravity and Jupiter

411
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Speaker 1: is crushing compared to the gravity on Earth. But you

412
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Speaker 1: can make little ones, yeah, and you could. If you

413
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Speaker 1: have this power, you can divide Jupiter up into a

414
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Speaker 1: hundred little black holes and use that to provide gravity

415
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Speaker 1: on a hundred little structure. It seems kind of dangerous still,

416
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Speaker 1: because like what if you fall into it, or what

417
00:21:29,720 --> 00:21:32,360
Speaker 1: if you're you know, you know, what if your structure

418
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Speaker 1: touches the edge of it. Yeah, well, you're worried about

419
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Speaker 1: the people, you know, living on this thing. I'm worried

420
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Speaker 1: about the people manufacturing it, you know, like I hope

421
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Speaker 1: they're being careful and they're wearing hard hats when they're

422
00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:44,240
Speaker 1: manufacturing black holes. Oh yeah, because if you touch a

423
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Speaker 1: black hole, that's it. That's it, man, there's no coming back.

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Speaker 1: You're not pulling your hand back out of those things. Okay,

425
00:21:49,640 --> 00:21:52,520
Speaker 1: So then what about the solar sailing? That's pretty plausible

426
00:21:52,560 --> 00:21:56,040
Speaker 1: and realistic. That's totally plausible. Solar sailing is a real thing.

427
00:21:56,440 --> 00:21:58,840
Speaker 1: I mean, there's real physics there. It's just a big

428
00:21:58,920 --> 00:22:02,080
Speaker 1: sheet of very very light material, and when a photon

429
00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:04,680
Speaker 1: bounces off of it, it pushes on it. It's like

430
00:22:04,720 --> 00:22:07,680
Speaker 1: if somebody throws a ball and it bounces off of you,

431
00:22:07,760 --> 00:22:11,200
Speaker 1: it's giving you a little push. And photons have no mass,

432
00:22:11,200 --> 00:22:14,159
Speaker 1: but they do have momentum, and so when they bounce

433
00:22:14,240 --> 00:22:16,560
Speaker 1: off of a mirror, for example, they are giving that

434
00:22:16,640 --> 00:22:19,120
Speaker 1: mirror a little push. If you put a mirror out

435
00:22:19,160 --> 00:22:22,840
Speaker 1: in space, the Sun's photons will push it through space. Yeah,

436
00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:25,720
Speaker 1: we have a whole episode about solar sailing if you

437
00:22:26,040 --> 00:22:29,320
Speaker 1: search our archives. And the problem is that solar sale

438
00:22:29,320 --> 00:22:32,000
Speaker 1: helps you move away from the Sun, but it doesn't

439
00:22:32,000 --> 00:22:34,400
Speaker 1: help you move towards the Sun. That's right. And there

440
00:22:34,440 --> 00:22:36,399
Speaker 1: was this really fun moment in that podcast when I

441
00:22:36,440 --> 00:22:38,520
Speaker 1: was being so excited about solar sales and then you

442
00:22:38,520 --> 00:22:40,720
Speaker 1: were like, well, but what about turning? Can you turn?

443
00:22:42,240 --> 00:22:46,280
Speaker 1: I've never thought about that before. Oops, But it turns

444
00:22:46,320 --> 00:22:48,200
Speaker 1: out you can, right, You can turn with a solar

445
00:22:48,240 --> 00:22:50,960
Speaker 1: sale if you angle it, because it means the photons

446
00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:53,000
Speaker 1: get reflected off, like to the side a little bit,

447
00:22:53,119 --> 00:22:56,000
Speaker 1: which gives you a push sideways. And you can't use

448
00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:59,639
Speaker 1: a solar sale to go in towards the Sun, but

449
00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:02,600
Speaker 1: you can use it to like slow yourself down. Like

450
00:23:02,680 --> 00:23:05,280
Speaker 1: say you're in orbit around the Sun and you want

451
00:23:05,320 --> 00:23:07,399
Speaker 1: to go to a closer orbit. You can sort of

452
00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:10,720
Speaker 1: angle your sale to bleed off some of your velocity

453
00:23:11,080 --> 00:23:13,840
Speaker 1: so that the sail is pushing away against the direction

454
00:23:13,840 --> 00:23:16,480
Speaker 1: you're moving in orbit, and that will help you fall

455
00:23:16,520 --> 00:23:19,480
Speaker 1: into a closer orbit. It can't actually pull you in.

456
00:23:19,600 --> 00:23:22,639
Speaker 1: Only the Sun's gravity can pull you in. Photons can

457
00:23:22,680 --> 00:23:26,040
Speaker 1: just provide an outward or sideways force, But so going

458
00:23:26,080 --> 00:23:29,000
Speaker 1: in is harder than going out, but it is possible.

459
00:23:29,240 --> 00:23:30,800
Speaker 1: I guess it makes me kind of think about how,

460
00:23:30,840 --> 00:23:33,760
Speaker 1: you know, how you would navigate a solar system where

461
00:23:33,760 --> 00:23:36,040
Speaker 1: everything is broken up. Do you think that that those

462
00:23:36,119 --> 00:23:39,720
Speaker 1: ancient humans or aliens when they broke up the planets

463
00:23:39,720 --> 00:23:42,560
Speaker 1: that they think about like creating stable orbits and and

464
00:23:42,600 --> 00:23:45,240
Speaker 1: things like that, or is the whole Solar system just

465
00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:47,720
Speaker 1: this chaotic mass you know, they planted very carefully. It's

466
00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:51,199
Speaker 1: called the constellation. And these little habitats are all in

467
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:53,480
Speaker 1: different orbits that sometimes gets close to each other and

468
00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:56,240
Speaker 1: sometimes further away. And some of these things are on

469
00:23:56,359 --> 00:23:58,720
Speaker 1: larger orbits because some people like living out in the

470
00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:01,639
Speaker 1: middle of the darkness and coming back occasionally every hundred

471
00:24:01,760 --> 00:24:04,440
Speaker 1: years or something, and so you have lots of options,

472
00:24:04,720 --> 00:24:06,720
Speaker 1: and these things sort of get closer and further apart,

473
00:24:06,800 --> 00:24:08,400
Speaker 1: so it's easier to jump from one to the other.

474
00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:11,360
Speaker 1: And doesn't it take years to go between these islands

475
00:24:11,440 --> 00:24:13,880
Speaker 1: or colonies. Well, he I think set the whole thing

476
00:24:14,280 --> 00:24:16,680
Speaker 1: sort of close enough to the Sun that these sun

477
00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:20,080
Speaker 1: jammers are powerful and distances are not so far, but

478
00:24:20,160 --> 00:24:22,720
Speaker 1: it does take weeks. Right, You're not like teleporting from

479
00:24:22,840 --> 00:24:25,120
Speaker 1: from place to place. And that really is a factor

480
00:24:25,200 --> 00:24:27,840
Speaker 1: in the story that sometimes it takes weeks or months

481
00:24:27,840 --> 00:24:30,480
Speaker 1: to get from one habitat to the other. And you know,

482
00:24:30,560 --> 00:24:33,880
Speaker 1: it sort of feels like ancient chips, Right, you got

483
00:24:33,880 --> 00:24:36,480
Speaker 1: into a boat. You don't just get to America six

484
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:39,480
Speaker 1: hours later. You know, after watching three movies, it took

485
00:24:39,520 --> 00:24:41,760
Speaker 1: months or sometimes years to get around the world. So

486
00:24:41,800 --> 00:24:44,440
Speaker 1: we sort of captured that by transplanting it onto the

487
00:24:44,480 --> 00:24:48,840
Speaker 1: Solar system. Can you get space scurvy? You can? There

488
00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:52,600
Speaker 1: are versions of that. Really, huh? All right? And then

489
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:56,200
Speaker 1: the last bit of science fiction here is this skull communication,

490
00:24:56,280 --> 00:24:59,360
Speaker 1: Like some of the skulls can communicate telepathically even though

491
00:24:59,359 --> 00:25:02,280
Speaker 1: they're the debt. Yeah, that's right. And as I was reading,

492
00:25:02,280 --> 00:25:04,240
Speaker 1: and I was wondering if he was going for faster

493
00:25:04,320 --> 00:25:07,919
Speaker 1: than light communication here, because it does seem fairly rapid.

