The Science Finction Universe of Lindsay Ellis

Daniel and Jorge talk about the Universe of Lindsay Ellis' novel "Axiom's End"

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, I've got an idea for a new movie genre.
Who I'm excited and a little terrified. Well you should be, because,
first of all, you've got aliens in this movie. Okay,
I'm loving it so far. Okay. And now you add
a romance connection and you get an alien rom com,
you know you might have something there. Miscommunication is the

(00:30):
basis for basically every rom com. Yeah, and can you
imagine the meat cute giant spaceships first looks? Love it
first standing. It gives the phrase first contact a whole
new spin. That might be an approvate Daniel, It'll be
p G. I'm sure I am more handmade cartoonists and

(01:03):
the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a
particle physicist, and I want to have some relationship with aliens,
but maybe not that kind of relationship, just the intellectual kind, right, Yeah,
I want a platonic conversation with the aliens. You don't
want to be friends with them, you just want to
be like colleagues. No, I definitely want to physics zone them,
all right. I don't want to give them the wrong

(01:25):
impression and say, you know, I have other intentions, right,
But what if they're really cool, you want to hang
out with them? You know, I don't really know what
those social cues are. You know, how do you read
the signs? And alien is throwing you right? If you
put a tentacle in a certain you know shape, who knows,
how do one interpret that? Yeah? Exactly if you cross
off something in my equation, what does that mean? Usually

(01:47):
that you're the professor and the other person is the
crowd student. But welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge
Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio, in
which we think about all the crazy and hilarious stuff
that's going on in our universe, all the weird stuff
that's happening here on Earth, all the stuff that might
be happening on an alien planet somewhere where they are

(02:07):
also trying to figure out the universe. We squish it
all up and we try to stuff it into your
brain in just forty short minutes. That's right, because it's
a big universe, and who knows what's out there or
who is out there? And hopefully we are not alone
in trying to figure out the secrets of the universe.
Hopefully there's a whole community of physicists and mathematicians and

(02:27):
scientists out there trying to puzzle over the nature of
this beautiful and bonkers universe, and one day we could
all get together and share notes and maybe even meet
cute Do you think it'd be collegial, Daniel, like when
you feel competitive with the aliens, like when they put
you out of a job. If they come here with
all the answers to particle physics, I don't think I'd
feel more competitive with the aliens than I do with

(02:49):
my other physics colleagues already, That's what I mean. Like,
you know only one person can get the intergalactic Noble Price. Yeah,
well I already have tenures, so I don't have to
worry about my job. He don't care like dealing comes,
Let them do my job for me, so I can
work less, even less. What if the aliens come and

(03:10):
then they take over all the good jobs? You're saying
so like human grad students can become professors anymore. I mean,
like they come with all the answers, so there's nothing
for you to do. There's always going to be something
to do. Even if they come with answers to our
current questions. There are always more questions. You know that
every answer just leads to more questions. Maybe they have

(03:30):
tenure two and they are slacking off too, that's one
thing to hope for. But anyway, there is a lot
of space out there in the universe, and it might
be filled with other species, and who knows what kinds
of wonders are out there, And so that's a big
part of physics to wonder about this and to think
about what could be out there and for us to
discover that's right. And also to do some thinking in

(03:52):
advance about how we might talk to those aliens if
they did come and visit. Could we communicate with them mathematically?
Would we be able to figure out their language? Would
there be some really awkward moments when we don't know
what to say or they say the wrong thing. It's
actually useful to think these things through because then the
day that aliens do arrive, we will have figured out
maybe a few strategies. Yeah, and so some advanced thinkers

(04:15):
in this area of science and research are science fiction authors.
Absolutely their job is to think of interesting possibilities for
what could happen or what could be out there, or
what what happened if we ever meet or discover these things.
That's right. Even though science fiction authors are not always
living in our actual, factual universe, they are on the

(04:35):
cutting edge of thought, because where are they living, Daniel,
If not in our universe? Are saying that authors are
aliens to interdimensional aliens. They're living in a fictional universe,
which amazingly is stored inside their brain, which is inside
our universe. So that's sort of cool, Like our universe
contains in it models of other universes inside people's brains.

(04:57):
It sounds like the next Christopher Nolan movie. Yeah, I'm
going to get a credit for that one. Christopher called
me up. But the cool thing is that that's exactly
what physicists do, right. I have in my mind several
possible universes that I'm wondering about. Is this one hour universe?
Isn't that one hour universe? So it's a pretty important
job to be creative and come up with other universes

(05:19):
that might actually relate to reality, that might give us
inside into how ours work. So we on the podcast
are always champions of science fiction authors on the cutting
edge of thought. Yeah, and so do they on the program.
We'll be tackling the science fiction universe of Lindsay Ellis.

