Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Norri with
Speaker 2: your science fiction writer and futurist Robert J. Sawyer has
Speaker 2: been interviewed by three hundred and fifty times on radio,
Speaker 2: three hundred and fifty times on television, and then those
Speaker 2: numbers have probably increased and countless times in print. Based
Speaker 2: out of Toronto, Rob hosted the Canadian TV series Supernatural
Speaker 2: Investigator for three seasons, principal commentator for the History Channel's
Speaker 2: Canada's popular History Erace TV series. He is one of
Speaker 2: only eight writers in history the only Canadian to win
Speaker 2: all three of the world's top science fiction awards for
Speaker 2: Best Novel of the Year, the Hugo, the Nebula, and
Speaker 2: the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He was last with
Speaker 2: me three years ago, as we talked then about his
Speaker 2: Oppenheimer alternative Robert. Its timing is great. Welcome back, Hi, George.
Speaker 3: I'm delighted to be here again. Thanks so much for
Speaker 3: having me.
Speaker 2: Were you insulted at all in the upcoming Christopher Nolan's
Speaker 2: blockbuster that they talk about Oppenheimer?
Speaker 3: I was not, but the man who you know. It's
Speaker 3: based on a book, unfortunately not my book. I would
Speaker 3: be on a yacht right now instead of fitting in
Speaker 3: my friend's living room, which is where I'm at the moment.
Speaker 3: The book that it's based on is actually called American Prometheus,
Speaker 3: The Triumphant Tragedy of Jay Robert Oppenheimer, which is a
Speaker 3: non fiction book. My book is a novel about Oppenheimer
Speaker 3: and the men who wrote that book, Martin J. Sherwin
Speaker 3: and Kay Bird Kai Kai an unusual first name, Kai Bird,
Speaker 3: And sadly, Marty Sherwin just recently passed away, unfortunately just
Speaker 3: before he got to see the movie that was based
Speaker 3: on his book. But before he did, he did read
Speaker 3: my book and gave me a very nice cover blurb.
Speaker 3: So I'm one step away, let's say, from Nolan's source material,
Speaker 3: And of course Nolan's movie and my novel are all
Speaker 3: based in the historical record, so the facts are facts.
Speaker 2: As the saying ghosts, why are they saying that this
Speaker 2: is going to be the summer blockbuster?
Speaker 3: You know, that's a really good question, and I'm not
Speaker 3: sure honestly that it's going to be. That it opens
Speaker 3: the same weekend as the Barbie Movie, Margo Robbie. Now,
Speaker 3: when you think about what do you want to do
Speaker 3: on a summer night, right, do you want to relax
Speaker 3: with a frothy, light fun film like the Barbie Movie?
Speaker 3: Or do you want to be reminded that Vladimir Putin
Speaker 3: and maybe Kim John Um are even as we speak,
Speaker 3: stroking the buttons that can launch their nukes. So I'm
Speaker 3: not sure the timing is right now. A movie like
Speaker 3: Oppenheimer takes years to make. So when Christopher Nolan decided
Speaker 3: that this would be his big blockbuster film for the
Speaker 3: summer of two thousand and three, was before the invasion
Speaker 3: of Ukraine by Russia, and it was a world that
Speaker 3: was post the Cold War. It was a world where
Speaker 3: we thought, you know, as I had said to my
Speaker 3: young niece a little while ago, we thought this was
Speaker 3: all in the past. We grew up a duck and
Speaker 3: cover and all of that, you know, fear of nuclear
Speaker 3: holocaust in the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, we thought
Speaker 3: all that was passed. So I don't know if people
Speaker 3: are going to flock to this film the way Christopher
Speaker 3: Nolan and the star Killian Murphy are hoping that they will.
Speaker 3: I'll certainly be there to check it out because of
Speaker 3: my interest in the topic. But whether it's going to
Speaker 3: draw people who want to be first and foremost entertained
Speaker 3: by a summer blockbuster, I really don't know.
Speaker 2: Some of the snippets I've seen about the movie, Robert,
Speaker 2: from critics who have probably previewed it, say that it
Speaker 2: is truly horrendous in terms of what has happened. I mean,
Speaker 2: they say it's a great movie, but they're scared to death.