494
00:25:08,040 --> 00:25:10,840
Speaker 1: But he's also he's kept the whole universe of his

495
00:25:10,880 --> 00:25:14,240
Speaker 1: book barely tightly around the Sun, and so the distances

496
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:17,480
Speaker 1: are not large, so it might be fast in light

497
00:25:17,560 --> 00:25:21,080
Speaker 1: or might just be like as fast as light. Um,

498
00:25:21,119 --> 00:25:27,000
Speaker 1: but you know, could aliens have some telepathic ability to communicate? Certainly? Right,

499
00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:30,399
Speaker 1: there's nothing physics can say no to to telepathy. Perhaps

500
00:25:30,440 --> 00:25:32,960
Speaker 1: you can really generate some signals in your brain. Sure,

501
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:35,439
Speaker 1: I mean think about the engineering generates some signals in

502
00:25:35,440 --> 00:25:37,600
Speaker 1: your brain that somebody else can read. I mean basically

503
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 1: a walkie talking. Yeah, yes, exactly. Telepathy is just another

504
00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:43,879
Speaker 1: wave to communicate. It's like I already do that. I

505
00:25:43,960 --> 00:25:46,560
Speaker 1: generate signals in my brain which create waves in the

506
00:25:46,600 --> 00:25:49,280
Speaker 1: air which go into your ear, which generates signals in

507
00:25:49,320 --> 00:25:53,840
Speaker 1: your brain. Sound is telepathy. And this world we're living in,

508
00:25:53,920 --> 00:26:00,399
Speaker 1: then you just approved, just physics approved telepathic aliens. I

509
00:26:00,400 --> 00:26:02,520
Speaker 1: don't see why it's not possible. You know, the bit

510
00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:04,840
Speaker 1: that stretches it is like, well, could you use their

511
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 1: skulls to do telepathy after they are long dead? I

512
00:26:08,320 --> 00:26:10,920
Speaker 1: don't know, but hey, it was a fun book, all right. Well,

513
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:13,399
Speaker 1: so you actually got to talk to him, and we're

514
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:16,359
Speaker 1: going to play the interview for everyone here in a

515
00:26:16,480 --> 00:26:18,639
Speaker 1: in a minute here, Um, but what are some of

516
00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:20,479
Speaker 1: the questions you you asked him? I asked him what

517
00:26:20,520 --> 00:26:24,239
Speaker 1: motivated this and whether he was interested in keeping the

518
00:26:24,280 --> 00:26:26,880
Speaker 1: physics real. And then of course I asked him how

519
00:26:26,920 --> 00:26:28,720
Speaker 1: to become a science fiction author if you were a

520
00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:33,080
Speaker 1: physicist hypothetical hypothetically of course, yes, because we all know

521
00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:37,360
Speaker 1: your dream is to be a podcast host. That's right,

522
00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:42,320
Speaker 1: one day, one day? All right, Well, here is Daniel's

523
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:47,080
Speaker 1: interview with Alistair Reynolds, author of the Revenger science fiction trilogy.

524
00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:49,439
Speaker 1: So I'm very happy in honor to have with us

525
00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:52,800
Speaker 1: today on the podcast the multi award winning author and

526
00:26:52,920 --> 00:26:56,760
Speaker 1: former physicist Alistair Reynolds. Alistair, thanks very much for coming

527
00:26:56,800 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 1: on the podcast. Good afternoon, Daniel, A very great pleasure.

528
00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:02,840
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. And do you consider yourself

529
00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:05,919
Speaker 1: a former physicist or is somebody a physicist forever? I

530
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:08,119
Speaker 1: thought about this a lot, actually, and I used to

531
00:27:08,119 --> 00:27:10,360
Speaker 1: say it was a former scientist, but no, I think

532
00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:12,239
Speaker 1: it's sort of in the blood. It's just a way

533
00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 1: of a way of looking at the world that you

534
00:27:14,200 --> 00:27:16,880
Speaker 1: don't just cast off the day you stopped being paid

535
00:27:16,920 --> 00:27:19,399
Speaker 1: to do science. So I'm yeah, I'm a scientist for

536
00:27:19,400 --> 00:27:21,640
Speaker 1: the rest of my life. And tell us a little

537
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:24,040
Speaker 1: bit about your background. How did you come to your

538
00:27:24,080 --> 00:27:26,560
Speaker 1: science fiction writer, how did you what was your education

539
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 1: in its sort of to to sort of parallel strands.

540
00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:32,800
Speaker 1: Right through my life was an interesting space and science

541
00:27:32,840 --> 00:27:35,919
Speaker 1: and also an interest in science fiction, and they've just

542
00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:38,040
Speaker 1: been there for as long as I have. And uh,

543
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:41,560
Speaker 1: I started writing stories from the point where I could

544
00:27:41,560 --> 00:27:44,119
Speaker 1: hold a pen and I just never stopped, really so

545
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:48,280
Speaker 1: right through my early education and the sort of point

546
00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:50,400
Speaker 1: where I decided I wanted to maybe try and become

547
00:27:50,440 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 1: a physicist, there was also also the creative writing going on,

548
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:57,440
Speaker 1: and then I guess I think it's when I was

549
00:27:57,480 --> 00:28:01,639
Speaker 1: about sixteen, I decide, you try and take the writing

550
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:04,920
Speaker 1: more seriously. So I started reading about the ways into

551
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:10,199
Speaker 1: publication magazines, that kind of thing, never never thinking that

552
00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:12,000
Speaker 1: would be a career option, but I thought it would

553
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 1: be something I could do, you know, as seriously as

554
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 1: a lot of other science fiction writers who had proper

555
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:19,160
Speaker 1: jobs as well, but they're also sort of successful writers

556
00:28:19,160 --> 00:28:21,760
Speaker 1: in their own right. Yeah. But so I also kept

557
00:28:21,800 --> 00:28:25,040
Speaker 1: on studying to become a scientist as well right through

558
00:28:25,040 --> 00:28:26,480
Speaker 1: that period. But there was never a point where I

559
00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:28,200
Speaker 1: woke up when they said, Okay, I'm gonna be a writer.

560
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:31,440
Speaker 1: It was always there. And what exactly was your area

561
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:35,040
Speaker 1: focus in science? I wanted. So I did a degree

562
00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:38,720
Speaker 1: in astronomy and physics at Newcastle, and I didn't really

563
00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:41,600
Speaker 1: have particular sense of what direction I wanted to go

564
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 1: in when I started that degree. I just wanted to

565
00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:45,600
Speaker 1: be a scientist. In fact, what I really wanted to

566
00:28:45,640 --> 00:28:49,520
Speaker 1: be as an astronaut um And I thought, this is

567
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:51,400
Speaker 1: going going back to sort of the early to mid

568
00:28:51,520 --> 00:28:55,920
Speaker 1: ninety eighties. I thought, by the time I've become a

569
00:28:55,960 --> 00:28:59,600
Speaker 1: professional scientist, there will be sort of lunar observatories, you know,

570
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:01,440
Speaker 1: radio telescopes on the dark side of the Moon and

571
00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:03,840
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. So I thought, Bill, it

572
00:29:03,840 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 1: will be you'll go into space just by being an

573
00:29:06,320 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 1: astronomy kind of like the Antarctic surveys kind of thing.

574
00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:10,720
Speaker 1: So I thought that would be a good way to

575
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:13,760
Speaker 1: get in space. But no, I did a degree, and

576
00:29:13,800 --> 00:29:15,480
Speaker 1: by the end of the degree, I kind of I

577
00:29:15,560 --> 00:29:18,360
Speaker 1: was taking an interesting cosmology as suppose in particle physics.

578
00:29:18,480 --> 00:29:20,440
Speaker 1: I was very interesting in things like the nature of

579
00:29:20,480 --> 00:29:23,760
Speaker 1: the neutrino and the solar neutrino problem, which were things

580
00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:27,520
Speaker 1: that weren't really resolved in the mid eighties, and I

581
00:29:27,520 --> 00:29:31,160
Speaker 1: started getting interested in I suppose the early stories about

582
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:34,640
Speaker 1: dark matter and you know, really sound health fundamental particle

583
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:37,920
Speaker 1: physics mapped onto cosmology and things like that. But that's

584
00:29:37,960 --> 00:29:41,240
Speaker 1: a really hot and very popular area of astronomy. Everyone

585
00:29:41,280 --> 00:29:43,960
Speaker 1: wants to go into, you know, So I didn't really

586
00:29:43,960 --> 00:29:46,760
Speaker 1: have the sort of mathematical chops to do that. I don't,

587
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:53,320
Speaker 1: but I sort of segued into stellar astronomy. So my

588
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:58,120
Speaker 1: PhD was on the mathematic of the properties of interacting

589
00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:02,200
Speaker 1: binary starts, particularly a class of binary star where you

590
00:30:02,240 --> 00:30:05,200
Speaker 1: have a style that's rather heavy in a relationship to

591
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:08,200
Speaker 1: the Sun, sort of ten ten to twenty solar matters,

592
00:30:08,280 --> 00:30:10,200
Speaker 1: and then the other partner in the binary would be

593
00:30:10,240 --> 00:30:13,440
Speaker 1: a neutron star. These are these are sort of high

594
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:16,400
Speaker 1: mass extra bineries, and there's lots of different types of them,

595
00:30:16,560 --> 00:30:18,719
Speaker 1: but many of them have a rather short orbital periods,

596
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:22,600
Speaker 1: so you can study the orbital cycle over a few days,

597
00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:26,760
Speaker 1: which makes them good targets for say short campaigns on

598
00:30:26,800 --> 00:30:29,800
Speaker 1: big telescope. So so you would aim to go to

599
00:30:30,560 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 1: Australia or Hawaii or something like that and bag for

600
00:30:33,560 --> 00:30:36,560
Speaker 1: nights of observations on a number of these different high

601
00:30:36,600 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 1: miss extra binaries. And the big sort of topic that

602
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:43,560
Speaker 1: was of interest was the limiting mass of the neutron star,

603
00:30:43,840 --> 00:30:46,000
Speaker 1: because there's all sorts of theories that sort of said,

604
00:30:46,040 --> 00:30:47,920
Speaker 1: what the what the mass of the neutron start to

605
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:49,920
Speaker 1: be For some of the observations that have been done