(05:40):
That's right. Lindsay Ellis is the author of a really
fun book called axioms End, which explores a lot of
these topics in some pretty interesting ways. Yeah, and this
is part of our series of science fiction author interviews
and discussions about their work. We have a bunch of
them in the podcast archive, right, Daniel, that's right. We've
talked to a huge number of really fun and creative

(06:01):
authors who have been really generous and told us about
how they created the universe of their novel. This is
the literary podcast. We're digging into the physics of their universe.
Is it plausible, how does it work, how do they
put it together? And what can we learn about our
universe from their created fictional universe. Yeah. To Science Literary
Podcast on occasion. So if you're interested in discovering new

(06:23):
authors or hearing interviews with well known authors of science fic,
champ check out our archive. Do you think if you
wrote a science fiction novel you'd be up for being
interrogated about the physics of it by physicists. I get
interrogated by physicists every week, twice a week. Actually, wouldn't
be it wouldn't be that hard, you'd be especially experienced. Yeah,

(06:44):
I have a special degree on that. Then you should
write a science fiction though that sounds like something to
add to your list. Write horror. It's more like horror
or you know, period drama. Your horror novel is called
being on a podcast with the Physicist Scream. That's right,
Misery Part two. But anyway, so we're talking to me

(07:04):
about Lindsay Ellis's work, and she's a pretty interesting author.
I mean, she's pretty multifaceted, and she does a lot
of things online, right, Yeah, she has a pretty big
presence online. She has a YouTube channel, and she does
literary criticism, and so this is the beginning of her
career as an author. She's like cracking into the science
fiction community. It's pretty cool to see that the community

(07:24):
is open this way, that people can still come in
with a new idea and a debut novel and make
the best seller list. Yeah, it's a pretty big splash.
I mean, she made the New York Times best seller
listen her first trying. Yeah, exactly of her novels have
been best sellers. Yeah, that's a pretty good it's right there.
But congratulations to her and so they were going to
talk about her book Axioms and meaning like the end

(07:47):
of axioms or like the end of an axiom. It's
the end of an axiom. Yeah, And I don't want
to spoil exactly what the title means because you only
find out about two thirds of the way through the book.
But a lot of the book is about questioning your axioms,
is about questioning your thoughts about how the universe worked,
and also questioning your thoughts about how aliens operate and
how to communicate with them. It's sort of like a

(08:09):
paradigm shift. It's kind of what it's about. Yeah, exactly,
all right, Well, maybe step us through. What is the
basic premise of the book. Well, in the universe that
she created, it's like a slightly alternative history goes back
to two thousand and seven, all the way back to
two thousand seven, I know exactly. If you can cast
your mind back before your fuzzy memories of how the
world used to work, it does feel like a different world,

(08:31):
doesn't it. Well, she literally has a different world. And
in her world, aliens have arrived on Earth, but they
arrived like decades ago, you know, in the sixties and
the government covered it up. So it's sort of like
the ros Will scenario where there aliens and Area fifty one,
but only the government knows about them. Wow. So in
the fifties they landed like in flying Saucers or so,

(08:53):
they landed decades ago and they sort of crash landed.
But then the governments are like swept it up and
kept it under wraps until more aliens arrive. So now
here we are in two thousand and seven, more aliens
are landing and the secret is getting out. They have
like a Julian Assange like character that's trying to blow
the whistle on the government and leak the fact that
the government has been keeping aliens a secret for decades

(09:15):
and then it's all blown up when more aliens arrive. Wow.
You know, I've always wondered why in all these science
fiction movies and shows they always to portray the government
is wanting to cover this up. Do you know where
that comes from? Like, what would be the rationale for
government to cover it up? I don't think there is
any rationale. I think it's a born of conspiracy theories,
Like it just doesn't make any sense, doesn't make any

(09:36):
sense from an individual point of view, like why would
an individual scientist or government worker not want to share
this information? And it doesn't make sense from the sort
of government policy point of view, like I never believe
the argument that, like people are gonna go crazy if
they find out, like you gotta deal with it. There's
plenty of bad news out there, you know, just let
us know and we'll figure out a policy. So I

(09:56):
never really made sense to me. I think it just
comes from people who think the government is lying to
us about everything because the government has lied to us
about stuff before. Just a general sort of suspicion of government. Yeah, exactly.
And also, if you want to believe that aliens exist
and the government is not telling us that they do,
then the only way for you to believe that the
government has aliens is to assume that they're lying. Right. Well, So, anyways,

(10:21):
in the book, the aliens landed a long time ago,
and then they just started landing again. Now that she
explained why they came back, yeah, she does. The aliens
that have landed now are sort of coming after the
ones that landed forty years ago. But one of the
really fascinating things about the aliens that landed forty years ago.
Is that they didn't die. It's not like they crash
landed and we have corpses. The government has custody of

(10:43):
living aliens. But the fascinating thing is that those aliens
have been refusing to communicate, They like ignored every effort
to make contact or talk to them. Wow, because we
imprisoned them, or they're just being shy, or they're just
giving us a cultural Well, that's a great question, right,
and it goes to the heart of like why are

(11:03):
the aliens doing something? To answer that question, you have
to understand, like what do the aliens want? Why are
they here? What's important to them? And that's really the
heart of the book is trying to make sense of
could you ever understand what the aliens want and why
they do things? Can you even do basic communication with
the aliens? Could you develop a language to talk to them?
And even if you had that, could you ever really

(11:25):
understand them and empathize with them? Right? Right? Because who
knows they're what conditions they evolved, right, they could have
evolved on their totally different conditions, and so there are
a sort of way we see the world could be
totally different than the way they see the world. Absolutely,
it's very tempting to think about aliens and sort of
star tricky with They're like us, but just a tiny
little bit different. So talking to aliens is sort of

(11:46):
like talking to somebody from the other side of the
world that each stuff that feels weird to you, but
you're capable of sort of extending and extrapolating from your
experience to theirs. And do you hear It's like aliens
will be pretty alien, and so it might even be
that there's so puzzling that they just ignore you for
forty years for reasons of their own. I like that
element of it. There's a realistic sense of frustration and

(12:09):
difficulty in the same sense of like remember that movie Arrival,
aliens show up, it's just sort of like, what's your deal?
What are you doing here? It's hard to even know
how to begin communicating with them. They're so weird, right,
But I guess I have questions about the practicality of it,
like how do you keep aliens hitting somewhere? Do you
have to like put them in a cage habitat? And
how do you feed them? What do they eat and poop? Yeah? Right,

(12:31):
so these aliens, they keep them under wraps, and the
aliens are actually like self powered. So these aliens have
pretty cool biological technology. They're actually post biological. They're like
part nervous system, but the rest of them is sort
of like advanced cyboards. And they come with some internal
power source, so I guess they don't need to eat
for decades. You have some sort of magical like nuclear

(12:55):
something source inside of him, and then they're they're like
in a cage or dome or how did they how
are they kept? Yeah, so the government keeps them basically
in the equivalent of Area fifty one and has been
constantly trying to communicate with them, but they just sort
of sit there, ignoring the scientists until the new Aliens arrive,
and then everything changes. What happens when the new Aliens arrived.

