The Science Fiction Universe of "Meru" by SB Divya

Daniel and Kelly talk to the author of "Meru" about a future which blurs the line between humans and machines.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Kelly, do you still remember your parents phone number
from when you were growing up?

Speaker 2 (00:13):
I do.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
I doubt I'll ever forget it.

Speaker 4 (00:15):
My fingers can still go through the muscle memory of
pushing it on a Touchtowne phone.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
And now do you know like all of your family
phone numbers?

Speaker 5 (00:23):
No?

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Absolutely not.

Speaker 4 (00:25):
They're on my phone. There's no need to remember them.
They're on the brain in my pocket.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
So do you think of your phone as like an
extension of your brain?

Speaker 3 (00:33):
I am not.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
Sure I could be a fully functioning human being without
it anymore.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
So maybe do you ever wonder, though, if like our
phones feel the same way. Do they feel like they're
part of our brains or that we are part of them?

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (00:49):
I hope not, because if my phone has feelings, I'm
sure it's crumpy because I drop it all the time
and I have filled it with photos of disgusting bugs
and rolling poop. So I hope my phone does not
have feelings.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
We've all dunked our phone in places we'd never want
to mention. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and

(01:24):
a professor at UC Irvine, and I think my phone
is smarter than I am.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
I'm Kelly wier Smith.

Speaker 4 (01:31):
I'm an adjunct assistant professor at Greece University, and I
am sure that my phone is smarter than.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
I am because your phone told you so.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
That's right, and I believe everything my phone says.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Well, my phone is definitely better at some things than
I am, though I still hold out hope that there
are things that humans can do that phones can't do.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
That gap is getting smaller and smaller every day, though, Daniel.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
But maybe that's not the right way to look at it.
Maybe instead of heating with our phones about who's most intelligent,
we should just be thinking about us and our phones
together working in harmony to unlock the nature of the universe.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
The Ultimate Symbiosis.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
And Welcome to the podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the
universe in which we try to unlock the nature of
the universe. We use all of the technology at our disposal,
all of the AI, and all of the biological intelligence
to try to unravel the mystery of this beautiful and
gorgeous cosmos, to boil it all down into a story
that makes sense, at least to our human brains, if

(02:34):
that's even possible. My friend and usual co host Jorge
can't be here today, but I'm very pleased to be
joined by our regular guest host, Kelly. Kelly, thanks again
for coming on the pod.

Speaker 4 (02:43):
Hello, thanks for having me on the pod. I especially
love when you're having me on the podcast to talk
about science fiction books. So I'm super excited to be
here today.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
That's right. Usually we are analyzing the science of our
actual universe, wanting to understand how quantum mechanics weaves itself
together to make our reality, or what's going on going
on with the latest advances in astronomy and cosmology. But
part of doing science is being creative, is thinking about
the ways the universe could work or might work, or
ways alternative universes could work. And so that's why I

(03:13):
like to read so much science fiction, and on the
podcast we have a series of episodes diving into the
physics of fictional universes in which we interview science fiction authors.
It's an excuse for me to get to read science
fiction and an opportunity for Kelly and I do fanboy
and fangirl out talking to the authors themselves. Yay. But

(03:36):
it's a fascinating process hearing about how somebody puts together
an entire fictional universe, how they build it up from
the rules, the consequences of living in that universe. What
is it like to be human if the rules are
fundamentally different, or if technology has progressed so far that
it changes the nature of being human.

Speaker 4 (03:54):
You know, I've always had a lot of respect for
sci fi authors, but through the course of doing these
interviews with you, I have there's so much more respect
thinking about how much world building needs to happen before
a book comes out.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
It's just it's so much more work than I would
have imagined.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
That's right, because you have to be creative not just
about the science of your universe and the technology of it,
but really thinking deeply about the human side of it.
The best science fiction, of course, they're human stories. They're
about people and what it's like to be human in
that era, and you have to also bridge this gap.
You can't write stories about people who are so far
away from us emotionally personally that we can't identify with them, right,

(04:30):
You need to somehow create that universe and make it
adjacent enough to ours that we can connect with these
characters and care about them, even though their lives can
be so different. From ours, and.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
This book did such a good job of that.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
It really did. It also sort of puts us in
our place as humans and makes us feel like, oh boy,
we better get our stuff together. Yes. So on the
podcast today, we'll be talking about the science fiction universe
of Meru by S. B. Diva. Diva is an author
we've had on the podcast before. She is very acclaimed.

(05:05):
She's the Hugo and Nebula nominated author of Machinehood, which
we talked about about a year ago on the pod.
Her stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. She's
also a former editor of Escape Pod, which is a
weekly science fiction podcast which is a lot of fun.
She has degrees in computational neuroscience and signal processing and
has worked in the medical device industry, so she knows

(05:28):
what she's talking about when it comes to post humanity,
as we'll hear all about in our interview with her.
And one of my favorite things in her bio is
that on her homepage she writes, quote, I am currently
mortal and full of squishy organs, but I hope to
outlive that.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
M I wonder what the timeline is going to be
for that.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
I think she's hoping that some of the stuff in
her book happens soon enough that she can move beyond
her earthly existence as a bag of squishy meat.

Speaker 4 (05:57):
I'm happy as a bag of squishybeat, but the whole
big things work out for her.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
So, Kelly and I both read this book. It's called
Mehru Meru, and it's available for sale now. We encourage
you to get it. Kelly, what do you think this
book is about? How would you summarize the topic of
the book for our listeners?