606
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:52,520
Speaker 1: in the sort of sixties and seventies, we're a little

607
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 1: bit sketchy, you know. So there was some question about

608
00:30:55,760 --> 00:30:58,960
Speaker 1: whether the neutron stars were were lighter than than they

609
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:01,479
Speaker 1: should have been. Cool stuff, It was cool. Yeah, it's

610
00:31:01,480 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 1: really interesting. Yeah, Well, let me ask you some questions

611
00:31:04,120 --> 00:31:06,680
Speaker 1: to get to know how you think about the universe,

612
00:31:07,160 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 1: and do you think the universe is really really big

613
00:31:10,320 --> 00:31:14,680
Speaker 1: or actually literally infinite? I think my my sort of

614
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:20,240
Speaker 1: take on it is probably just bog standard modern cosmology

615
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:25,800
Speaker 1: with um, you know, a big band inflationary park or

616
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:27,920
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. And then we sort

617
00:31:27,920 --> 00:31:30,040
Speaker 1: of a you know, thirteen and a half billion years later,

618
00:31:30,520 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 1: we're here with an observa an observable universe which is

619
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:38,520
Speaker 1: bigger than the age of the universe multiplied by by

620
00:31:38,520 --> 00:31:41,160
Speaker 1: by years, which some people have trouble wrapping their hairs around,

621
00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:44,680
Speaker 1: but not infinite. Um. So yeah, I think we live

622
00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:49,000
Speaker 1: in a sort of bounded universe. But I'm not Zella

623
00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 1: is about it. To me, the actually infinite universe makes

624
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:56,760
Speaker 1: the most sense because it's hard to imagine having a

625
00:31:56,760 --> 00:32:00,800
Speaker 1: bound abound in space or a bound in matter theme

626
00:32:01,840 --> 00:32:04,719
Speaker 1: harder to explain the actual infinity. Even though infinity is

627
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:08,120
Speaker 1: difficult for humans to wrap their minds around, it may

628
00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:10,960
Speaker 1: actually be natural. You know, the the universe is no

629
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:14,640
Speaker 1: stranger to bizarroness. So but let me ask you another question.

630
00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:18,120
Speaker 1: Do you think that human interstellar flight will ever be

631
00:32:18,160 --> 00:32:21,400
Speaker 1: a reality? Is that's something people will will ever actually do?

632
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:23,240
Speaker 1: Do you think will be stuck in our Solar system forever?

633
00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:26,680
Speaker 1: I mean, there's like so many different levels to that question.

634
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:29,440
Speaker 1: It's like, is there a technical capability that we could

635
00:32:29,440 --> 00:32:32,520
Speaker 1: achieve if we so wanted? That? To me is probably

636
00:32:32,600 --> 00:32:36,920
Speaker 1: a fairly firm yes, in that we already know a

637
00:32:36,960 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 1: little bit about Say, you know, we could build a

638
00:32:39,640 --> 00:32:43,880
Speaker 1: fusion spacecraft based on fairly well established principles that could

639
00:32:43,880 --> 00:32:46,640
Speaker 1: get us up to about ten speed of light. So

640
00:32:46,680 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 1: he might have trouble slowing down, but at least we

641
00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:51,360
Speaker 1: could take a go about our star into a forty

642
00:32:51,440 --> 00:32:55,200
Speaker 1: years or something like that using technology that's not absolutely

643
00:32:56,160 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 1: beyond beyond the sort of pale when we sort of

644
00:32:58,560 --> 00:33:00,320
Speaker 1: talk about sort of the stuff in my look sort

645
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: of like relativistic instead of travel one g. Where you

646
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:05,800
Speaker 1: sort of get up to the speed of light and

647
00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:09,280
Speaker 1: then you decelerate again and you have sort of significant

648
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:13,320
Speaker 1: time relation factors. That's a much bigger ask, and I

649
00:33:13,360 --> 00:33:17,960
Speaker 1: think that's like, if that's even technically feasible, it's probably

650
00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:20,800
Speaker 1: thousands of years in the future. But one of one

651
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:23,160
Speaker 1: of the sort of things that does sort of trouble

652
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:26,120
Speaker 1: me slightly. I'm not sure. I mean, my feeling is

653
00:33:26,160 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 1: that once we have the technical technical capability to maybe

654
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:33,600
Speaker 1: do interstellar crude interstellar exploration, we might not have the

655
00:33:33,600 --> 00:33:36,520
Speaker 1: will to do it anymore. Because in parallel with that

656
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:42,080
Speaker 1: development scientifically, in terms of scientific and engineering capabilities, presumably

657
00:33:42,080 --> 00:33:44,160
Speaker 1: our knowledge of the universe is going to expand as well,

658
00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:46,960
Speaker 1: and we may have what we consider to be a

659
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:51,080
Speaker 1: completely comprehensive, self consistent picture of our position in in

660
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:54,680
Speaker 1: in the galaxy and the galaxy within within within the

661
00:33:54,720 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 1: larger universe, and we may we may just reach a

662
00:33:57,080 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 1: point where we just not we're not interested in going

663
00:34:00,120 --> 00:34:02,360
Speaker 1: any further than our solar system because we've we've sexually

664
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 1: established to our own satisfaction that we know what's out there.

665
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:07,320
Speaker 1: And I think when when you know already we know

666
00:34:07,480 --> 00:34:12,200
Speaker 1: a lot more about the broad conditions of many solar systems.

667
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:15,240
Speaker 1: We know about thousands of extra planets in different solar systems,

668
00:34:15,280 --> 00:34:18,359
Speaker 1: So we have a sharpening sense of what's out there,

669
00:34:18,600 --> 00:34:21,360
Speaker 1: not just in our immediate interstellar neighborhood, but out to

670
00:34:21,600 --> 00:34:24,280
Speaker 1: thousands of light years with the sort of transit observation.

671
00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:27,600
Speaker 1: And as that picture firms up and develops over the

672
00:34:27,640 --> 00:34:30,520
Speaker 1: next century, it may we may think, think, realize that

673
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:34,480
Speaker 1: actually Earth like planets are incredibly rare, and all that's

674
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:37,280
Speaker 1: out there is just more stuff like the Solar system,

675
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:41,120
Speaker 1: you know, more more sort of versions of Mercury and Jupiter.

676
00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:44,320
Speaker 1: And would we be sufficiently motivated to explore if we

677
00:34:44,400 --> 00:34:46,920
Speaker 1: already sensed that we had we had all the answers already,

678
00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:48,960
Speaker 1: So I don't know, Maybe depends on what we see.

679
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:51,879
Speaker 1: Then if we saw something really interesting, if we sort

680
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:53,920
Speaker 1: of resolve the structure on the planet, I mean, they

681
00:34:53,920 --> 00:34:56,640
Speaker 1: don't necessarily necessarily mean an artificial structure, but if we

682
00:34:56,719 --> 00:34:59,799
Speaker 1: resolved say a continent with green bits or something like

683
00:34:59,840 --> 00:35:01,759
Speaker 1: that in a blue seed and then that would be

684
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 1: a significant motivator for some form of exploration. But I

685
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:07,960
Speaker 1: think it's far from settled that there will be this

686
00:35:08,160 --> 00:35:11,279
Speaker 1: grand You know, the default science fiction future is that

687
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:13,960
Speaker 1: we go into the Solar System, best around there for

688
00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:18,000
Speaker 1: a few hundred years, and then we developed interstellar capability,

689
00:35:18,160 --> 00:35:20,880
Speaker 1: sometimes even faster than like capability, and we burst out

690
00:35:20,920 --> 00:35:25,480
Speaker 1: into the universe. And that's like a sort of cosmic destiny. Um.

691
00:35:25,520 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 1: I'm happy to play with that in science fictional terms.

692
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:31,359
Speaker 1: As a writer. It's there's a lot of literally fun

693
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:34,279
Speaker 1: to be had from that prectice. But I'm probably a

694
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:36,960
Speaker 1: little bit more doubtful about it now than I was

695
00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:38,759
Speaker 1: when I start in my career. And so that leads

696
00:35:38,800 --> 00:35:41,920
Speaker 1: me to my next question about the Fermi paradox. In

697
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:45,520
Speaker 1: your books, there's almost always aliens and there's been contact,

698
00:35:45,800 --> 00:35:48,760
Speaker 1: but in some cases the galaxy is like mostly wiped

699
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:52,440
Speaker 1: out by some prehistoric galactic battle. So what does you

700
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:55,720
Speaker 1: take on our current situation, like why haven't the alien

701
00:35:55,840 --> 00:35:58,600
Speaker 1: visited in your opinion, here in our in our actual

702
00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:02,040
Speaker 1: physical galaxy. Again, I always say what day of the

703
00:36:02,040 --> 00:36:03,600
Speaker 1: week is it? And I'll give you a different answer.