(13:17):
So the new Aliens arrive and they meet the main character,
the protagonist, and then they try to rescue the original aliens.
They try to save the original aliens. So then the protagonists,
the person that we get to know best as the character,
actually ends up trying to serve as an interpreter between
this new alien and the rest of humanity. On this
new aliens mission to rescue the original aliens from a

(13:38):
third match of aliens that are coming to take them out. WHOA,
maybe we should have given a split elder. That sounds
like a big part of the plot, so that the
new aliens can communicate and do communicate with the main character.
They can and they have decided to. And so a
lot of the book is about learning, like what's that
like for the aliens? How to communicate with the aliens?
Why haven't the original ones communicated? And it's really fun

(14:01):
and fascinating And if you've read the book, I would
love to hang out and have coffee and talk to
you about it, but I don't want to give too
much away about the sort of intellectual ideas behind the book, right, right?
And so what do they look like? Are they humanoid?
Do they look like a cube? What do the what
do the alien bodies look like? They're sort of humanoid
in my mind's eye, they look a little bit like
the alien in the movie Alien that's like a big

(14:24):
long head and really really large eyes, but roughly humanoid.
But they're not like, you know, a big gaseous cloud
or like a gelatinous cube or anything too weird. So
is that part of the conspiracy that the movie alien
actually came from the real aliens. You just birth that
conspiracy theory right here today. Man, good job, all right,

(14:45):
but it spread disinformation. Done my duty for today. So
that the whole character arc and the arc of the
book is really about this character getting to know this
one alien that's coming to rescue the others and learning
also sort of the larger context of the galaxy. How
many species are out there, how many intelligent species there are,
this kind of stuff. So, you know, from the point
of view with somebody who's really curious about whether this

(15:07):
is true in reality, is fascinating for this character at
least to get some answers. Oh, I see that the
new aliens that come and talk to our main character
sort of give them the scoop on what's going on
in the galaxy. Yeah, a little bit, and sort of grudgingly,
what does that mean? Those aliens are not here to
educate us and share, you know, their intellectual wealth. They're
here to save their brothers and sisters. So, you know,

(15:30):
only when absolutely necessary do they give away a tidbit
of information that we are desperate to learn. Honestly, the
humans are like the annoying kid who keeps asking questions, yes,
exactly how many of you are there? And how do
you achieve fascinating like trottle that kind of thing exactly?
So does she paint a friendly universe out there or
does she paintless sort of like a warring kind of

(15:51):
hostile universe. It's a complicated question. The picture she paints
is that communication with aliens is complicated, is difficult, It
is maybe impossible and potentially dangerous because meeting these aliens
and talk to them could begin a conflict between humans
and those aliens. And so it's not necessarily seen as
like a good thing to establish communication with these aliens.

(16:12):
It's a tricky topic. I says, tricky because you might
say the wrong thing and the next thing you know,
you're in a star war. That's right, you say, hey,
didn't I see you guys in that movie? And then boom,
humanity is eradicated. The worst thing you can say to
an alien, aren't you? The ones based on that movie
Alien by Ridley Scott? How dare you? And that's why
we don't send cartoonists to be ambassadors or anything. Keeping

(16:34):
my home in a pencil and paper and that's it,
all right, Well, let's get into some of the signs
that she talks about in her novel Lncy Ellis is
Axioms End, and then let's get to your interview with her.
But first let's take a quick break. Alright. We're talking

(17:01):
about the science fiction universe of author Lindsay Ellis and
her book Axioms And, which is about aliens coming to
visit us and giving us a culturaler exactly. And it's
about how to develop communication with aliens, you know, how
you actually would get to talk to them and ask
them questions and use them as a way to learn

(17:21):
about the universe, and whether that's at all possible. M
all right, So maybe step us through. What are some
of the interesting science bits that she uses or imagines
or talks about in her book. So the main character
in the book is actually a linguist who went to
UC Irvine. No way, why did you get her degree? Totally? Yes? Absolutely,
nice to see you see I like appear in culture somewhere.

(17:44):
That's crazy. Why it's I'm not I'm not saying anything
against your university, but it does seem like an unlikely
university to pick. Does she have roots in California or something?
How did how did she arrive at that, did you
ask her? Yeah, she lives in Long Beach, and so
I think she just wanted sort of like a nearby
university and the story takes place in l A. I
also suspect she didn't want it to be too glamorous.

(18:05):
And the character is actually the kind of student we
get at U see I, you know, first in her
family to go to college, not very wealthy, and so
I think it actually puts U. C. I in a
good light. You know, it offers an opportunity for lots
of folks to get an education. Nice. So I guess
maybe the main kind of science topic here is about
communication with alien and I guess she posits the question
of whether it's even possible to talk to an alien,

(18:26):
like maybe they're so alien we can't even have a
common basis on which to talk or communicate. Yeah, And
she used this sort of linguistic knowledge of this main
character to talk about how human knowledge is put together
and trying to speculate about how an alien language might
work and how you might sort of build the basic
primitives you would need to learn to communicate with them.