Speaker 4 (06:15):
Oh, I wish you had told me you were going
to ask you that ahead of time. There's lots of
moving pieces in this book. It's like complicated in a
great way. But so I guess in summary, humans have
sort of messed up, and another branch of humans have
evolved and they've been sort of taken care of things
to make sure we don't mess up again, and this
is sort of the story about whether or not we

(06:37):
deserve to be released.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
Back out into the universe. What do you think?

Speaker 4 (06:41):
How would you describe what the book is about in
just a few sentences?

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Either? That was a great summary. Yeah, in my view,
it's like near future science fiction, and so it's close
enough that we can imagine it happening. And the major
movements that happened between now in this near future are
that there's a new race of humans, humans that have
sort of machines built into them. More than like your
phone in your pocket. These are like really integrated into

(07:07):
what it's like to be these beings, and they don't
call themselves humans. They call themselves alloys. In the way
that you can mix metals together to get a stronger metal.
Here she's mixing organic and machine parts together to make
an alloy. And you have all sorts of really fascinating mixtures,
including beings that can fly through space. They're basically living ships,

(07:28):
you know, humans that are ships that fly through space
that have other humans inside of them. It's really very creative.

Speaker 4 (07:35):
It's such a cool idea, and I feel like that
is maybe the part of the book that kept me
up the most sidnight thinking about, like one thinking about
the social dynamics, but then two thinking about you know,
if you're traveling through space and it takes you like
months to get somewhere, what do you do on a
trip like that when it's just.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
You and anyway.

Speaker 4 (07:53):
I could talk about this all day long, It is
such a cool idea, and she does great things with it.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
She does great things with it. She really thinks, sit
through what it's like to be that and the emotional
relationship you have with this ship. I was just also
pleased to have so many new ideas. When I read
so much science fiction, I feel like the same five
ideas for getting from one place to another are recycled
over and over again. And so I just love seeing
something news. I mean, you haven't seen before. It's really creative.

(08:18):
And I was also really impressed by the reality of
the experience, you know, the human side of it. A
lot of times when you find yourself in a new
world in science fiction, it's a bit cartoony, you know,
it's very simplified. But she is such a rich description
of like the politics, the arguments. You know, there's no
monolithic organizations here where like all of the alloys think
this and all the humans think that. You know, there's

(08:40):
currents and there's factions and there's disagreements among every group
in a way that I think is very human and realistic.
I mean, these days, nobody can seem to agree about
anything that's right.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
That's right, and she built out this huge history to
sort of support the story, and you get glimpses of
it every once in a while, but this is like,
this is a complete world that she has built and
you immerse yourself in it and it's yeah, I agree,
So politics don't feel corny.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
The history makes perfect sense and it's it's awesome.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah, And I love that she has like massive failed
projects in the book. This is time in the book
where so many builds like a meta habitat out in space,
and then everybody's like, nah, I don't really want to
move there. Eh, it's like, wait, trillions of dollars, that
seems like something that's likely to happen.

Speaker 6 (09:23):
You know.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
That's basically what Mark Zuckerberg is doing right now with
the metaverse.

Speaker 7 (09:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah, no, very very realistic.

Speaker 4 (09:29):
I imagine when we start eating out into space, there
are going to be things that people like that work
and things that people like that don't work, and it'll
be you know, interesting to see how things pan out.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah, there'll be all sorts of fascinating dead ends and
the equivalent of like abandoned apartment buildings and all sorts
of stuff in a way that I think will be
totally unpredictable, right, and so people make lots of money
and people who don't. And so I loved seeing that
in the book. It makes it feel very much like
you're actually visiting another universe. It does.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, she's got multiple different things that failed, from like
biology experiments to engineering the experiments, and then you just
sort of see how you've learned from those failures and
you move forward.

Speaker 4 (10:05):
And you know, one of the ways that they move
forward and learned from a failure was humans tried terrorforming
bars and just totally blew it, which is super interesting
to think about from the perspective of you know, current
things that are going on right now. But anyway, in
the book, humans totally blew their chance and destroyed things.
And now the alloys are taking care of the humans,

(10:27):
but humans aren't really leaving Earth that much because they've
sort of been contained.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
And this is the story of a human.

Speaker 4 (10:33):
Who actually gets the option or the opportunity to travel
out and show that humans can do the right thing.
We've learned our lesson. But you know, they're also upon
between all these different powerful forces. They've got these different
factions that are fighting that think humans should have the
chance and others that think that they shouldn't and then
you'll have to just see what happens.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
That's right, no pressure, You're only standing in for all
of humanity, right right, right. So let's talk about the
science of the book A Lion little bit. She has
some really fascinating innovations here. She has these really deep
human computer alloys. This is more than just like I've
got something wired to my brain where I can control
a machine. These are people where they have organic and

(11:14):
metallic machine based elements really of their biology. She talks
about like programming these things, having these things really be
an outgrowth of their DNA. You're the biologist here, Do
you think that that's something we could have, you know,
in fifty years, one hundred years, five hundred years sort
of ever? Or is that implausible?

Speaker 3 (11:32):
You know? I just don't know.

Speaker 4 (11:34):
So, like as you might remember from Sunish, I really
hate putting dates on things, but you know, I will
say that it does seem like on the one hand,
biology is super complicated and traits are controlled by many,
many genes, and so if you're going to have part
of your body growing as like you know, a computer part,
that you're going to be able to control that sounds
very complicated. But you know, on the other hand, crisper

(11:57):
is an amazing tool that we sort of surprise came
across in the near future.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
So maybe we'll stumble.