704
00:36:05,080 --> 00:36:07,040
Speaker 1: I mean, for a long time because I read this

705
00:36:07,160 --> 00:36:10,439
Speaker 1: very book that a lot of science fiction writers read

706
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:14,280
Speaker 1: in the eighties, which was The Anthropic Cosmological by Barrow

707
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:16,719
Speaker 1: and Tippler, and the sort of takeaway message of that

708
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:20,560
Speaker 1: is that the reason, the sort of explanation for the

709
00:36:20,600 --> 00:36:23,640
Speaker 1: Famie paradox is that there's no one out there because

710
00:36:24,040 --> 00:36:30,719
Speaker 1: the mechanics of interstellar colonization using relatively slow propulsion systems

711
00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:34,640
Speaker 1: but say replicating robots and things like that, I mean

712
00:36:34,680 --> 00:36:38,200
Speaker 1: that you could in effect colonized the entire galaxy in

713
00:36:38,200 --> 00:36:40,400
Speaker 1: a very short span of time, much less than a

714
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:43,360
Speaker 1: million years, and that's just a tiny fraction of the

715
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 1: existing age of the galaxy. So the argument is that

716
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:48,279
Speaker 1: only would have had to have happened once for the

717
00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:50,719
Speaker 1: sort of evidence of it to be obvious. There's been many,

718
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:52,680
Speaker 1: many opportunities for it to happen, and it doesn't seem

719
00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:55,640
Speaker 1: to have happened. Therefore, there's no aliens out there apart

720
00:36:55,680 --> 00:36:59,480
Speaker 1: from maybe single cell slide things. That I took that

721
00:36:59,560 --> 00:37:01,080
Speaker 1: as goss for for a long time. I think it

722
00:37:01,120 --> 00:37:03,400
Speaker 1: was a very sort of persuasive argument, but I'm a

723
00:37:03,440 --> 00:37:06,640
Speaker 1: lot I'm not so smitten with it now because I

724
00:37:06,680 --> 00:37:10,120
Speaker 1: think one also has to think if if there were

725
00:37:10,360 --> 00:37:13,840
Speaker 1: imagined that we had been visited by super intelligent alien

726
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:17,040
Speaker 1: beings at some point in our history, I think it

727
00:37:17,040 --> 00:37:19,680
Speaker 1: would be an absolutely trivial problem for them to conceal

728
00:37:19,920 --> 00:37:22,520
Speaker 1: all evidence of their activity. I think they could even

729
00:37:22,520 --> 00:37:24,799
Speaker 1: be here now we wouldn't see. That's why, in a way,

730
00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:27,840
Speaker 1: it's why I take I don't take UFOs seriously because

731
00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:32,000
Speaker 1: I think any any extraterrestrial civilization that wanted to visit

732
00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:35,160
Speaker 1: our skies could do so without being detected. They would

733
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:38,600
Speaker 1: just that would just be a trivial, little technological problem

734
00:37:38,680 --> 00:37:42,239
Speaker 1: for them just to avoid detection. So yeah, I kind

735
00:37:42,239 --> 00:37:45,520
Speaker 1: of haven't really answered that. I think the family paradox is.

736
00:37:45,719 --> 00:37:47,839
Speaker 1: One possible answer is that we're alone, and that's that's

737
00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:51,320
Speaker 1: sort of it's quite interesting one. I don't find it depressing,

738
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:53,680
Speaker 1: think it's interesting. But but the other one is that

739
00:37:53,920 --> 00:37:56,440
Speaker 1: really want to speculate about the motives and activities of

740
00:37:56,640 --> 00:38:00,200
Speaker 1: highly advanced extrastrial beings. We're you know, we're really we

741
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:02,600
Speaker 1: don't really have a lot of experience to base our

742
00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:05,359
Speaker 1: suppositions on. It's a lot of speculation from one data point.

743
00:38:05,520 --> 00:38:07,680
Speaker 1: It is an enormous amount of speculation. Yeah, well, I

744
00:38:07,800 --> 00:38:10,280
Speaker 1: quite like the idea that. I mean, someone did the mathematics.

745
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:12,600
Speaker 1: So it's about, you know, what are the orders of finding,

746
00:38:12,719 --> 00:38:16,160
Speaker 1: say a single alien artifact in the Solar System. We

747
00:38:16,280 --> 00:38:19,360
Speaker 1: had like an alien civilization somewhere else out in the galaxy,

748
00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:22,840
Speaker 1: because at some point some of their space also wander

749
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:24,680
Speaker 1: away from their system, and you know, there might be

750
00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:27,439
Speaker 1: sort of like a spanner on the moon or something

751
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:31,319
Speaker 1: like that. So I think it will be I mean,

752
00:38:31,800 --> 00:38:33,799
Speaker 1: well worth keeping our eyes open as we as we

753
00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:37,359
Speaker 1: sort of moved out through. I had hopes for MUA

754
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:40,520
Speaker 1: being a bit of space junk passing through the system,

755
00:38:40,600 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: but unfortunately doesn't look that way. I know, no, no,

756
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:45,799
Speaker 1: it's just a dirty comment or something like that. This

757
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:48,680
Speaker 1: is super fun, and I have more questions for our

758
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 1: guest science fiction author Alistair Reynolds. But first let's take

759
00:38:52,760 --> 00:39:08,640
Speaker 1: a quick break. All right, we're back and I'm talking

760
00:39:08,640 --> 00:39:13,040
Speaker 1: to Alistair Reynolds, science fiction author of the trilogy Revenger.

761
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:16,360
Speaker 1: So then let's turn to this novel that's the topic

762
00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:19,400
Speaker 1: of our episode today, which is actually your trio of novels,

763
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:23,680
Speaker 1: this Revenger series, and in this book, we're sort of

764
00:39:23,680 --> 00:39:26,839
Speaker 1: in a world where the old planets have been deconstructed

765
00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:30,920
Speaker 1: into a vast series of artificial worlds, and the ships

766
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:34,279
Speaker 1: that moved between them operate on solar sales. It's it's

767
00:39:34,280 --> 00:39:36,359
Speaker 1: a fascinating topic, and it felt to me very much

768
00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:38,799
Speaker 1: like a novel that could almost be set in a

769
00:39:38,840 --> 00:39:42,080
Speaker 1: bunch of pirate ships navigating between islands in the eight

770
00:39:42,239 --> 00:39:44,560
Speaker 1: hundreds or something. What gave you the idea to use

771
00:39:44,600 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 1: this concept? Um? So what made you want to write

772
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:52,120
Speaker 1: this book? Where did this idea come from? Did you

773
00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:54,680
Speaker 1: start from the science concept of solar sales? So did

774
00:39:54,719 --> 00:39:56,880
Speaker 1: you start from the story and look for the right setting?

775
00:39:57,600 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 1: Actually had to ideas that was sitting on my computer

776
00:40:01,080 --> 00:40:03,359
Speaker 1: for a long long time, and we're talking to the ten, ten,

777
00:40:03,440 --> 00:40:07,279
Speaker 1: fifteen years, because I quite often I have a lot

778
00:40:07,320 --> 00:40:09,560
Speaker 1: of ideas on the back burner, which is I think

779
00:40:09,560 --> 00:40:11,600
Speaker 1: a lot of writers are like that, because writing is

780
00:40:11,640 --> 00:40:13,319
Speaker 1: a bit like a conveyor. You know, you write one

781
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:15,160
Speaker 1: novel and you've you've got to kind of have some

782
00:40:15,280 --> 00:40:17,640
Speaker 1: ideas germinating for the next one. So I write a

783
00:40:17,680 --> 00:40:20,160
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that's very sort of notes, notes and

784
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:23,800
Speaker 1: sort of ideas to myself computer that don't necessarily go

785
00:40:23,800 --> 00:40:27,080
Speaker 1: anywhere for years and years. And the first sort of

786
00:40:27,360 --> 00:40:29,920
Speaker 1: part of that was that I tried to write to

787
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:34,960
Speaker 1: set the stories about explorers breaking into alien structures where

788
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:38,200
Speaker 1: they had a certain random time limit where they had

789
00:40:38,239 --> 00:40:40,239
Speaker 1: to get in, get the treasure, and get out, sort

790
00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:42,680
Speaker 1: of Indiana Jones stuff, but they didn't really know how

791
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:44,600
Speaker 1: long that they would have, so it was very sort

792
00:40:44,640 --> 00:40:46,960
Speaker 1: of high risk, sort of like safe cracking, but with

793
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:50,160
Speaker 1: an element of alien big dumb objects and things like that.

794
00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:52,880
Speaker 1: And I thought there's definitely something in that, there's some

795
00:40:52,960 --> 00:40:55,879
Speaker 1: mileageing idea, but I couldn't really get its catch fire,

796
00:40:56,320 --> 00:40:58,719
Speaker 1: and I tried telling it within some of my other

797
00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:02,839
Speaker 1: literally unit It's maybe it just didn't happen for one

798
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:04,799
Speaker 1: reason or another, but I had still have the idea

799
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:07,680
Speaker 1: on my hard drive. And then again about fifteen years ago,

800
00:41:07,719 --> 00:41:10,440
Speaker 1: I really liked the idea. I mean, there was a

801
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:13,600
Speaker 1: science fiction writer you probably aware of who had a

802
00:41:13,640 --> 00:41:17,280
Speaker 1: big burst of productivity in the sixties bychall Larry Niven,

803
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:21,839
Speaker 1: and he wrote a bunch of stories about what it

804
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:23,399
Speaker 1: kind of goes back to that thing we were talking

805
00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:26,440
Speaker 1: about of the manifest destiny of going into the Solar System.