Speaker 3: That's right. There's no question that Christopher Nolan is a
Speaker 3: brilliant director. Kirian Murphy, best known, you know for Peaky Blinders,
Speaker 3: the British crime series, is a brilliant actor. But every
Speaker 3: advance review, and there are lots of people who have
Speaker 3: seen it out has been screened for sure to select
Speaker 3: audiences have said people come out devastated, shocked. You know
Speaker 3: you're going to see and remember, this film is being
Speaker 3: released in seventy millimeters IMAX, the largest format available for
Speaker 3: commercial motion pictures, and a tomic explosion, the hell fire
Speaker 3: that happened at the Trinity Test of Los Alamos, and
Speaker 3: then of course that Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan where tens
Speaker 3: of thousands of people die. So yeah, you can understand
Speaker 3: very well that people come out emotionally brought from having
Speaker 3: seen this spectacle that you know, for whatever reason, Christopher
Speaker 3: Nolan has decided to give to us in a higher
Speaker 3: resolution than even the people who saw it in the
Speaker 3: flesh seventy eight years ago experienced.
Speaker 1: And did not.
Speaker 2: Penheimer have mixed feelings after the fact.
Speaker 3: So his change of heart you can date to a
Speaker 3: very specific seventy two hour period he went along with
Speaker 3: them dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, which was August sixth,
Speaker 3: nineteen forty five, the first use of the atomic bomb
Speaker 3: in war. What shocked him was that the second use
Speaker 3: came only seventy two hours later on October ninth, when
Speaker 3: Nagasaki was bombed. Remember the bomb took out the railway lines,
Speaker 3: it took out the highways, It took out the telegraph
Speaker 3: and telephone lines between Hiroshima and the Japanese High Command
Speaker 3: in Tokyo. So word was just reaching by people straggling
Speaker 3: in by foot or trying to get there unbroken roadways,
Speaker 3: just reaching a high command that some previously unknown monstrous
Speaker 3: bomb had been used, and then they used it a
Speaker 3: second time, and for Oppenheimer, that was when it went
Speaker 3: too far. This word did not exist in the English language,
Speaker 3: but it was coined at that point, and Oppenheimer was
Speaker 3: one of the first to use it overkill. It was
Speaker 3: more killing than was necessary in his view, and that
Speaker 3: changed him from a hawk to a dove overnight.
Speaker 2: Do we know, Robert, if there were plans to use
Speaker 2: it a third time?
Speaker 3: There was no third bomb yet they were desperately trying
Speaker 3: to get a third to one built. The United States
Speaker 3: used its entire arsenal, and they were two very different
Speaker 3: bomb designs. There's one called the uranium gun design, or
Speaker 3: the Little Boy, and one called the implosion lens design
Speaker 3: or the fat Man, and the United States government wanted
Speaker 3: to test them both. After the test at Los Alamos,
Speaker 3: where they tested the fat Man designed for the first time,
Speaker 3: Poppy said, the war's over, and General Groves said, this
Speaker 3: comes from Groves's own autobiography. This isn't revision of history.
Speaker 3: This is what he said when they first tested it
Speaker 3: in New Mexico. Yes, the war's over. Just as soon
Speaker 3: as we dropped two bombs on Japan. He was hell bent.
Speaker 3: And they used that phrase advisedly. General Groves, the leader
Speaker 3: of the Manhattan budget, was hell bent on testing both
Speaker 3: different competing designs on civilian targets to see which one
Speaker 3: was more effective. And there was no third bomb, so
Speaker 3: the Japanese had dug in their heels even longer. You know,
Speaker 3: the threat was. They didn't know we were out of
Speaker 3: bombs at that point, but we were. We hadn't had
Speaker 3: the ability to build a third one yet.
Speaker 2: Your cover that has an artistic sketch of a rocket
Speaker 2: ship and Oppenheimer, he looks kind of scary. How close
Speaker 2: did he look to that picture.
Speaker 3: That the artist who did the cover for the American
Speaker 3: edition of my novel, The Oppenheimer Alternative, was working from
Speaker 3: a photo of Oppenheimer, So that's what he really looked like. Wow.
Speaker 3: You can see, you know, in that Killian Murphy who's
Speaker 3: been cast to the role of the movie great actor,
Speaker 3: but the principal reason he was cast, obviously, is a
Speaker 3: profound physical resemblance to Oppenheimer himself. Oppenheimer, and you can
Speaker 3: see it on the cover of my book because it's
Speaker 3: in full color. Most of the photos we have Bobby,
Speaker 3: of course from the nineteen forties were black and white.