Speaker 4 (12:03):
Upon more surprises that shorten the timeline on these sorts
of things. But I guess, if I had to guess,
if I'm going to have like a leaf blower arm,
I don't think my grandkids are going to have this
sort of technology.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
Let's just say, but I could be wrong.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Is that your top choice? If you have some modification
you're like leaf blower arm? I could use it to
what brush my teeth to clean off that do the
dishes just like sort of blow all the dishes into
the sink.

Speaker 4 (12:32):
I'm in my garage recording right now, and I just
looked at the leaf blower and so that would not
be my first choice.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
It reminds me of all those internet videos of people
blowing leaf blowers into their mouths. I don't know why
that's so fun for people. Anyway, one day, maybe we'll
have people with leaf blower arms and we'll see weird
movies about it. Another really fascinating aspect of the science
of this book is how she gets from star to star.
So in loss of science fiction novels, there are warp
drives or there's war there's sort of these standard solutions

(13:02):
to getting from start a star not having it take
thousands of years. But in this book, she has something
totally new. She has invented like another layer of physics
beneath what we know. So she's taken our universe. She
says below that there's something else. There's this thing called
a famite field, and there's particles in that field, which
we would call famatons, and we can use that field

(13:24):
as an energy source and as a way to manipulate
space time itself to get between stars. I thought that
was really clever.

Speaker 4 (13:31):
Well, okay, now it's byrd to ask you, as a physicist,
is this plausible?

Speaker 1 (13:35):
So in general, like, is it plausible that there's something
beneath space time? A completely different way to think about
the universe. Absolutely, Like the message that we send on
this podcast all the time is that we really just
don't understand the way the universe works, Like we don't
know what space time is. Is it actually built up
from like weird little quantum dots that are woven together

(13:56):
using theories and forces that we don't understand it. Certainly
could be we have no idea. We have this theory
of general relativity that tells us about space time, but
we suspect it's probably wrong because it's not quantum mechanical.
So we're always looking for that next layer of knowledge
about what's going on in the universe. And so it's
certainly possible that there's something going on deep down there

(14:16):
which could allow us, if we understood it, to control
space time in just this way. I mean, her description
of it is a little bit more like spiritual and
fantastical than scientific. You know, she has these ships and
they sort of will themselves. They interact with this famity
field through their minds, and they will themselves from star
to star. But could there be famity fields and famatons

(14:38):
and in a way that lets us travel. Yes, absolutely,
that's totally possible.

Speaker 4 (14:42):
So like when my grandkids have leaf flower arms, maybe
they'll be trapped into distant stars.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
That's right, and then when they get there they can
use their leaf blower arms to like hover over the surface.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
Right, So maybe it wasn't such a bad idea. It
seems like a very versatile attachment.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yeah, I keep thinking of new applications for it all
the time.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
Well, you know, maybe we should see if we can
get a leaf blowing company to support the show. But
here's some commercial from someone who supports the show.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
All right, we're back and we're talking about the science
fiction universe of Meru, a novel by SB Diva about
post humanity where humans have become melded with machines and
formed a new race of humans, humans that are more
responsible than we are and allowed to travel through space
and do all sorts of things. And so, as we
usually do in the podcast, we were lucky enough to

(15:48):
speak to the author of this book here about her process.
So here's our interview with SB Diva. So it's my
pleasure to welcome back to the podcast SB Diva, the
author of this wonderful book, Mary that we've just been
talking about. Thanks very much for joining us again.

Speaker 7 (16:04):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to
be here and talking about this book.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
So you're the first author we've actually had back on
the podcast for a second round. And usually we ask
a series of silly questions to get people warmed up,
but we've already asked you about your thoughts about Star
trek transporters. So I have a different question for you
to get us oriented in your space of philosophy of science,
which is in your view, is Star Wars fantasy or

(16:32):
science fiction?

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Oh, that's a good one.

Speaker 7 (16:36):
I'm going to do a why not both and say
there is a subgenre called science fantasy, and Star Wars
falls squarely into that. For me?

Speaker 1 (16:46):
Is that because there are elements of it that are
sort of like hardcore science and also elements that are
sort of like left unexplained a little bit magical.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 7 (16:54):
I mean, notwithstanding the Mediclorians, the rest of the force
is very mystical, right. I thought the original stood a
little better that way than trying to explain it with science,
especially as a retcon. So, yeah, science fantasy is you know,
things like dragons in space. There are books out there
that involve this very topic, things like Binti by netdi

(17:19):
ocarfor you know, that involves space travel, astrolabes, but also
certain forms of indigenous magic. So it's a very why
not both the genre and I feel like that's one
of the reasons so many people love Star Wars, right,
is because you have all the cool tech, but then
you have the mystical force, and you have magic as well.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
I must be one of the very few people who
thought it was cool to try to explain the force
in terms of science, because you know, that's like kind
of who I am. I'm like, how does that work?
You know, what is the microscopic process that makes that happen?
So I was kind of into that. I was like, oh, cool,
And then I discovered it was very uncool to like that.

Speaker 7 (17:57):
I think if it had been that way from the start,
I would have been on board with it. But trying to,
like I said, trying to shoehorn it in after the
fact just felt kind of forced to me.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
All right, well, we'll try to get our science in
draft one every time as well.