806
00:41:26,440 --> 00:41:30,239
Speaker 1: And then we move out into interstellar space. But his

807
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:33,239
Speaker 1: stories were quite good fun because by the time we

808
00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:37,480
Speaker 1: had an interstellar society, we've met lots of different alien

809
00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:41,080
Speaker 1: civilization and some of them were trading their technology with

810
00:41:41,640 --> 00:41:44,400
Speaker 1: So what I quite liked about the Larry Diving stories

811
00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 1: and space stories was that you'd have a sort of spacecraft,

812
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:49,959
Speaker 1: but bits of it would be made by one set

813
00:41:49,960 --> 00:41:52,600
Speaker 1: of aliens, and you know, the puppeteers would make the

814
00:41:52,640 --> 00:41:55,080
Speaker 1: hulls because they were very good at making indestructive and material,

815
00:41:55,760 --> 00:41:57,240
Speaker 1: you know, and then there'd be some of the systems

816
00:41:57,239 --> 00:41:59,160
Speaker 1: supplied by someone else. And it was a real sort

817
00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:03,319
Speaker 1: of cosmopol and quite fun and colorful sort of civilization.

818
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:05,360
Speaker 1: I always like, I like the spirit of that, and

819
00:42:05,360 --> 00:42:06,759
Speaker 1: I thought, I really want to put my own spin

820
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:09,279
Speaker 1: on it. So I started coming up with notes for

821
00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:12,359
Speaker 1: a set of stories that were setting a dicens sa,

822
00:42:12,760 --> 00:42:16,480
Speaker 1: so not not a sphere around the start, but a

823
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:20,440
Speaker 1: literal globe of lots of little microworlds. And I thought,

824
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:22,759
Speaker 1: what if, rather than deal with the people who built it,

825
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:25,359
Speaker 1: what if some human explorers sort of stumbled up long

826
00:42:25,400 --> 00:42:28,319
Speaker 1: after it was constructed, and in fact after that sort

827
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:30,080
Speaker 1: of fallen into ruin, and then they could have a

828
00:42:30,080 --> 00:42:33,320
Speaker 1: sort of little micro civilization where they're playing amongst these

829
00:42:34,080 --> 00:42:38,839
Speaker 1: enigmatic leftovers from sort of previous glory civilizations glory lens.

830
00:42:39,560 --> 00:42:41,040
Speaker 1: But you can see so that that was an idea.

831
00:42:41,080 --> 00:42:43,879
Speaker 1: It didn't go anywhere either. But then a long long

832
00:42:43,880 --> 00:42:46,719
Speaker 1: time later, I I sort of spotted that those two

833
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:49,200
Speaker 1: ideas could be sort of jammed together and made something else.

834
00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:52,239
Speaker 1: And then the sort of third of the two ingredients,

835
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:56,800
Speaker 1: you know, just mention it was just a longstanding love

836
00:42:57,560 --> 00:43:01,120
Speaker 1: for nautical fiction, and that's that's where all the sort

837
00:43:01,120 --> 00:43:04,040
Speaker 1: of the Pirate High Treasure on the Seventh Seas and

838
00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:06,359
Speaker 1: all that stuff comes from, which just I just love

839
00:43:06,400 --> 00:43:08,799
Speaker 1: that stuff. I've steeped in it, and I always wanted

840
00:43:08,840 --> 00:43:11,120
Speaker 1: to write a sort of science fiction prestige of sort

841
00:43:11,160 --> 00:43:13,480
Speaker 1: of the age of fighting sale something that sort of

842
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:16,160
Speaker 1: went back to Robert Stevenson also a lot of the

843
00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:19,080
Speaker 1: sort of twentieth century writers who who did stories about

844
00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:23,080
Speaker 1: sailing ships. So just it all just came together. And

845
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:26,120
Speaker 1: then what I quite like was that because you're the

846
00:43:26,160 --> 00:43:29,960
Speaker 1: whole action is only confined to a volume about the

847
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:32,440
Speaker 1: size of the Earth's orbit, that's quite important. So it's

848
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:36,840
Speaker 1: sixteen light seconds wide. It's human civilization. Even though there's

849
00:43:37,239 --> 00:43:40,400
Speaker 1: thousands of thousands of planets within that sort of sphere.

850
00:43:40,680 --> 00:43:45,279
Speaker 1: I thought, well, within that bound you could just about

851
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:47,719
Speaker 1: get around and some solar sects. And you know, if

852
00:43:47,719 --> 00:43:49,440
Speaker 1: I thought, well, the use orbit takes us round some

853
00:43:49,600 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 1: once a year, so that would be the fun. It

854
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:53,920
Speaker 1: takes about a year to get from one side to

855
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:56,960
Speaker 1: the other of its body of worlds. And I sledged

856
00:43:57,040 --> 00:43:58,840
Speaker 1: it because solar sales are very good to get you know,

857
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:02,200
Speaker 1: they're getting a way from the Sun is obviously trivially

858
00:44:02,200 --> 00:44:03,840
Speaker 1: easy with the soil of sale, you just use the

859
00:44:03,880 --> 00:44:07,160
Speaker 1: light pressure. Attacking inwards is more difficult, but I read

860
00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 1: a paper about using Anglo momentum effects to sort of

861
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:13,239
Speaker 1: tack your way deeper into a gravity. Well, so that's

862
00:44:13,239 --> 00:44:15,040
Speaker 1: all I need. The rest of it is just just

863
00:44:15,160 --> 00:44:18,839
Speaker 1: pure handwing ion drives in there, just like I could

864
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 1: sort of a get out. If anyone were to say

865
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:25,799
Speaker 1: this is totally impossible using solar sects. They've also got

866
00:44:25,800 --> 00:44:27,840
Speaker 1: ie on capability. They're just prefer not to use it

867
00:44:28,120 --> 00:44:30,799
Speaker 1: because the solar cells. Solar sailing comes for free as

868
00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:32,960
Speaker 1: soon as you turn on the ion drive you're burning

869
00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:35,839
Speaker 1: fuel money, and so how important is it to you

870
00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:38,960
Speaker 1: that there's always sort of a physics explanation for everything

871
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:41,400
Speaker 1: that happens in your novel. It's critical to you that

872
00:44:41,440 --> 00:44:43,960
Speaker 1: you have a physically self consistent universe, even if you

873
00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:45,560
Speaker 1: get to tweak the laws of it a little bit,

874
00:44:45,719 --> 00:44:50,080
Speaker 1: but it's not colossally important, and it varies quite striking.

875
00:44:50,120 --> 00:44:52,719
Speaker 1: And I would say from one universe to another. I

876
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:56,560
Speaker 1: mean the the two sets of books that I'm probably

877
00:44:56,640 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 1: best best known for, the books I wrote earlier in

878
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:02,040
Speaker 1: my career here which I've returned to set in the

879
00:45:02,080 --> 00:45:05,960
Speaker 1: Revelations space, which on one level is quite grounded in

880
00:45:06,560 --> 00:45:09,560
Speaker 1: hard physics because it has this implacable rule you can't

881
00:45:09,600 --> 00:45:11,600
Speaker 1: travel faster than light. And I tried to work out

882
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:15,120
Speaker 1: all the relativistic effects correctly, and I try to do

883
00:45:16,120 --> 00:45:19,440
Speaker 1: the sort of dynamics of planetary systems and atmospheres as

884
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:21,799
Speaker 1: realistic as I could get it with my own limitations,

885
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:24,360
Speaker 1: and at the same time tell a story that was

886
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 1: hopefully interesting more than one person. But even within that

887
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:31,600
Speaker 1: there's sort of crazy science, creative sort of tacking on

888
00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:35,239
Speaker 1: signaling from the future, inertialist drives that kind of thing,

889
00:45:35,320 --> 00:45:37,960
Speaker 1: even a bit of time travel. So there range of

890
00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:40,880
Speaker 1: stuff is even more like that because you have this

891
00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 1: on the foreground. The humans use the technology that's broadly

892
00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:49,239
Speaker 1: familiar to our own, you know, so they have rockets

893
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:54,000
Speaker 1: for short distance navigation, and I was thinking real buck

894
00:45:54,080 --> 00:45:57,400
Speaker 1: rogers rockets here. So they like sort of bullet shaped

895
00:45:57,440 --> 00:46:00,239
Speaker 1: cylinders with little fins on the back, and rock keute

896
00:46:00,239 --> 00:46:03,400
Speaker 1: motives really with with portholes and riverts as well. That

897
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:06,239
Speaker 1: was important to have lots of riverts. But that's like

898
00:46:06,360 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 1: within within our technological sort of horizons. And the ships

899
00:46:11,360 --> 00:46:14,040
Speaker 1: not outlandish in the sense that they use solar sales.

900
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:17,200
Speaker 1: But I didn't I didn't tie myself down to I mean,

901
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:19,719
Speaker 1: if you sort of do the math, so I said, right,

902
00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:21,600
Speaker 1: my ships are about the size of a seventary seven.