Speaker 3: He had piercing blue eyes, although he looked scary of
Speaker 3: course on the cover of my book, and it was
Speaker 3: certainly contemplating the destruction of you know, whole populations. He
Speaker 3: was also famously charismatic, funny ladies man. Women swooned in
Speaker 3: his presence, literally swoon his student. He was a propost
Speaker 3: prefsler at the University of California, Berkeley before he was
Speaker 3: co opted to be the scientific director of the Manhattan Project.
Speaker 3: They all imitated his mannerisms and his style of dress
Speaker 3: because they thought this was just the coolest cat around.
Speaker 2: Was he at odds with the other physicist, Edward Teller.
Speaker 3: Very much so, for a couple of reasons. Fundamentally, one
Speaker 3: is they were just polar opposites and personality. Affy was
Speaker 3: outgoing and basically a friendly and pretty happy man. Keller
Speaker 3: was a bitter, bitter man, as Color himself said. You know,
Speaker 3: he had fled twice from persecution, first when he had
Speaker 3: to you know, flee his native Hungary as a young man,
Speaker 3: and then when he had to flee from the Nazis
Speaker 3: when of course the start of World War Two. And
Speaker 3: the second reason, though, was Oppenheimer wanted to build what
Speaker 3: we know today is the A bomb, the atomic bomb,
Speaker 3: the nuclear vision bomb. And Teller said, he said us
Speaker 3: quite literally, that's not worthy of our intellects. Your grad students,
Speaker 3: who said topp Nimber could build that device. What we
Speaker 3: need is the H bomb, the hydrogen bomb, the thermonuclear bomb,
Speaker 3: the nuclear fusion bomb, which is hundreds of times more powerful.
Speaker 3: And they were at complete odds over that. Oppenheimer, in fact,
Speaker 3: of course, spearheaded the successful effort to make the A bomb. Teller,
Speaker 3: although he was at Los Alabos, set that effort out.
Speaker 3: He refused to work on this project he felt was
Speaker 3: Beneatha's dignity, and spent all of his time during World
Speaker 3: War Two working on what Oppenheimer thought was a pie
Speaker 3: in the sky unnecessary, the thermonuclear hydrogen bomb, which of
Speaker 3: course is the one that will be used today if
Speaker 3: we do have a nuclear war. Yeah, they did.
Speaker 2: They came out with it. Everybody has one.
Speaker 3: Now, everybody has the one because of espionage, the atomic
Speaker 3: bomb with claws, Fukes and some other spies sold the
Speaker 3: atomic bomb secrets from Los Alamos and gave them to
Speaker 3: the Russians. It turned out that you know, in the
Speaker 3: aftermath the debriefing after World War Two that the Japanese
Speaker 3: were nowhere near having an atomic bomb, the Germans were
Speaker 3: nowhere near having an atomic bomb, the Russians weren't. If
Speaker 3: that brain trust that was assembled on the Mesa of
Speaker 3: Los Alamos, New Mexico had never been brought together, we
Speaker 3: probably never would have gotten the atomic bomb. But once
Speaker 3: one country has, as you know as well, George, any
Speaker 3: military secret, every country has that within a few years,
Speaker 3: because espionage is way cheaper that research and development in retrospect.
Speaker 2: Roberts should we have nuked everybody that was our enemy.
Speaker 3: So the original goal was to build a bomb to
Speaker 3: nuke Hitler and drop on Berlin. And many of the
Speaker 3: scientists who were working on the Manhattan Project, of course,
Speaker 3: were Jewish emigrats from Europe, right, You.
Speaker 2: Know Offenheimert was Jewish, wasn't.
Speaker 3: He He was He was not an emigrant. He was
Speaker 3: born in New York City. His parents were wealthy and
Speaker 3: had kind of missed out on all of that persecution.
Speaker 3: But the families of many of the others knew that
Speaker 3: their families were being you know, that the programs, and
Speaker 3: although we didn't find out the extent of the Holocaust
Speaker 3: until after the liberation of Auschwitz and elsewhere. They knew
Speaker 3: that things were very, very bad or European Jewry because
Speaker 3: of Adolf Hitler. The idea was originally to build a
Speaker 3: bomb and use it against Berlin, and the Manhattan Project
Speaker 3: actually failed in its goal because Adolf Hitler did with
Speaker 3: a single bullet in April of nineteen forty five what
Speaker 3: all of the two billion in nineteen forty five dollars
Speaker 3: of research that went to the Manhattan Project had failed
Speaker 3: to do, which is take out Adolf Hitler. He killed
Speaker 3: himself because conventional mostly Russian troops were pressing in on Berlin.