Speaker 7 (18:13):
From yes, for sure.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
All right, so let's talk about your book, which Kelly
and I both read and both really enjoyed, and the
focus of the book is on this sort of post
human or transhuman I'm not sure what the right word is,
experience far in the future, when it's more than just
like biological humans, as humans have all sorts of modifications
that are really quite different from the humans that we
know that you call alloys in your book, tell us

(18:37):
about your inspiration, What made you write this book, Where
did the idea come from? What's exciting to you about
post humanity?

Speaker 7 (18:44):
Yeah, so, first off, I will say I prefer post
humans to transhuman only because transhumanism is a thing now
and it's particular philosophy about improving humankind. And this book
is very intentionally interrogating that very idea, right, which is

(19:06):
can and should we even talk about improvement when it
comes to biology, humanity, life in general. And so the
idea for this book, especially for the Alloys, was that
I did want to carry some of the themes of
genetic engineering and cybernetic enhancements for my first novel, Machinehood,

(19:28):
but much much further.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Into the future.

Speaker 7 (19:31):
You know, we talk a lot today in the media
about designer babies and the ethics of genetics, and I thought, okay, well,
let's assume that genetic editing is happening right, the genies
out of the bottle, and let's say that one day,
just like we write software code, we can build DNA

(19:51):
up from scratch. And that's not as hypothetical as it sounds.
We've already done that with yeast. So there are yeast
legos that people in the lab play with today, and
so you know, a thousand years from now, I don't
think it's much of a stretch to say that we'll
have the technology to do that with our chromosomes. And
at that point, I think, you know, it really begs
the question of what kind of DNA is allowed, what

(20:15):
kind of beings might exist, you know, and why? And
so this book explores a lot of those questions.

Speaker 4 (20:22):
I'm really interested in the designer baby's angle, and so
I thought it was really interesting that, like, right at
the beginning of the book sort of you start with
an interesting ethical question here. And so in my mind,
people are more comfortable with thinking about designer babies when
you are tinkering to make an improvement to make their
lives better. But in the book there's some tinkering that

(20:44):
is negative, but maybe.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
It'll end up being better at some point. Like what
do you think the future looks like in terms of
our ethical sort of roads? Do you think at one
point will feel comfortable making these tinkerings that might not
make someone better?

Speaker 7 (20:59):
I think we're already making tinkerings that have the potential
to not make someone better or perhaps in a more
nuanced way better here worse there right. Again, it can
be a combination of things, and as we know, gene
expression and how it translates to your health, your behavior,
your biochemistry can be pretty complicated. You know, certain things

(21:23):
rely on one or two genes, but a lot of
other things rely on many, and the combination of how
those different genes are.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Expressed in your body.

Speaker 7 (21:31):
And so I don't think we have the tools right
now to model that in detail enough to know what
we're doing. But assuming at some point we do, I
think the risk of doing it in an unintentional way,
like without very specific rules and regulations is that, yes,
this idea of making someone's life better can land us

(21:52):
on a very steep, slippery slope to eugenics. So upfront
I wanted to establish that in this world they've.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
Gone through that.

Speaker 7 (22:00):
Actually, you know, in the history of Meru there's the
directed mutation catastrophe, which is when things went bad for
life because we tinkered a little too much and we
oversimplified actually to where genetic diversity was reduced and that
ended up working against us from natural selection factors. So
they come to the realization that a you have to

(22:23):
allow for trance mutations in order to just have innovation
in general, and b you have to allow for various
types of diseases and disabilities to exist in the population
as well. You do your best to accommodate them and
make their lives good, and you give them the option
of treatment if it really can't be good. But you

(22:46):
don't eliminate it from the gene pool, because you never
know when the environment might demand that those genes exist,
and we might find it useful to have people who
have expressed those so that we understand how they work.
And I think that plies today actually just as well
as a thousand years from now. It's just that we
don't necessarily have the tools.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
So that's a very good argument from a practical point
of view, like we can't predict, we can't model, we
don't know the impact of any decision, and also we
don't know what the future will need from us as
a gene pool in terms of diversity to survive. But
what about the moral side of it? Can we drill
down on that? Are you suggesting that people don't have
the right to do this kind of thing or that
it's a bad idea from a policy standpoint? Can we

(23:29):
make that decision for everybody? I mean suggesting we should
like not allow anybody to do this for their own babies.

Speaker 7 (23:35):
I think what we have to sit down very carefully
and consider what rules and regulations we're going to build
around this, and it's going to be you know, as complicated,
if not more complicated than something like the FDA regulating drugs. Right.
It's there's a lot of parallels.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
There's a difference, I would say, between.

Speaker 7 (24:00):
Gene therapy, which is something you change in gene expression
or certain types of cells in the body, but that
are not necessarily psychotic, that aren't going to be hereditary, right,
So you're not necessarily changing the genome, you're not changing
the eggs or the sperm, and so I think there's

(24:24):
an important distinction to be made there as well. So parents,
or in the case of METO, a person when they
become a consenting adult, can choose to have gene therapy
to correct for certain conditions that they're not happy living with, right,
And I think that absolutely everyone should have that choice.
Whether parents should have that choice for their babies is

(24:46):
another ethical argument, you know, moral or ethical argument that
we're having already today. Right, the deaf communities having it
cited communities and uncited communities are having it right, anything
where it's hereditary but livable, like you can still have
a good quality of life. You know, we're having these
conversations with autism, with down syndrome, like who gets to decide,