903
00:46:21,640 --> 00:46:23,960
Speaker 1: That's that's what I decided, because I wanted them to

904
00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:26,120
Speaker 1: be big enough that you could sort of have a

905
00:46:26,120 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 1: bit of drama within the compartments, you know, maybe room

906
00:46:30,560 --> 00:46:32,799
Speaker 1: enough for a crew of ten or twelves or something

907
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:34,799
Speaker 1: like that. But I didn't want to be sort of

908
00:46:35,000 --> 00:46:37,840
Speaker 1: enormous space dread or dreadnought sort of kilometers long, you know,

909
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:39,960
Speaker 1: seven three sevens good, it's about the size of a

910
00:46:40,239 --> 00:46:42,960
Speaker 1: of a galleon or something like that. But the amount

911
00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:47,160
Speaker 1: of area of solar sales you need to accelerate even

912
00:46:47,160 --> 00:46:50,320
Speaker 1: the Secretary seven to any any kind of acceleration, and

913
00:46:50,360 --> 00:46:52,600
Speaker 1: the accelerations in the Book of the Ships and the

914
00:46:52,600 --> 00:46:54,640
Speaker 1: books are quite low by as quite of the SciTE

915
00:46:54,719 --> 00:46:56,840
Speaker 1: fictional statard. It's sort of like, I don't know, a

916
00:46:56,880 --> 00:46:58,600
Speaker 1: third of a tenth of a g or something like that,

917
00:46:59,040 --> 00:47:01,799
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't an enormous collecting area to do that.

918
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:04,919
Speaker 1: So I just didn't want to go down that road

919
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:10,560
Speaker 1: of scrupulously fact checking myself because because fundamentally these books

920
00:47:10,560 --> 00:47:13,200
Speaker 1: are about the spirit of adventure, a sense of drama

921
00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:17,120
Speaker 1: and atmosphere that the sort of mix of what no

922
00:47:17,239 --> 00:47:19,200
Speaker 1: a sort of fiction and nautical fiction, of a bit

923
00:47:19,239 --> 00:47:22,240
Speaker 1: of gothic horror coming in there, and I didn't really

924
00:47:22,560 --> 00:47:26,279
Speaker 1: want them to be paradigmatic hardest fet books. That's why

925
00:47:26,280 --> 00:47:28,399
Speaker 1: there's so the science is kind of crazy as well.

926
00:47:28,440 --> 00:47:32,400
Speaker 1: When when there's stuff the humans opera utilized, there's alien technologies,

927
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:35,839
Speaker 1: former human technologies left over, even though we never used

928
00:47:35,840 --> 00:47:38,239
Speaker 1: the word human in any of the three books, but

929
00:47:38,280 --> 00:47:41,160
Speaker 1: they have access to weird things that they don't really

930
00:47:41,200 --> 00:47:45,000
Speaker 1: understand how they work, and I, as a writer, put

931
00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:47,080
Speaker 1: as little explanations I can get as I can get

932
00:47:47,080 --> 00:47:48,719
Speaker 1: away with from the page. Tell me a little bit

933
00:47:48,760 --> 00:47:51,920
Speaker 1: about the bones that they use to do faster than

934
00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:55,719
Speaker 1: like communication. Is this something you imagine might one day

935
00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:58,600
Speaker 1: be possible with some crazy alien tech and our civilization?

936
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:01,960
Speaker 1: Or you think faster like communication is totally out of

937
00:48:02,000 --> 00:48:05,080
Speaker 1: bounds for humanity. But I think I kind of fudged.

938
00:48:05,440 --> 00:48:09,600
Speaker 1: I kept it. I never resolved to my own satisfaction

939
00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:12,319
Speaker 1: whether the skulls work faster than like. The humans don't

940
00:48:12,320 --> 00:48:15,480
Speaker 1: really know because they're because they're operating within this sort

941
00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:19,520
Speaker 1: of relatively small volume of space. It's not apparent to

942
00:48:19,560 --> 00:48:21,960
Speaker 1: them whether they're, whether they're instantaneous or not. I perhaps

943
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:26,279
Speaker 1: perhaps they are kind of But actually the genesis of

944
00:48:26,320 --> 00:48:28,920
Speaker 1: the skulls idea was that, originally, to go back to

945
00:48:28,960 --> 00:48:33,719
Speaker 1: this idea of humans utilizing bits of alien technology, originally

946
00:48:33,760 --> 00:48:36,360
Speaker 1: the whole ships are going to be skulls. So it

947
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:37,680
Speaker 1: was just like you're going to have like a three

948
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:41,799
Speaker 1: h foot long discarded skull from some alia you find

949
00:48:41,800 --> 00:48:46,920
Speaker 1: floating in space, presum presumably some long vanished staffaring alien,

950
00:48:47,760 --> 00:48:49,560
Speaker 1: and I like the idea was the humans sort of

951
00:48:49,600 --> 00:48:51,920
Speaker 1: get these skulls and they sort of scoop out all

952
00:48:51,920 --> 00:48:55,240
Speaker 1: the jump that's left over and then put rocket boats

953
00:48:55,280 --> 00:48:56,920
Speaker 1: on them or whatever, and then they just fly these

954
00:48:56,920 --> 00:48:59,400
Speaker 1: skulls around. And I was really going with this, and

955
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:02,520
Speaker 1: then I went to Z Guardians of the Galaxy and

956
00:49:03,120 --> 00:49:05,279
Speaker 1: why some at some point in this film they go

957
00:49:05,360 --> 00:49:07,240
Speaker 1: to this sort of I think it's like asteroid moneys

958
00:49:07,320 --> 00:49:10,759
Speaker 1: or something like that, and the bases a skull. It's

959
00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:13,360
Speaker 1: just floating in a nebula, and I just can't do

960
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:15,120
Speaker 1: it now because it's been done, you know, they've had

961
00:49:15,320 --> 00:49:17,520
Speaker 1: a big space skull has been done. So then I

962
00:49:17,680 --> 00:49:20,359
Speaker 1: downscoped and I thought, well, if if the ships can't

963
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:24,560
Speaker 1: be skulls, then they will have something inside that uses

964
00:49:24,640 --> 00:49:26,840
Speaker 1: the idea of the table Scott and I was just

965
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:31,040
Speaker 1: thinking about old fashioned crystal radio sets, you know, and

966
00:49:31,120 --> 00:49:32,520
Speaker 1: a little bit of that, a little bit of sort

967
00:49:32,560 --> 00:49:35,520
Speaker 1: of weiji boards just to keep it spooky, but really

968
00:49:35,520 --> 00:49:38,360
Speaker 1: it was just to get a sort of slightly recarb

969
00:49:38,920 --> 00:49:41,799
Speaker 1: gothic vibe in to the stories, and it gave the

970
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:46,720
Speaker 1: cruise another specialization idea that people with this particular talent

971
00:49:46,840 --> 00:49:48,960
Speaker 1: to be able to get a signal a skull, but

972
00:49:49,040 --> 00:49:51,360
Speaker 1: I didn't really know how whether that would just be

973
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:54,279
Speaker 1: a little background detail or started the books. Well, to me,

974
00:49:54,360 --> 00:49:56,239
Speaker 1: it seems really evocative of a lot of the other

975
00:49:56,280 --> 00:49:58,759
Speaker 1: things I like about your other novels, the fact that

976
00:49:58,840 --> 00:50:02,480
Speaker 1: the protagonist in the book are we surrounded by leftover

977
00:50:02,600 --> 00:50:07,080
Speaker 1: bits from ancient civilizations? Like there's constantly there's vast quantities

978
00:50:07,120 --> 00:50:11,640
Speaker 1: of previously understood but now lost knowledge. And I like

979
00:50:11,760 --> 00:50:13,680
Speaker 1: that because it resonates with the way I feel about

980
00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:17,719
Speaker 1: our universe, that we're surrounded constantly with information about the

981
00:50:17,800 --> 00:50:20,600
Speaker 1: universe and we don't understand, you know, we're bathed and

982
00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:24,600
Speaker 1: clues but totally clueless. This is something you're explicitly going

983
00:50:24,680 --> 00:50:26,960
Speaker 1: for in your books or is this just the way

984
00:50:27,000 --> 00:50:28,879
Speaker 1: you feel about the universe? Probably just the way way

985
00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:30,440
Speaker 1: I feel about the universe. But it's also I mean,

986
00:50:30,480 --> 00:50:33,440
Speaker 1: it's like there's some the cynical answer is actually it

987
00:50:33,480 --> 00:50:36,800
Speaker 1: Actually I've always said it's far more interesting to describe

988
00:50:36,800 --> 00:50:40,080
Speaker 1: the spacecraft that's covered in rust than than well it's

989
00:50:40,160 --> 00:50:42,200
Speaker 1: kind of all shiny and chrome, because there's lots more

990
00:50:42,239 --> 00:50:44,360
Speaker 1: adjectives you can use when things are sort of crumbling,

991
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:47,319
Speaker 1: falling up. So I've always liked I've always been drawn

992
00:50:47,400 --> 00:50:50,719
Speaker 1: to that sense of decrepitude and lots of old things

993
00:50:50,840 --> 00:50:54,680
Speaker 1: have bolted together more or less work but don't work reliably.

994
00:50:55,120 --> 00:50:57,360
Speaker 1: Just it's just far more interesting. But I think the

995
00:50:57,400 --> 00:51:00,399
Speaker 1: more serious answer would be that a lot of that's fiction.