(18:47):
And so I give her kudos for like thinking it through.
You know, it's not just like you start pointing and
stuff and saying the words and then five minutes later
you're having a deep conversation about philosophy. She does take
us on that tour, and there's lots of you new
things that are misunderstood, and subtle cultural references that aren't
included in words. You know, there's there's a lot of
that good stuff. But also she assumes that these aliens,

(19:08):
the ones that arrived in her book, can have their
language sort of cracked by this sort of linguistic analysis,
that it's even possible to communicate with them, right, because
I guess you have to assume, since there are a
space faring civilization or species, that they do have communication
at least between them. There there must be some way,
assuming there are sort of separate you know, consciousness and

(19:28):
minds and and things like that. It's not a hive
mind or the borg, they must have some way to
communicate themselves. So, you know, there must be something there
that we can maybe the code or you know, figure out.
I think it's a pretty good assumption that aliens will
communicate with each other, but whether we could decode it
and figure it out. I think that assumes a lot
about the way alien brains work and the way they think,

(19:51):
you know, the conditions under which they evolved. I think
we want to be real about it. I think it
would be really extraordinarily difficult. We'd be very, very lucky.
I mean, there are still human languages that we have
not decoded. Remember how difficult it was to decode like
Egyptian hieroglyphics. If we didn't have the Rosetta stone, we
might not have ever figured it out. And so there's
lots of difficulties there. Just because you have a speaker

(20:12):
of that language doesn't mean you can decoded, right. But
you know, I guess there Rosettas done was hard because
we didn't have anyone who knew those languages to talk to.
But do you think maybe, you know, if somebody was alive,
that you could maybe have a conversation and start to
figure it out. I imagine, if there is life out
there in the universe, it must have some sort of
commonalities to our life, what it means to be alive

(20:34):
and not alive, and also physics and math and things
like that. Right, wouldn't that give us some common basis
to start with? Perhaps? But that's sort of the exciting
thing about this question. We're hoping if we do meet
alien life, it will surprise us that it will exist
in ways we hadn't imagined where possible, it will communicate
or think in ways that we never even thought of.
That's the purpose of exploration, right to go out and

(20:56):
be surprised by reality, to see you when it disagrees
with your preconcess options. And so it's sort of easy
to imagine, Yeah, life could be sort of similar to
us in these basic ways. We assume that these foundational
things have to exist. But I'm hoping to be surprised,
So I don't think it would make for a very
fun book, though, you know, if aliens showed up and
we just like couldn't talk to them for a hundred years,

(21:16):
like not in a great story, you know. So I
get as a as a sort of literary device, how
she had to sort of assume aliens were similar enough
for us to talk to them. But I think in
the broader sense of our actual universe, it's much more
likely to be much more difficult, if not impossible, right,
And I guess it doesn't help that they're giving you
the sign and treatment like they do it in her book. Yeah,

(21:39):
and it's much easier if aliens come here, which I
think is less likely, right because of the distances involved.
What if we get a message from aliens on another planet,
really really far away, and then our communication is like
takes twenty years to send a message. Imagine learning to
speak a language across that kind of distance and time
when you only get to like ask three questions and
get three answers and then you're it, and like, you know,

(22:01):
the next generation of scientists have to take it up. Yeah,
that would be pretty slow. All right, Well, let's talk
all bad some of the other science bits here. So
in her universe there are aliens all over the galaxy
and how do they get around? So in her universe,
she tried really hard to make realistics. She try to
stick to the physics of our universe. In her universe,

(22:21):
there's life all over the galaxy, but intelligent life is
very very rare. There's only a couple of species that
are intelligent to have the capability to even eventually develop
like spacefaring technology. And here I think she's trying to
make a comment on this question about you know, like
how common is life and how common is intelligent life.
But these aliens don't have life faster than light travel,

(22:42):
so they fly through the universe, you know, close to
the speed of light on their awesome ships. But they're
also limited in the same way we are by the
vast distances between stars. So how do these civilizations interact
and stay cohesive? Yes, so these civilizations these aliens are
not actually very broad. It's like there's one alien planet
and there's another alien planet. And something that she talks

(23:04):
about in the book a lot which I thought was
really interesting, is the possibility of like interstellar war. You know,
would an alien species want to wipe out another one?
Like if they were aliens found on a star ten
light years from here, which is very very close cosmologically,
why would they ever want to kill us? Right? What
does Earth have that they need? There's plenty of like
platinum and iron and oxygen and water in Jupiter and

(23:28):
in Neptune. They wouldn't need to come to Earth to
kill us to take it unless they actually wanted us
as slaves. There's no reason in my mind they would
actually need to have a conflict with us. M does
does she cover that in her book? Like what's the
reason behind this war? Yeah? She does talk about that,
and she takes this sense essentially all species are born
in conflict. And it's very similar to another book we

(23:49):
talked about once, Maxim Barry's book Providence, about discovering an
alien species that's sort of weird and sort of feels
a need to fight the ideas that like, when you
grow up on a planet, they're limited resource and so
you sort of learn to see threats. If somebody is
so far from you that you don't see them as
you're in group, then they're in your out group and
that makes them a threat. So even if two communities too,

(24:10):
aliens and different star systems could actually live independently and
not bother each other, this sort of this natural tendency
to see each other as a threat and then start
pulling triggers. People are jerks. Basically, people are jerks, and
I hope aliens aren't jerks, you know, But in her novel,
they basically are all right. So the Alians are there,

(24:33):
they're at war, and they have cyborg bodies. They're sort
of like super advanced or they just kind of evolved
into this kind of cyborg mixed technology existence. No, they
are constructed, right, They build these bodies and they have
really awesome capabilities. And I don't want to get too
much into the detail because I don't want to spoil it.