(25:06):
you know, whether or not they want to raise a
child with these conditions? Right, So there's important considerations for
the parents, for the children, and then there's the social considerations,
and then there's the species wide considerations and so admity.
I was really trying to tackle that that final scale, right,
which I don't think a lot of people are talking
about today because again we don't have that capacity right now,

(25:29):
but species wide survival and people who've paid close attention
to certain animal and insect population studies have noticed that
things that sound good as adaptive behaviors, when taken to
the extreme, can often lead to species extinction, right, aggressive

(25:49):
mate selection for example, or certain types of decorative mutations
that you know, take into the extreme end up reducing
survivability overall. And so that I think, you know, is
a consideration a little bit more for the future compared
to parents' children and family and society, which are a

(26:10):
little bit more pressing. I would never arrogate the power
to myself to sit here and say that I know best.
I certainly don't, And I think this is the sort
of thing that, you know, we need to tap millions
of people from across the world and attempt to achieve
some kind of global consensus ideally on.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
Where we go with this.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
I totally respect that we don't know what we're doing
in this area, and that makes it terrifying, and it
feels like a bad idea to give people power to
make these decisions which could have crazy consequences. But I
also feel like we're kind of already in that situation.
I mean, as a parent, I'm making decisions all the time.
They're going to totally influence the path of my child's life.
How to educate them, where to raise them up, how

(26:52):
to solve this problem, how to deal with this discipline issue.
I certainly don't know what I'm doing, and I'm probably
missing them up in all sorts of ways I can
even imagine, And I see other people making choices that
I think verge on the edge of child abuse. You know,
how can you teach your kids those things about the universe?
That's just wrong? And so I guess you know. To me,
the argument is like, well, at least we're limiting our
power a little bit, we're bounding ourselves. We're doing the

(27:14):
stuff that we've been doing for thousands of years, and
we're still here. So I guess in a sense, it's
a conservative viewpoint to say, like, let's not give ourselves
too much power too quickly to change the direction of
the whole species.

Speaker 4 (27:26):
Another change that you allow to happen in your universe
is you have these human machine hybrids. I'm interested in
brain computer interfaces and all these various ways that we're
sort of augmenting ourselves with technology these days.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
Do you think these kinds of human machine hybrids are
the future? And how near term is this future?

Speaker 2 (27:45):
If so?

Speaker 7 (27:45):
I guess my hopeful vision of the future is that
we will have a spectrum of beings, you know, everything
from Homo sapiens to artificially intelligent machines right that are sentient,
conscious and have full rights as individuals. And you know
those who are blends in between with MEDU and with

(28:08):
the alloys. And the reason I call them alloys is
that they organically through their DNA, express parts of their
bodies that are not purely organic right, So it's not
just carbon based. So they have silicon, they have heavy metals,
but the instruction set for how these things are organized

(28:30):
in their bodies comes still from their chromosomal sets. And
this is something I think we're definitely going to have
the capacity to do going forward.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
There's already a lot of bleedover.

Speaker 7 (28:41):
Between DNA and silicon, so I see no reason why
we couldn't get a lot more interesting with that going forward.
And again, we have life on Earth that show us
how some of these things can be done, so we
can already steal creatively from what we have around us.
And so yeah, I don't see any reason why we
couldn't coexist, right, Like, that's my hope, as past fist

(29:04):
an optimist, that we will coexist with a variety of
forms of consciousness, some which are living and carbon based.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
And some which aren't.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
And so tell us more about this idea you developed
of humans traveling inside alloys. This concept of ships that
are essentially living beings that have as you say this
like non organic component that could travel through space. That's
a really cool and creative idea. Haven't seen somewhere else where?
Did that come from?

Speaker 7 (29:32):
That came from me wanting a cool and different way
of space travel. I'm a very idea driven writer, and
so when I sat down to envision this, I knew
I wanted it to be a space opera, and I thought,
what can I do with space travel that hasn't been
done that I have seen? And it's like, we've seen

(29:53):
sentient spaceships, right, We've seen all the old school spaceships
from the previous century that are warp drives, etc. Ion
drives that are just very complicated machines, and we've even.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Seen living spacecraft.

Speaker 7 (30:10):
Again, I will raise the example of Binti, but also
in Escaping Exodus by Niki Drayden. Some of these I
haven't actually read them, but I remember from a blurb
one of these like dragons in spaceships type things. Right,
So we've considered having creatures that can transport us in space.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
So I guess the natural progression.

Speaker 7 (30:33):
To me was, well, why not people, you know, especially
if we can genetically engineer them. We know whales can
get pretty big, we know dinosaurs can get even bigger,
and certainly some of those animals were large enough to
have a small human being inside them, right, or even
a regular sized human being so then it's just a
matter of in this magical thousand years from now genetically

(30:56):
engineered future, creating a person who has organs that can
carry smaller people inside them and also has organs that
allow them to travel through space to absorb energy from
sunlight to basically meditate their way across interstellar distances.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
I definitely went a little, you know, maybe.

Speaker 7 (31:19):
Arguably quite a bit towards space fantasy with this, Like
I came up with science ish reasons and ways that
all of these things could happen. But certainly there's no
such thing as a family feel today, right, And there's
no such thing as reality transits where you can you
can see all of space time in your mind and

(31:39):
decide where you want to go.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
I wish, yes, right, But I definitely got very Jonah
and the space whale vibes from that sort of structure. Yeah,
very cool.