996
00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:01,640
Speaker 1: I read a lot, a lot a lot of the

997
00:51:01,640 --> 00:51:04,200
Speaker 1: science fictions, but I was influenced by had that sense

998
00:51:04,239 --> 00:51:07,160
Speaker 1: of antiquity, of layers of antiquity, and the future built

999
00:51:07,160 --> 00:51:10,400
Speaker 1: on top of of the past. I mean, in literary

1000
00:51:10,680 --> 00:51:13,440
Speaker 1: science fiction. I think the writer that I got the

1001
00:51:13,480 --> 00:51:16,920
Speaker 1: most sense of that from would be Jean Wolf, because

1002
00:51:17,200 --> 00:51:18,920
Speaker 1: the books of the New Sun, which I read when

1003
00:51:18,920 --> 00:51:21,920
Speaker 1: I was at university, kind of feel like fantasy, and

1004
00:51:21,960 --> 00:51:25,080
Speaker 1: it's you sense that you're a long way into the

1005
00:51:25,120 --> 00:51:29,200
Speaker 1: future of this dying earth. But gradually little bits of

1006
00:51:29,239 --> 00:51:32,200
Speaker 1: science fiction sort of intruded into the narrative and you

1007
00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:36,080
Speaker 1: realized that, you know, this is very very distant time

1008
00:51:36,160 --> 00:51:39,720
Speaker 1: is built on well almost literally on these geological strata

1009
00:51:39,840 --> 00:51:42,680
Speaker 1: of different ages, and I really love that, and I

1010
00:51:42,719 --> 00:51:46,000
Speaker 1: love the fact that there were bits of technology, weaponry,

1011
00:51:46,080 --> 00:51:49,560
Speaker 1: whatever left over from more sophisticated times that the characters

1012
00:51:49,560 --> 00:51:53,719
Speaker 1: could could use but not necessarily understand. But so you

1013
00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:56,240
Speaker 1: have on the surface, it's kind of sort and sorcery,

1014
00:51:56,400 --> 00:51:59,279
Speaker 1: very game of Throne sort of stuff with citadels and

1015
00:51:59,600 --> 00:52:02,479
Speaker 1: guys in cloaks with swords. But at the same time,

1016
00:52:03,280 --> 00:52:07,120
Speaker 1: very rich people have ray guns because they found rey guns,

1017
00:52:07,120 --> 00:52:10,200
Speaker 1: and some people are flying cards because they just left

1018
00:52:10,239 --> 00:52:12,160
Speaker 1: over bits of leftover technology. And I love that. I

1019
00:52:12,200 --> 00:52:17,760
Speaker 1: love that sense of just archaeological accretion of different layers,

1020
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:20,279
Speaker 1: so that came into the It's also in lots of

1021
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:22,640
Speaker 1: Doctor Who as well, lots of classic doctor Who had

1022
00:52:22,640 --> 00:52:25,280
Speaker 1: that sense of really really deep time, deep deep paths.

1023
00:52:25,360 --> 00:52:28,319
Speaker 1: So I just as well, I find it fascinating but

1024
00:52:28,840 --> 00:52:31,320
Speaker 1: also a bit painful because it gives you the sense

1025
00:52:31,360 --> 00:52:35,200
Speaker 1: that somebody knew these answers, somebody mastered these topics, and

1026
00:52:35,239 --> 00:52:38,080
Speaker 1: then the knowledge was just lost. And to me, that's

1027
00:52:38,120 --> 00:52:41,440
Speaker 1: as endlessly first doing um. But let me let me

1028
00:52:41,440 --> 00:52:43,800
Speaker 1: ask you a sense. You are in a unique position

1029
00:52:43,920 --> 00:52:47,360
Speaker 1: being in both the academic community and the science fiction community.

1030
00:52:47,840 --> 00:52:51,200
Speaker 1: I had a sense that science fiction authors actively and

1031
00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:56,040
Speaker 1: realistically contribute to sort of progress in academic scientific research

1032
00:52:56,280 --> 00:52:59,160
Speaker 1: and engineering by coming up with sort of the craziest

1033
00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:02,600
Speaker 1: ideas on the edge of possibilities. Having been in both communities,

1034
00:53:02,640 --> 00:53:04,839
Speaker 1: how do you feel about the way those two inter

1035
00:53:04,920 --> 00:53:11,640
Speaker 1: relate intellectually? I didn't sense that exchange. On a personal level.

1036
00:53:11,640 --> 00:53:14,920
Speaker 1: In my experience as a scientist had very little to

1037
00:53:14,920 --> 00:53:18,080
Speaker 1: do with science fiction because I was working in a particulars,

1038
00:53:18,680 --> 00:53:23,160
Speaker 1: particularly a subsets of astronomy and instrument science when I

1039
00:53:23,239 --> 00:53:25,640
Speaker 1: was working through in Space Agency, sort of photon camping

1040
00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:28,200
Speaker 1: and things like that, which also played into astronomy. But

1041
00:53:29,680 --> 00:53:32,680
Speaker 1: I mean, I kind of kept my science fiction credentials

1042
00:53:32,719 --> 00:53:34,440
Speaker 1: to myself for a long time, so I didn't really

1043
00:53:34,640 --> 00:53:36,600
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure how people would take it. And I've

1044
00:53:37,160 --> 00:53:40,279
Speaker 1: found a general rule. Some scientists are really receptive to

1045
00:53:40,280 --> 00:53:42,960
Speaker 1: science fiction, and they love it. They they've been stimulated

1046
00:53:43,000 --> 00:53:45,520
Speaker 1: by it, and they see the potential in it. But

1047
00:53:45,640 --> 00:53:49,160
Speaker 1: others are really disdainful of it. And I don't, you know,

1048
00:53:49,160 --> 00:53:51,040
Speaker 1: I didn't want to run foul of the latter, so

1049
00:53:51,120 --> 00:53:53,319
Speaker 1: I just I'm not going to make a big deal

1050
00:53:53,360 --> 00:53:56,239
Speaker 1: of this. But since I stopped my former scientific career,

1051
00:53:56,520 --> 00:53:58,960
Speaker 1: I have taken an interest in this. I mean, I've

1052
00:53:58,960 --> 00:54:02,440
Speaker 1: sort of looked at, for instance, the way that our

1053
00:54:02,600 --> 00:54:06,640
Speaker 1: scientific and literally understanding of the planet Mars has evolved

1054
00:54:06,840 --> 00:54:09,480
Speaker 1: over sort of the last century and a half. That's

1055
00:54:09,520 --> 00:54:12,400
Speaker 1: of interest to me. I've done lectures on that because

1056
00:54:12,800 --> 00:54:17,680
Speaker 1: it's a real two way process where science fiction and

1057
00:54:17,840 --> 00:54:22,000
Speaker 1: science have sort of moved hand in hand. Our science

1058
00:54:22,040 --> 00:54:25,200
Speaker 1: fictional understanding of the universe, and with with Mars as

1059
00:54:25,239 --> 00:54:28,759
Speaker 1: a case study, as has evolved and sometimes like behind

1060
00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:31,920
Speaker 1: the science because sometimes as writers were very attached to

1061
00:54:31,920 --> 00:54:35,160
Speaker 1: a particular image of something, and when the science appends

1062
00:54:35,200 --> 00:54:36,840
Speaker 1: that image, we often don't want to let go of it,

1063
00:54:37,640 --> 00:54:39,960
Speaker 1: but eventually we come around to it eventually, I think

1064
00:54:40,080 --> 00:54:42,600
Speaker 1: the know with with with Mars, you know, there was

1065
00:54:42,719 --> 00:54:44,640
Speaker 1: there was a sense that we had to say goodbye

1066
00:54:44,719 --> 00:54:49,080
Speaker 1: to the romantic idea of Mars, of Edgar Ice Burrows

1067
00:54:49,080 --> 00:54:52,440
Speaker 1: and even Ray Bradbury as somewhere where where there might

1068
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:57,279
Speaker 1: be civilizations and ruins and wonders, and we had to

1069
00:54:57,320 --> 00:55:00,480
Speaker 1: confront the idea that Mars was really just a a

1070
00:55:00,560 --> 00:55:03,719
Speaker 1: barely less prospicable version of our own move you know,

1071
00:55:03,800 --> 00:55:08,120
Speaker 1: it's a an arried, nearly airless rock floating in space.

1072
00:55:08,520 --> 00:55:10,600
Speaker 1: But now we have we kind of come to terms

1073
00:55:10,640 --> 00:55:11,960
Speaker 1: of that, and now we now we can see the

1074
00:55:12,000 --> 00:55:14,719
Speaker 1: grandeur in the beauty in the real marks. That eventually

1075
00:55:14,800 --> 00:55:17,400
Speaker 1: led to a whole second wave of science fiction books

1076
00:55:17,480 --> 00:55:23,560
Speaker 1: that drew their inspiration from Viking and then subsequent Martian expeditions,

1077
00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:26,400
Speaker 1: and that process is carried on. There's also sort of

1078
00:55:26,440 --> 00:55:28,200
Speaker 1: two way, the traffic in the other direction, where you

1079
00:55:28,239 --> 00:55:31,080
Speaker 1: get little bits of science that draw their inspiration from

1080
00:55:31,239 --> 00:55:34,320
Speaker 1: from science fiction. It's not as easy to trace those connections,

1081
00:55:34,440 --> 00:55:36,480
Speaker 1: but they're certainly there. I mean, he's on my level.