(24:53):
But it's this sort of host biological system and because
of it, they can like live for hundreds of years
and they can repair themselves, so you can do all
sorts of cool engineering to these bodies that you could
imagine if you could like replace your arm or get
a new one or upgraded or all this kind of stuff.
All right, So it sounds like in general the books
stays pretty close to science and ideas about linguistics. It's

(25:14):
not like they're inventing a new kind of energy or
particle or misconsidering any sort of dark matter notions or
anything right now. There's no pim particle or anything crazy
like that. You know. The signs of the book is
pretty well done, and she's made some choices about how
aliens might be, which to my mind I think makes
them a little more human than they're likely to be.
But I also get why for a literary point of view,

(25:34):
she sort of needed to do that cool all right,
And then so you got to talk to her. I did.
She was really nice and spent like half an hour
talking to me about aliens and what they might be
like and what it's like to write a science fiction
book where one of the main characters is really truly
deeply alien. That we had a lot of fun, awesome.
All right, Well here is Daniel's interview with Lindsay Ellis,
author of the book Axioms, and all right, so I'm

(25:57):
very happy to welcome to our program Lindsay Ellis, author
of Axioms, And Lindsey, why don't you introduce yourself and
tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. So I
I mostly for the last ten years or so have
been working in new media online video and to a
lesser degree, podcasting, And like the whole time I had
been secretly plotting to be a science fiction author, but

(26:19):
that only really came to fruition last year particular. Really
a long time. Getting published is really hard, especially in
this sort of like weird, nebulous world of commercial sci fi.
But yeah, I after doing YouTube for about ten years
and I still do it, like it's still kind of
my main bread and butter. I published my first novel
last July, and the second one in the series comes

(26:40):
out in October, and then we'll just take it from there. Well, congratulations,
I'm glad to see that science fiction is open to
newcomers and makes the rest of us aspiring science fiction
authors have a little bit of hope. Yeah, so difficult. Yeah,
I feel like I've noticed that a lot of like
sort of the prestige novels lately, not mine, but like
the last years, all the big winners of the awards

(27:02):
were all deeput novels. So yeah, it's it's it's pretty
opening to new blood I think that, you know, science
fiction lately has been a lot less reactionary than it
has been historically. Well that's great. So before we dig
into the details of your book, we have a few questions.
We ask every science fiction author to sort of orient
them in the space. So here's some questions about science
fiction in general. First question is sort of philosophical. Do

(27:25):
you think that star trek transporters kill you and then
clone you on the other side, or actually transport your
atoms to your destination they kill you? No hesitation on
that one, Huh, Yeah, I mean sorry, science it is
what it is. That's an easy one, guys. I bet
it's one of those things where it's like just don't

(27:46):
think about it. Okay, So given that, would you use
a teleporter? Would you use it to like get to
go to the service of Pluto or whatever? No, especially
since it only works short range anyway, It's like, come on, guys,
Like I, I I feel like I'd be like that
doctor in a second season of the Next Generation, the
replacement doctor who was like, no, I won't do the thing,

(28:08):
like yeah, it literally kills you, all right. Well, in
that case, what technology in science fiction would you most
like to see become reality? The one that cures like
cancer and just like Parkinson's. I would really invite to
not have Alzheimer's, you know, I think that's my biggie.
It's like, I think for us, I assume you're like

(28:29):
a millennial, is like, I think our generation is going
to be one of the last generations that like doesn't
really benefit from technology that can protect us from like
Alzheimer's and dimension Parkinson's and stuff like that. So that
kind of sucks because I feel like, you know, assuming
civilization doesn't fall, which I you know, I'm not convinced
that it won't. I feel like in the future there
will be like really good preventative measures for certain diseases

(28:52):
that we are just really commonplace now, and it would
be nice to you know, be of your of sound
mind when you die. But like dementia runs really bad
in my family. So that's something I think about a lot.
It'd be nice to live in a time when people
look back and said, really that still happened to people,
that's crazy. Yeah. Last general question is what's your personal

(29:12):
answer to the Fermi paradox? Given the huge number of
planets out there that seemed to have earthlike conditions, why
isn't that we haven't seen aliens or been visited by
aliens or observed aliens on another planet yet? I guess honestly,
my answer is basically the answer that I gave in
the book, although the answer in the book comes with
a pretty huge aster risk that comes in the second book. Basically,

(29:33):
I think that intelligent life is the is the extreme rarity.
I think also people don't really take it to consideration
how young the universes, and you know, just the sheer
number of stars that had to like go through life
cycles in order to get to the complex elements that
comprise our solar system. Now, you know, like a lot
of stars had to go supernova for us to get

(29:54):
things like you know, platinum and you know, carbon, all
sorts of fun things. So I think it is very
likely considering that, you know, intelligent life only popped about
on Earth as a you know, result of a cavalcade
of mass extinctions and also kind of close to the
end of the Earth's life cycle. You know, we're about
eight of the way through, and what are the odds