Speaker 4 (31:47):
I loved how much you thought through what it would
be like to live in an alley. So my first
thought was like, oh my gosh, if I was living
inside of someone else, every step I took I would
worry about and like private you know, a person who
has social anxiety and needs them alone time, and how
do you get alone time when you are like living
in the person who is transporting you? And and I like, yeah,

(32:10):
how long did it take to think through all of
the like, you know, what would be the social implications
of talking to the vehicle.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
That's taking you from place to place and not being
able to escape.

Speaker 7 (32:20):
Yeah, before we get into that, I do want to
point out that females are already vehicles for other people.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
That right, like I was.

Speaker 5 (32:32):
Suddenly like, yeah, there's there's this one other obvious parallel
in my mind where it's like, yes, we can already
carry people around inside as granted they are people who
are highly dependent on us and symbiotic or parasitic in
some ways, and for a long time are arguably not
people yet and then they.

Speaker 4 (32:52):
Kick you and it's uncomfortable, and then I guess that's
what made me think about, like, you know, if you're
walking around inside, like is it uncapable to have those footsteps?

Speaker 2 (33:00):
And that definitely was on my mind.

Speaker 7 (33:01):
You know, in late stages of pregnancy, it's pretty clear
that there is a person in there with a will.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
And a lot of punching and really bad sleep habits.
So definitely, you know, in.

Speaker 7 (33:16):
Thinking about transportation in general. Right, And once I had
the main character Gianthe inside the other main character of
Aha having this chamber, I was like, she's an adult,
She's going to need some privacy in there, right, And
they're also going to need ways to communicate, and it's
got to not be squishy, like I think it would
be really disconcerting as a mammal to constantly be in

(33:41):
an environment that's warm and squishy. Like maybe eventually we
would adapt and get used to it, but you know,
we definitely prefer our firmer surfaces where we have always
constructed our houses and footing are pretending waterbeds don't exist.
I mean they do, but you wouldn't want your entire
floor to be a waterbed, right like.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
You could spaceship I mean I read that in the seventies, right.

Speaker 7 (34:09):
No, you're yeah, well, there is that story where there's
a male space traveler inside a highly sexual, very very
soft spacecraft.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
And I'm just I'm blanking on the name.

Speaker 7 (34:23):
It'll come to me at some point, or hopefully one
of your listeners will know what I'm talking about. I
very distinctly remember that story because wow, that was quite creative,
and so you know, putting all that together and thinking
about again, what examples do we have today on Earth?

Speaker 2 (34:39):
I was like, oh, we have.

Speaker 7 (34:40):
Snail shells, right, shells are exuded from the soft part
of the snail, the calcium, and so why not be
able to you know, exude it the same way internally, right,
just like and we have bones obviously too, right, So
you just need to map it into something that's more
spheroidal shape. Right, So then the human being can be

(35:02):
in there moving around relatively comfortably, and the alloy pilot
that's carrying them also will experience less discomfort.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
Hopefully.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
Let's just hope nobody sits on their bladder, right. All right,
we have lots more questions for our author and guests,
but first we have to take a quick break. All right,

(35:34):
we're back and we're talking to Divia, author of Mehru,
about the science of her fictional universe. Something I really
enjoyed in the book is the angle where the alloies
are sort of the grown ups. Humans are sort of
like have misbehaved in the past and made some big mistakes,
and the alloies are sort of like now they're to
keep them in charge. It makes the humans somehow feel

(35:55):
I don't know, almost subhuman in comparison, and specifically in
your book, human have attempted to terraform Mars and ended
up destroying it in the process. So people are talking
about terraforming Mars. Elon Musk has plans to live there,
and he talks about like nuking the polar ice caps
to release additional atmosphere. What are your thoughts for some
of the wild proposals for how to go about terraforming Mars.

(36:17):
Are you afraid we're going to end up living your novel?

Speaker 7 (36:20):
I don't know that afraid is the right word there.
I certainly see the possibility of hitting tipping points in
terraforming that we don't even know exist right law of
unintended consequences, And again, we don't have good enough simulations, modeling,
and understanding of geophysics to be one hundred percent confident

(36:41):
of what we're doing. I have similar concerns with a
lot of the atmospheric engineering that they're talking about right
now to reduce global warming, right like spraying silicates and
aerosols and all kinds of things in the upper atmosphere
to try to reflect sunlight, like, okay, we could do,
and there are models, But how confident are we you

(37:01):
know that these aren't going to have bad repercressions down
the line. But at the end of the day, we
are human beings today. We are not the human beings
of Meru who were properly chastised and actually chose to
be confined on earth, untreated in some ways like a
children right to be well taken care of and still

(37:23):
live very free, good lives, but let go of a
lot of human nature and allow their genes to be altered.
We're not there, obviously. We're here today, and in today's world,
the dominant factor is still survival and expansion and consumption.
And then you know, as long as those are the
things that are driving our social values and our progress

(37:47):
and our ideas of progress, I don't know that we're
going to stop the elon Musks of tomorrow from taking
action right and maybe to some extent, damn the consequences,
because you know, we did that with the industrial age,
and I don't think there are huge regrets with the
level of industry and technology that we have today, but

(38:09):
I hope that there are at least some regrets in
how we got here right and the level of side
effects pollution, climate change, and everything else that we are
now dealing with and having rushed into it without thinking
it through.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
So you mentioned that at one point in the future
you're hoping that there'll be sentient machines that will have
full rights with humans with artificial intelligence like just booming lately.
What do you think the future looks like? There?

Speaker 4 (38:39):
Are we close? Is that going to happen in our lifetime?
And like, what is the line at which the machines
should be getting rights?