Speaker 3: Knew he was a goner at that point.
Speaker 2: Unless he snuck off to South America.
Speaker 3: Well that, of course, you know, we still had those
Speaker 3: conspiracies out this point. He almost certainly would be dead regardless,
Speaker 3: given just the age of the man that it was
Speaker 3: seventy eight years ago that he killed himself seventy eight
Speaker 3: years ago this past April. But yeah, there certainly always
Speaker 3: was that specter of possibility, and of course his death
Speaker 3: and the death of some of the others who disappeared
Speaker 3: three dates the other big scientific breakthrough of the twentieth
Speaker 3: century one of course, was the atomic bomb. The other
Speaker 3: was the breakthrough of the decoding of the human genome,
Speaker 3: the discovery by Crick and Watson of DNA. We had
Speaker 3: no way except visual identification to say that was Adolf Hitler.
Speaker 3: And we all know this past week, you know, when
Speaker 3: Vladimir Putin has supposedly been appearing here and there and
Speaker 3: everywhere to kind of reassert his dominance in the Soviet
Speaker 3: Union after the essentially the coup attempts from the Vagunar forces. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the last week, but is a Putin? We well know
Speaker 3: that the Soviets and now the Russians have often used
Speaker 3: lookalikes for public appearances because if somebody succeeds and it's
Speaker 3: fascinating the lookalikes, well you know, it's bad look for
Speaker 3: the lookalike, but the actual leader is say that's good. Ye.
Speaker 2: Now, the title of your book is called The Oppenheimer Alternative.
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 3: So it's a science fiction novel, and there's a branch
Speaker 3: of science fiction called alternate history, which takes, you know,
Speaker 3: the basic facts as we know them, and God comes
Speaker 3: up with an alternative. And in my case, the alternative
Speaker 3: is instead of Oppenheimer and all of these scientists, including
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, Edward Teller, but also Enrico Fermei and
Speaker 3: Hans Beta, and they are Zillard. All of the scientists
Speaker 3: sort from the Manhattan Project instead of them dissipating back
Speaker 3: into mostly academia. In the fall of nineteen forty five,
Speaker 3: after the bombings of Japan and the end of World
Speaker 3: War Two, they stay together to try and save the
Speaker 3: Earth from appending a solar disaster, disaster involving our son.
Speaker 3: So it goes to the point of the dropping of
Speaker 3: the bombs on Yoshima Magasaki, following history as we know it,
Speaker 3: and then goes off in a different, more science fictional
Speaker 3: direction in my novel, The Alpenheimer Alternative.
Speaker 2: Robert, how did you get involved in science fiction writing.
Speaker 3: I'm of that generation, I said, you know, some people
Speaker 3: were lived in nineteen fifties. I wasn't. I was born
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixties, in nineteen sixty, so I'm of that
Speaker 3: generation that had two things that brought me into science fiction.
Speaker 3: The twin prongs of the original Star Trek, which premiered
Speaker 3: when I was six years old I saw it in
Speaker 3: first run, and of course the landing of people on
Speaker 3: the Moon, the Apollo effort was the backdrop of my
Speaker 3: life and the movie two thousand and one of Space
Speaker 3: Odyssey that came out in nineteen sixty eight when I
Speaker 3: was eight years old. Well, they were saying in that
Speaker 3: movie by the time I was forty one, an age
Speaker 3: that's long done now two thousand and one, that we
Speaker 3: would have orbiting space stations with hotels aboard them, and
Speaker 3: cities on the Moon, and planetary travel and something imagine
Speaker 3: we'll talk about later in the program, George, artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3: Well we didn't get it all by two thousand and one,
Speaker 3: but the promise that we would have all those things
Speaker 3: made me wanted to vote my career to speculating about
Speaker 3: what we were going to get and when we might
Speaker 3: get it, and those thinks, Star Trek, Apollo Program and
Speaker 3: two thousand and one A Space Odyssey were my entrees
Speaker 3: into thinking about the future.
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