1082
00:55:36,520 --> 00:55:39,319
Speaker 1: You have scientists who say I became a scientist because

1083
00:55:39,320 --> 00:55:42,280
Speaker 1: I read science fiction. It's probably to some degree true

1084
00:55:42,360 --> 00:55:44,000
Speaker 1: true of me. I don't know. Did you read science

1085
00:55:44,040 --> 00:55:47,360
Speaker 1: fiction as were absolutely did? I think that that's for me.

1086
00:55:47,440 --> 00:55:49,880
Speaker 1: The science fiction authors were the ones thinking about the

1087
00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:52,879
Speaker 1: deepest questions. You know, day to day science work, we're

1088
00:55:52,920 --> 00:55:56,200
Speaker 1: not answering big questions about the universe or making big discoveries,

1089
00:55:56,239 --> 00:55:58,560
Speaker 1: and so to sort of connect with the romance of

1090
00:55:58,600 --> 00:56:01,759
Speaker 1: the mystery of the universe, science fiction really tapped into

1091
00:56:01,800 --> 00:56:05,120
Speaker 1: that much more directly from me than the actual research

1092
00:56:05,200 --> 00:56:07,160
Speaker 1: work that I do on a day to day basis.

1093
00:56:07,360 --> 00:56:10,160
Speaker 1: To me, that's why they provide a nice balance. I mean,

1094
00:56:10,280 --> 00:56:13,520
Speaker 1: The one sort of case study that I can sometimes

1095
00:56:13,560 --> 00:56:15,720
Speaker 1: present to people as a clear case of science fiction

1096
00:56:16,040 --> 00:56:21,440
Speaker 1: shaping scientific thinking is when Carl Sagan was writing Contact,

1097
00:56:21,560 --> 00:56:24,120
Speaker 1: he wanted to come up with some plausible means of

1098
00:56:24,760 --> 00:56:27,720
Speaker 1: using First of all, he had an idea of travel

1099
00:56:27,800 --> 00:56:30,239
Speaker 1: through black holes, and then he went to speak to

1100
00:56:30,320 --> 00:56:33,000
Speaker 1: Kip Thorn, and out of that came the idea that

1101
00:56:33,239 --> 00:56:36,160
Speaker 1: a traversible wormhole was a much more interesting idea. And

1102
00:56:36,200 --> 00:56:38,200
Speaker 1: then Kip Thorn, sort of, I think for almost for

1103
00:56:38,280 --> 00:56:40,960
Speaker 1: his own sort of self gratification, came up with the

1104
00:56:41,040 --> 00:56:44,120
Speaker 1: sort of mathematics of of traversible wormholes, with the idea

1105
00:56:44,200 --> 00:56:48,040
Speaker 1: that you needed exotic energy to stabilize the throat. But

1106
00:56:48,200 --> 00:56:52,480
Speaker 1: that's still a whole viable discipline in I don't know

1107
00:56:52,560 --> 00:56:54,680
Speaker 1: what whether you call that particle physics or you know,

1108
00:56:55,040 --> 00:56:59,240
Speaker 1: spacetime physic gravitational physics, but lots of lots of papers

1109
00:56:59,239 --> 00:57:02,799
Speaker 1: are still are still coming out with reference to traversible

1110
00:57:02,840 --> 00:57:07,640
Speaker 1: wormholes and the physics of so that whole subdiscipline probably

1111
00:57:07,680 --> 00:57:10,960
Speaker 1: wouldn't have existed without at least the germ of a

1112
00:57:10,960 --> 00:57:14,279
Speaker 1: piece of science fiction. There many many other examples, but

1113
00:57:14,360 --> 00:57:16,919
Speaker 1: that's a really clear couple one well let me ask

1114
00:57:16,960 --> 00:57:20,480
Speaker 1: you as the last question about your future work. I

1115
00:57:20,640 --> 00:57:23,880
Speaker 1: hear that you're working on a new novel in your

1116
00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:26,720
Speaker 1: Revelation Space universe, which I'm very excited about, and I

1117
00:57:26,840 --> 00:57:28,880
Speaker 1: wanted to want to ask you what makes you decide

1118
00:57:28,920 --> 00:57:32,200
Speaker 1: to sort of revisit a universe that you've created previously,

1119
00:57:32,440 --> 00:57:35,520
Speaker 1: or to create a vast new intellectual playground. I don't know.

1120
00:57:35,680 --> 00:57:37,360
Speaker 1: I think they just feel like itches that you've got

1121
00:57:37,440 --> 00:57:40,840
Speaker 1: to scratch and you can't fight it. You just have

1122
00:57:40,960 --> 00:57:44,680
Speaker 1: to go with the the muse. Not to put too

1123
00:57:45,320 --> 00:57:48,080
Speaker 1: pretentious a term on it, but every now and again

1124
00:57:48,120 --> 00:57:50,120
Speaker 1: an idea sort of. I mean, Stephen King says another

1125
00:57:50,880 --> 00:57:53,240
Speaker 1: what's the what's the expression using like the muse shots

1126
00:57:53,280 --> 00:57:55,280
Speaker 1: into your head and you've got it. It's a really

1127
00:57:55,400 --> 00:57:58,520
Speaker 1: horrible expression, but it's true. You just can't predict it.

1128
00:57:58,560 --> 00:58:01,760
Speaker 1: And I've always just been ateful that a if you

1129
00:58:01,800 --> 00:58:04,080
Speaker 1: have a desire to write something that's good, it's far

1130
00:58:04,160 --> 00:58:06,880
Speaker 1: better than waking up and having no ideas. So I've

1131
00:58:06,880 --> 00:58:09,080
Speaker 1: always been quite grateful for the fact that the ideas

1132
00:58:09,440 --> 00:58:12,920
Speaker 1: keep coming and never complained about it. It's far better's

1133
00:58:12,960 --> 00:58:15,840
Speaker 1: and have too many, too many books in the queue.

1134
00:58:15,920 --> 00:58:19,200
Speaker 1: If you like them too few, But yeah, I don't know.

1135
00:58:19,200 --> 00:58:21,280
Speaker 1: I don't analyze it too too much. Really, I just

1136
00:58:21,640 --> 00:58:25,480
Speaker 1: go with the flow and hopefully people are happy to

1137
00:58:25,640 --> 00:58:27,760
Speaker 1: go along with it, read them, publishers are happy to

1138
00:58:27,800 --> 00:58:31,360
Speaker 1: publish them hopefully. Well. I've thoroughly enjoyed them, and I've

1139
00:58:31,400 --> 00:58:34,520
Speaker 1: also very much enjoyed talking today. Thank you very much

1140
00:58:34,560 --> 00:58:37,280
Speaker 1: for taking your time to answer our questions and to

1141
00:58:37,720 --> 00:58:41,120
Speaker 1: share your thoughts about writing and science and crazy aliens.

1142
00:58:41,480 --> 00:58:44,240
Speaker 1: It's probably very great pleasure. Thank you, really great questions

1143
00:58:44,240 --> 00:58:46,120
Speaker 1: as well. We could talk all day. I think, all right,

1144
00:58:46,240 --> 00:58:50,480
Speaker 1: pretty interesting, pretty cool guy. And also I just incredibly

1145
00:58:50,520 --> 00:58:51,880
Speaker 1: he has a he has like a perfect name for

1146
00:58:52,000 --> 00:58:57,040
Speaker 1: it for nautical adventures and pirate pirate story. Yes, Alistair

1147
00:58:57,120 --> 00:58:59,200
Speaker 1: Rent and his Welsh accident. I guess mix them sound

1148
00:58:59,200 --> 00:59:01,720
Speaker 1: a little bit like a wi now. He was really

1149
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:04,320
Speaker 1: wonderful to talk to. So thanks, thank you, Alistair for

1150
00:59:04,400 --> 00:59:06,760
Speaker 1: taking your time to talk to me and for letting

1151
00:59:06,840 --> 00:59:09,320
Speaker 1: us hear about the physics of your universe and what

1152
00:59:09,440 --> 00:59:11,800
Speaker 1: goes on inside your brain. Yeah, we hope you enjoyed that,

1153
00:59:11,920 --> 00:59:13,560
Speaker 1: and hopefully I got you to think a little bit

1154
00:59:13,600 --> 00:59:17,320
Speaker 1: about what could be possible out there in even in

1155
00:59:17,400 --> 00:59:20,040
Speaker 1: the far future, millions of years from now. That's right,

1156
00:59:20,120 --> 00:59:21,960
Speaker 1: So go out and check out his book. It's the

1157
00:59:22,040 --> 00:59:25,800
Speaker 1: Revenger Trilogy from Alistair Reynolds. He also has written many

1158
00:59:25,920 --> 00:59:30,240
Speaker 1: other wonderful books, including Chasm City and Revelation, Space and

1159
00:59:30,440 --> 00:59:34,240
Speaker 1: Pushing Ice, which I also recommend. Yeah, so thanks for

1160
00:59:34,360 --> 00:59:44,800
Speaker 1: joining us, see you next time. Thanks for listening, and

1161
00:59:44,880 --> 00:59:47,560
Speaker 1: remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a

1162
00:59:47,680 --> 00:59:51,080
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from my

1163
00:59:51,200 --> 00:59:54,720
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

1164
00:59:54,920 --> 01:00:02,720
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. No