Speaker 7 (38:46):
Yeah, that that's not a line. Unfortunately, it's a zone
or even just an infinite continuum. And unfortunately, I suspect
that our incentive structure is in the wrong places for
giving machines rights, and we're probably going to get to

(39:08):
it far later than we should. Daniel knows from my
previous novel Machinehood. I got into this quite a bit
more there, into this exact question of you know, how
will we know when they're sentient? Will we want to
admit to ourselves when they're sentient when it's not to
you know, to our advantage to do so?

Speaker 3 (39:27):
Right?

Speaker 7 (39:28):
And I think that's where some of the existential fears
come in that people like Stephen Hawking have expressed that, well,
the ais are at some point going to be sentient
and intelligence enough to like rise up and either destroy
us or claim personhood whether we like it or not.
And you know, possibly violence will ensue, because that's what

(39:51):
biological creations always do. I'm not convinced that violence has
to ensue for artificial intelligences. I'm not convinced we know
what sentience and consciousness is today. We don't have good,
testable definitions of any of these things, and they're very fuzzy,
and it's sort of like, what was I forget who
said the quote about pornography and obscenity that I know

(40:14):
it when I see it, right, there's very much that
kind of attitude. And yet I think you push people
on that and suddenly they're like, oh wait, you know,
is an ant sentient? Is it conscious? Does the ant
deserve rights just because it's less sentient and less conscious
than us? Like, at what point do things with some

(40:34):
iota of that deserve rights? Are plants? Sentient plants are
definitely conscious. We have experiments that have anesthetized plants and
put them to sleep, so there is some kind of
consciousness there.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
And that's where with Metu.

Speaker 7 (40:49):
I decided to step past all of this into a
world in which everybody grants that there are degrees of
consciousness and sentience and also livingness. Right, what does it
mean to be alive? What is a life form versus
non life? If you have an android that is using

(41:11):
cultured human skin, but everything else inside is you know,
metal machine parts, is that android now biological because some
parts of it, you know, is it alive or is
it non living? Right?

Speaker 6 (41:25):
Like?

Speaker 7 (41:25):
It gets complicated so fast, And that's where I personally
prefer that we err on the side of too much
rather than too little. Like it's always better to give
too many rights than not enough.

Speaker 6 (41:36):
It's not historically, how exactly exactly historically we've we've really
fallen on that, and so I'm hoping that going forward,
you know, we don't make that same mistake.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
So I asked you earlier your thoughts on whether Star
Wars was fantasy or science fiction, because I was also
very curious about the physics of your interstellar travel. I
love that you invented a new way to do this.
You know, I've read so many scientific novels. I felt
like I'd seen everything for how to get from Star
to star in less than a zillion years. So I
love that you have a new idea. And my question

(42:07):
is how much of the science did you develop that
of these family fields and famatons. Did you do a
whole like physics background only the tip of the iceberg
ended up in your novel, or did you want to
leave it a little bit fantastical.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
For the family fields. I gave it some thought.

Speaker 7 (42:24):
I kind of took what I know about physics and
my own physics background, and figured, you know, we could
have something operating on scales different than what we can
measure today, and we can certainly have physics that we
aren't aware of today a thousand years from now.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
I guarantee you.

Speaker 7 (42:39):
That we will right like that, you know, I will
put bet money. I like my science to fit my story,
so it's a very symbiotic relationship. And so I wanted
alloy pilots to be able to fly through interplanetary scales
of space, right and ultimately even intertellar and have a
way to gain momentum from these famiti fields, right. I

(43:02):
wanted it to be an energy source so that they
didn't have to use fuel, so that there wasn't a
need to mine consume and pollute, right, Like, I wanted
to break that cycle. And I'm sufficiently aware of current
physics at least the solar power and light isn't going
to be enough, right, So I came up with these
fields that have gradients. And what I liked about that

(43:25):
was that in my mind, you know, sort of like
when we draw space time and we draw curvatures, that
it's an easy way to give readers something to grab
onto that these pilots are going, you know, upslope or downslope, right,
So it's something that we can relate to as human
readers as Okay, when we go down we get faster,

(43:46):
and when we go up we go slower.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
So we have this in.

Speaker 7 (43:49):
Other physical fields. It's just that we don't necessarily always
talk about it in those terms. So I decided, yes,
there are there are gradients, there are things that they
can measure. So I think I a lot of that
in the book. But I tried to do it in
a more fun way rather than like, and now I
will give you a physics lecture I made up.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
You know, are you implying physics lectures are not fun?
Is that what you just did?

Speaker 7 (44:13):
I imply that they're not necessarily fun to read in
the middle of a science fiction novel, my caveat. But
you know, even still, I've had readers comment that there's
too much terminology and that it's too complicated in science
because I think when you start throwing around where it's
like fields and gradients, some people are already like, I

(44:34):
don't know what these mean, and now I'm confused, versus
readers who you know, maybe have some understanding and familiarity
with those concepts. Right, So obviously it depends on the audience.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Well, I find that most science fiction is really technology fiction,
like here's some new widget, or here's some new what's
it that does this thing? Very few actually dig into
the science and really write science fiction. And in your book,
I felt like I was in another universe that was
in a universe where the science was fundamentally different from
our universe, and that was exciting to me. I was like,
I want to know more, and how does this work?

(45:07):
And I'm going to dig into this and stuff, and
so yeah, I wanted more. I wanted math.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
I did want math.