(30:15):
that would happen over and over, especially in a fairly
young universe, you know, because I think we got like
a few trillion years before heat death starts in earnest.
So like, I think it's you know, I think it's
a combination of the universe is still pretty young, and
intelligent life is the filter. Like it's hard to it's
hard to cross that threshold. I don't like, I don't
I don't honestly buy the whole. Like, you know, we're

(30:37):
going to kill ourselves argument and that's what that's where
all the other aliens are because we have to work
pretty damn hard to wipe ourselves into extinction. Well, I'm
glad to hear you have faith in the survival of
the species. I mean, I don't have faith in the
survival civilization. I'm just saying, if we like we're like cockroaches,
it would be really hard to wipe this out altogether. Alright,

(30:58):
So that's a lot of fun, a lot more questions
for our author. But first let's take a quick break. Okay,
we're back and I'm talking to Lindsay Ellis, author of Axioms,

(31:20):
and let's talk about your book, which I really enjoy.
Congratulations on it than you. Your story really talks a
lot about sort of species conflict and difficulties and dangers
of communication and contact between different species. So tell me
what drew you to these themes. What made you decide
to make this the focus of your book. Well, I
think the thing about first contact fiction in general is

(31:42):
it always is about some form of other you know
capital Oh, basically, it's it's always kind of dealing with
a sort of anxiety slash curiosity about something that you yourself,
as a reader or as an author, or as a
culture might feel kind of is connected from. And that's why,

(32:02):
like invasion fiction is really common and you kind of
have like H. G. Wells, War of the World's is
a really good example of something that is both aware
of the destruction that his culture is reeking, but also
really anxious about the idea of being invaded. You know,
this coming on the heels of the franc Oppression War
and right for World War One. But I think, to me,

(32:23):
because some people kind of like the sort of military
science fiction thing where just like good versus evil, the
tension comes from how do we defeat the bad invading thing?
I just find narratives that are about trying to understand
something strange and foreign more interesting, Like, just as a reader,
I think, you know, I think those those kind of
narratives are more satisfying. I think, you know, that's why

(32:44):
people really liked to Rival, because like the entire book
is not just about figuring out their language, but it's
also figuring out what their deal is, you know, like
what do they want? And those kinds of narratives to me,
are just a lot more interesting than the you know,
invasion narratives. But I enjoy invasion narratives to Like. I
don't know if you follow me on Twitter or my
YouTube channel, but like I tweet about Independence Day constantly

(33:06):
because an Independence Day is one of my favorite movies.
So yeah, it's like I I I love certain invasion narratives.
I just don't think i'd ever write one, or well,
at least not a conventional one. In the book. It
seems like you're a little bit ambivalent about whether communication
is something to aspire to, like we could understand these aliens,
or whether it just sort of brings on danger. And

(33:26):
so I wanted to ask you, in your universe, some
of the folks see aliens as threats, you know, sort
of despite the near infinite set of resources out there
in the universe. So do you think that we pose
like a threat to alien civilization or our aliens only
in danger if we see them as a threat, you know,
why can't we just all share the vast amounts of

(33:47):
platinum and water in the universe, you mean hypothetically or
in in the book, in reality, like in our universe. Well,
I think that really depends on like the situation, because
like I see people making like these really kind of
wild speculation, like, well, have really aliens really showed up?
This is definitely what would happen, And it's like, you
don't know, you don't know, you don't know that. So

(34:10):
I think people kind of get in their heads a
little too much about what is logical whenever when when
the reality is like if aliens showed up, they're becoming
with their own set of reasons and politics and culture
and rationality, and we have no idea what that would be.
I think in general, the idea that aliens would come
for our resources is kind of silly unless that resource

(34:32):
is specific to life on Earth, because obviously, like elements
are you know, really common, like water is everywhere, you know,
things that are common on Earth are common everywhere. You know.
It's just like there are any number of reasons why
they could show up and possibly be hostile or possibly
you know, be not hostile. And I think that that's
sort of like why it's kind of hard to make

(34:53):
real speculation of like why can't we just get along?
Is like, but we don't know what their deal is.
We don't know what their politics are, and we don't
know what our politics would be when they showed up.
You know. I think it's interesting to say, like, well,
what would have happened if they showed up like in
nineteen sixty, like at the high, like the most dangerous
height of the Cold War, as opposed to like when

(35:17):
not a lot's going on, you know, and everyone's pretty chill,
and you know, there's not any you know, rise and
fascism yet that we would see in the two thousands.
So yeah, it's it's just like it's it's a sort
of conflation of scenarios. But I think the main thing,
as far as human nature goes is we are very
fearful and we humans have a very deep rooted instinctive

(35:38):
in group out group mentality, and that I think would
be the hardest thing for us to overcome. So I
hear that you're saying that these aliens are essentially by
definition alien and maybe impossible to understand their motives and
to communicate with them in reality like in our universe
in the book, it feels to me like maybe you
wrote it sort of as a bridge. You're like, I'm

(35:59):
bringing aliens to them a little bit more understandable because
true alien is it sort of hard to relate to
that true? Was their a gap there between what you
think is actually happening in our universe and what you
wrote about in the book. Absolutely, yeah, because that's sort
of like a narrative function, like what does the story
you want to write? And I think the thing about
a rival is the aliens aren't really characters like they

(36:19):
don't really have personalities, and like I did want to
have aliens with personalities and like you know, motivations and
relationships and stuff like that. So it's like it had
to kind of figure out where the line was to
her is like, you know, looks alien and feels alien,
but is still understandable. And that's part of why the

(36:39):
actual work of decoding human language happens before the narrative
even starts, because like that just I didn't want to
tell the story of how we learned the language, Like
that just wasn't the book I wanted to write. So yeah,
I think that like the understandable nous of of the
aliens am persated particular, it was a narrative function, but

(37:02):
it was also just kind of like the story I
wanted to write. I wanted the narrative to be like
the center on the relationship between these two. Yeah, it's
not that exciting the story. If the aliens show up
and we just never figure out how to communicate with them,
it's just like a big shrug for a thousand years, right, Yeah.
Or or it'll be like an Endor's game scenario where
it's like we fight and then they just kind of
stop one day and everyone's like, well, they'll be back,

(37:24):
you know, and not actually know why they stopped fighting.
So in your book there's a lot of linguistic theory
and discussion of the structure of the alien language. Do
you think that in reality linguists would be like on
the front lines of real life alien contact. No, No,
absolutely not. I think the thing people tend to forget
about linguistics is it is a very tune to not

(37:47):
just human syntax, but also the human mouth and sounds
that we make, and like the full half of linguistics
is just about the sounds, the phonemes, but also at
the same time, there's just so much about like language
acquisition and that we haven't figured out yet. And the
thing is, like, I think the easiest way, like there's
a Chomskyan way to understand language acquisition, which was the

(38:10):
one I ascribed to or at least in the in
the in the context of the book, which is why
in the book, human language is almost kind of described
as algorithmic and basically, if you kind of figure out
the algorithm, you can decode any human language with enough context.
I wish I had that algorithm. Basically, the idea of
being if the human brain is the hardware, language is

(38:30):
the software. So if you don't have that hardware, then
the software is completely meaningless. And this I think would
work in reverse too. I think, you know, I'm not
saying linguist would be completely useless, but I think like
the study of human linguistics probably is not going to
apply to a hypothetical alien language. I think that the

(38:51):
most useful thing in that context would probably be like,
you know, pattern recognition software, that sort of thing, because
you know, it's like if you look at people trying
to figure a dolphin language, they're not human linguists, you know,
So that that that is why I think linguists wouldn't
be terribly useful in this scenario. Isn't any human attempt
to understand the alien language going to be constrained in

(39:11):
the same way like we could argue that mathematics is universal,
but we don't actually know that. It could just be
like a product of the way that our hardware work
and really no sense to alien mathematicians. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It's hard to say because it's just like you're you're
dealing with like incredible speculatives with also fundamentally like a
line of thinking that you yourself are not capable of,
which was kind of a weird thing with me, because

(39:33):
it's one thing like where it's a book and you
have to describe the sounds being made. You don't have
like the fun luxury of like you know, a sound
department making up sounds. But also like the you know,
the alien language and how it operates as opposed to
human language, like there would be overlaps, like it's a
spoken language, like so it's not like through colors or
smells or whatever. So it's like an oral spoken language,

(39:57):
you know, and so therefore it uses phone names, it
uses sounds, but like the similarities kind of in there,
like they don't really have words, they don't. It's it's
more like a sort of cluster of phonemes that create
a lump of meaning and you know, describing that in
a way that you understand what it is. But at
the same time you can't speak it and you can't
think it because you don't, you know, you're a human

(40:17):
brain that understands human language. So then thinking about the
bodies of the aliens, I thought there were a lot
of really cool ideas in your story about how a
species might like move beyond their biological origins. Do you
think that's the future of humanity? Do you do you
want to have a artificial body in the future? Oh? Man,
that that's what I don't like to think about, because
it's going to be class based. You know, it's gonna

(40:39):
be you know, speaking of H. G. Wells, you know
in the Time Machine, when the time traveler goes into
the future, he's like, oh, weird, two different species and
it turns out like one of them is the rich
people and wrote them or the under class. So I
think that's sort of the thing that scares me a
little bit about, like genetic engineering and trans humanism is like,
oh good, another way we can really put into sharp

(41:05):
relief the class divide. So it's sort of one of
those things that I do kind of think. I think
it's inevitable, but I don't think it's inevitable in a
good way. Right. Yeah, Well, down here in Orange County,
I see a lot of folks with botox spaces, and
I wonder if I really am the same species as
some of the people around here. Anyway, next question I
want to ask you is about the political question that
you raised earlier about how we would respond. In your book,

(41:28):
there's a lot of information about the aliens that's kept
secret by the government. Is a key plot device you use.
Do you think that's happening now that the government has
secret information about aliens? Or do you think it would
happen if aliens did visit? Uh? No, no, and no.
I think because I kind of put like why I
think they couldn't keep this a secret in the book,

(41:50):
like like Nils, who's one of the like sort of
this Chilian Assange character as a little polemic somewhere like
halfway through the book where he talks about information sharing
between agency is after nine eleven, made keeping a secret
of this magnitude that involved this many people of like
essentially impossible. But I think like whenever you see like
the stuff that like the Pentagon released lately, people are like, oh,

(42:11):
they proved its aliens, and it's like, no, you do
understand that an unidentified flying object just means it's a
flying object that that's unidentified, like they don't know what
it is. So I I very leeriate that conspiratorial thinking
where it's like you don't use evidence to come to
a conclusion. You have a conclusion, and then use the
thing as evidence and ignore anything else to the contrary.