Speaker 4 (45:14):
I thought you hit the right the right tone, So like,
I don't I'm not a physicist. I know a little
bit of physics, and I thought you explained it well
enough that I thought, for a moment, gosh, I don't
remember you said specifically. I thought, I don't remember Daniel
ever talking about family fields, which makes me think that
maybe this is a thing in this world that doesn't exist.

(45:35):
But I'm going with it, and like anyway, I thought
it very nicely blended into the world. I believed it.
I wasn't sure, but I didn't need that.

Speaker 7 (45:42):
That's awesome, And I will tell you, Kelly, You're not
the only one to think that I wasn't inventing physics
for this book, to which I made a little like
oh no face, like somebody going out there like, why
can't we build family spaceships today? Because I'm not real.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Sorry, you don't know, it's not real, right, That's.

Speaker 7 (46:04):
True, It's true, it could, And I will admit I
was inspired by dark matter and dark energy and that
something needs to be accelerating our universe outwards.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
So why not Fama de fields? You know?

Speaker 1 (46:15):
So tell us a little bit about your process of
writing the book. Are you a plotter or a panther
or somewhere in between.

Speaker 7 (46:21):
These days, I'm definitely one hundred percent plotter. I learned
my lesson with my first novel that a loose outline
isn't isn't necessarily the best idea for me and for
the way I like to write, mostly because I hate revising.
I much prefer the drafting stage, and so the more
you can plan out, the better.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
I will say that actual.

Speaker 7 (46:43):
Plot as a plotter is my weak point. I'm much
better at world building. I enjoy it. I love thinking
about my characters and their interactions and story and themes.
And then when it comes to the actual like nitty
gritty what happens next, and just steal liberally from other stories,
and then because of all the other stuff, it changes

(47:05):
enough that it becomes my own plot. But I found that, yeah,
I'm not very good.

Speaker 2 (47:10):
At inventing my own plot.

Speaker 7 (47:11):
Maybe that will change with experience, but for now, I
encourage all artists to steal liberally from other artists as
long as they then, let's say, chisel away until it
becomes their own.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
My husband is an artist, and he agrees with that completely.
He says it all the time. So I heard you're
working at a sequel. Can you tell us anything about that?

Speaker 7 (47:32):
I can. There's already pre orders up, so I'm definitely
committed to this sequel. Without giving too much away for
readers of Menu, I will say that whereas book one
is largely a space adventure, as I'm sure they could
tell from our conversation, book two concentrates more on adventure

(47:53):
around the globe and my very loose elevator pitches. It's
a bit around the world in eighty days and a
bit Greta Thunberg's you know, eco challenge to travel with
minimal footprints, and I kind of mash those two together
into this world, and there's a time skip, there's a
different set of characters that book two focuses on. So

(48:15):
it's not really a direct sequel so much as you know,
part of the series set in this world.

Speaker 3 (48:21):
And when can we have that in our hands? Do
we know yet?

Speaker 7 (48:24):
No, because this author is going to be late. We
were supposed to have it in the world sometime in
February of twenty twenty four, but I'm not super happy
with my manuscript and I would like to be before
I get it out there, so it'll it'll probably be
if I had to guess summer, summer or early fall

(48:47):
twenty twenty four hopefully, But like I said, you can
pre order it today. So if you love book one
that much, you know, definitely show your support for book
two because publishers like to see that maybe there will
be a book three.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
I love that you're already selling copies even though it's
not finished, right, it's finished ish, finished ish, Like everything
every part of my life is finished.

Speaker 7 (49:12):
Is yes, I've gotten to write the words the end.
So there is a manuscript. It's just you know, it
needs a little bit more than spit and polish.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
Let's say, all right, well, thanks very much for joining us.
Tell us where people can find a copy of me Room.

Speaker 7 (49:26):
Hopefully anywhere books are sold. In most of the English
speaking world and some parts of the non English speaking world.
You can find it on audio, ebook and trade paperback.
I will always encourage people to go to bookshop or
their local indie bookstore just to support, especially if you're
buying print books. I will also say, if you're going

(49:48):
to buy it for your kindle, starting on May first,
it's going to be on discount. I think it's part
of Asian and Pacific Islander Month in America, so at
least in the US you'll be able to get it
a little bit cheaper if ebook is your jam.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
All right, Well, thanks very much for coming on. We
really enjoyed chatting with you about all these hard questions.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
Thanks for having me, and you know I love hard questions.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
All right, that was super fun interview, Kelly. What do
you think about that?

Speaker 3 (50:18):
I had so much fun and I can't wait for
the next.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
Book me too. I'm just glad that there are people
out there thinking about other universes and what it's like
to be human in them and the politics of it,
and then setting out compelling stories that entertain me for hours.
I'm just glad I live in the universe where science
fiction exists.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
Me too.

Speaker 4 (50:36):
And I'm also glad that there are authors who can
have positive takes on how humanity is going to move
forward eventually.

Speaker 3 (50:42):
I like positive books.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
And she was also realistic. She wasn't promising she was
going to finish the next novel anytime soon.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
Right, Yes, like that about her too. I'm sure my
editor would like me to channel set a little.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
Bit more in the future, all right, And thanks to
all of our listeners for coming along on this ride
into another universe. We have a lot of fun in
these episodes. And I hear that a lot of you
enjoy listening to them. So thanks again everyone for listening,
and thanks Kelly for joining us today, Thanks.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
For having had a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
Bye everyone, all right, everyone tune in next time. Thanks
for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the
Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

(51:33):
to your favorite shows.