(42:33):
So I think it's it depends. I think, like in
this case, they genuinely don't know what it is, so
of course they kept a secret, and I think historically
that would have been the case. But I think if
they knew something definite, like, no, you can't keep that
a secret. That's way too big and it would cause
a scandal like that, because that's what happens in the book,
is like, if they like were deliberately keeping this thing
a secret for such a long time, it would just

(42:54):
cause such a massive scandal when it inevitably gets out.
So that that's my take on the whole government conspiracy thing. Well,
I hope that's true. So the last question I have
for you is about sort of constructing your universe. When
you went out to write this novel. How important was
it for you that the science of your universe be
sort of the same as the science of our universe,

(43:16):
That everything that happens there, you know, limitations on fast
and light travel to be the same as the ones
in our universe. Well, I guess the funny thing is,
like I wanted to write something that wasn't technically in
contradiction to certain theories. I guess is the thing because
as I'm sure you know, you know, we haven't figured

(43:37):
out the theory of everything yet, and there's just like
a lot we don't know about, like the physics of
the universe, And so I guess my thing was I
actually I had a nuclear physicist is a German guy
named Wolfgang, and he lives in Frankfort, or he did.
Whenever I talked to him about this, I was thinking, like,
you know, whenever I figured out, like, well, what are
the laws of physics of this universe? Do I pick

(43:58):
one of the any potential theory of everything theories? Or
do I just make one up? And uh? I asked him.
I was like, what do you think is the right one?
And he's like, I like quantum loop gravity, Okay, well
when do you think ballpark? When do you think we're
gonna nail it down? And he's like, I don't know
two hundred three hundred years and like cool, So it
doesn't matter. So basically I I did. I went with

(44:21):
a version of string theory, and so I try to
keep everything under the umbrella of things that would be
theoretically possible. Let me put it that way. If this
version of stringth theory is true, which we're probably not
going to figure out in our lifetimes anyway. Unfortunately, there
are ten to the five string theories which could be true. Yeah,

(44:41):
and then the funny thing is like, since it's aliens,
I don't need to say which one because they have
a different name for it, see, and we don't know.
So Yeah, it was something that I thought a lot about,
but also like I kept intentionally vague because you know,
it's like they wouldn't have the same terms for things
that we do, so like some things would line up,

(45:02):
like you know, I don't know gravity or light speed
or stuff like that, but then other things, you know,
they would have different terminology for it, like you know,
dimensions or strings or stuff like that. Yeah, I guess
it was just like I wanted to keep it vague,
but also like technically theoretically possible, you know, like with
the idea of like telekinesis and stuff like that, and
you know this basically just being a sophisticated form of

(45:25):
manipulating electromagnetic fields and you know, condensing electrons and stuff
like that, They're like, well, Okay, sure, you know that
would take a lot of energy, so they just have
a lot of energy. Boom done. Like so yeah, awesome.
Well I thought that was really fun and I was
really appreciated that you sort of picked this out of
rules and stuck to them. To me, that's a critical

(45:45):
element of science fiction. Thank you thinking about it for
a long time. I appreciate it. Thanks very much for
coming on and telling us all about your book. Why
don't you tell our listeners about upcoming projects or things
you have coming out soon? Right? Well, Sequel to X
Seems comes out in October. It is done, so it's
in production as they call it at the publisher, And
that one I think will probably be more relevant to

(46:09):
the discussion of this podcast because it deals a lot
more into like the science of the universe and uh
like actually addresses the Fermi paradox and the origin of
life and stuff like that. Again, like just it's a
fictitious universe, but it's like, you know, it's fun to
play with hypotheticals based on like, well, here is what
we know, so how could it play out in other scenarios?

(46:30):
And so that comes out in October. And other than that,
I'm still doing long form stuff on YouTube that just
comes out once every couple of months or so because
videos are really really long. Got one coming out in
a couple of weeks. J K rolling again. So yeah, great,
Well looking forward to this equel to your book. I'll
definitely pick it up. And thanks again for joining us

(46:52):
and talking to us about all these crazy ideas. Thanks
a lot for having me, and I hope you guys
have a good rest of your plague. All Right, that
was a pretty cool chat. I love her thoughts about
alienness and how she had to make the aliens alien,
but you also kind of want to make them relatable
so that you, as a reader can identify with them. Yeah,

(47:12):
it's a tricky line to balance. I totally respect that,
and I like that she separated sort of the idea
she put into her novel, which is, you know, important
for telling a fun story, with her ideas about like
how the universe actually works. So that's pretty cool. It
sounds like she was a little conflicted, maybe like she
thinks the universe might work this way, but for the
writing of the novel she had to portray a certain way. Yeah,

(47:34):
this is not like a scientific paper, right, this is
not like her idea for how she thinks the universe
actually is this is like, Hey, here'd be a cool
universe in which I could tell a fun story that
would be enjoyable to read, you know, which is not
the kind of constraint I usually have in my science papers.
You know, but do you do write science fiction? Daniel?
Did this? Brey to write any science fiction stories or

(47:55):
feature any more professors from UC Irvine. I'd love to
see more of U. C. I appearing in culture somewhere.
And I think it's inspirational that somebody had a cool
idea and tried writing and then was successful and was
able to break into the industry. I always think it's
a healthy community when a novice can break in and
do a good enough job that they could actually be successful.

(48:15):
So that's awesome to hear. And I think that everybody
out there who's aspiring to write a science fiction novel
is encouraged by it. Cool. Well, if you are interested,
please check out Lindsay Elisi's book Axioms and you can
I'm sure to find it everywhere. I was a New
York Times bestseller, and get to see her thoughts and
her ideas and her stories about aliens coming to visit
us and ignoring us. It was a lot of fun,

(48:37):
and she has a sequel coming out later this year,
which I'm confident will also be fun. All Right, well,
please check out her work and we hope you enjoyed that.
Thanks for joining us, see you next time. Thanks for listening,
and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is

(48:59):
a pre duction of I Heart Radio. For more podcast.
For my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah,