The SF Multi-verse of Adrian Tchaikovsky

Daniel and Jorge discuss the science of "The Doors of Eden", a multi-zooniverse novel by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Or Hey, do you think that intelligence is inevitable in
our podcast? I'm not sure A lot of our jokes
are that's smart. Well, I think puns are a sign
of intelligence in my opinion. But I was wondering about
in life in general, like if you ran the Earth
as an experiment many times, how often do you think
you'd get intelligent life? Sometimes I'm not sure we have

(00:31):
intelligent life here on Earth anyway. So do you think,
like in another version of Earth, dinosaurs became smart, maybe
like built the Internet, or what if like plants became intelligent?
Then this could be a podcast done by bananas where
Banana's world the world. Maybe it's done by bananas and
listened to by intelligent dinosaurs, and it's probably a lot

(00:52):
smarter than this podcast, or maybe at least it's funnier.
I am more handmade cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi,

(01:15):
I'm Daniel, and in this element of the multiverse, I'm
a particle physicists. You think there's an alternate universe where
we swapped Daniel, Like I'm the physicist and you're the cartoonist.
I think you're well on your way to becoming a physicist.
In this universe. I wish I could say the same
about you, Daniel and cartooning. I should spend more time
doodling while we podcast, so I can work on my

(01:36):
art skills. That's how that's how I'm good at cartooning.
What do you think I do while you're talking about physics? Oh?
You should totally publish the doodles. No, but I do
like to imagine other lives I may have lived where
I pursued writing or art or music or something, and
I wonder how those would have turned out. But why
wait for another universe? Why don't you just right now

(01:57):
and pursue music. Okay, hold on, I'm going to hang up.
But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in which
we take you on that mental journey. We explore this universe,
We talk about other universes. We wonder, why is this
universe like this? Are there other universes out there? How
does this universe even work? Is it possible to understand it?

(02:20):
We wrap all that up in about forty minutes, stuff
some puns in it, and feed it to you for
intellectual lunch. Because you know, I think the universe that
we live in is rich and amazing and huge, and
there's still so much to discover. But there is the
amazing and incredible possibility that maybe this is not the
only universe, and maybe there are other universes out there

(02:42):
waiting for us to discover, universes without bananas, universes without snacks,
or maybe even universes with better snacks. Because a natural
question when you look at our universe as you wonder like,
is this the only way it could be? Could the
universe have been different? Are there other examples of universes
out there where things are different? What does that mean

(03:04):
for how special or how irrelevant we are? Yeah, and
I think it's, you know, the job of physicists to
think about these other universes. But I think the people
who get to have more fun with this idea are
writers and science fiction writers, because they are free to
let their imaginations run wild and think about all these
other universes and what they could be and what could
be in them. That's right. Science fiction writers not always

(03:25):
constrained by the laws of physics the way us experimentalists are,
but they still do contribute to this exploration of how
the universe is and how the universe might be, and
like we say in this podcast, a lot is a
vital element of exploring our universe thinking about how other
universes might behave and what the rules are. Yes, So
it will be continuing today our conversation with science fiction

(03:47):
authors about their work, about how they see these concepts
in physics and how they let their imaginations run wild
in these universes that's right, and more specifically, how they
build their universe, because when you tell story, you have
to put it in a universe, and the universe has
to follow rules for your story to make sense, for
your characters to have constraints, for those conflicts to mean anything.

(04:10):
And in science fiction you can invent any kind of
universe you like, I suppose, as long as it's self consistent.
So we've been having fun talking to well known science
fiction authors about how they are gods of their own
universe and what rules they decided to put in it
and what rules they decided to do leave to be.
On the podcast, we'll be talking about science fiction universe

(04:34):
of Adrian Tchaikowsky's Doors of Eden, that's right. In Adrian Tchaikovsky,
now a very well known and very successful science fiction author,
but has a quite an interesting background because he started
out actually writing fantasy novels. You can do both, apparently
you can't cross over, and he wrote some very well
received fantasy novels. You know, he spent a lot of

(04:56):
time doing D and D as a kid, and I
think those novels came out of that. And then he
switched over and a few years ago he wrote a
book called Children of Time, which is one of my
favorite science fiction novels. I was blown away when I
read it, and so I totally recommend his entire series
of science fiction works. But today we're talking about his
most recent book, which is just coming out now in August.

(05:18):
It's called Doors of Eaton. I guess, Daniel, what do
you see as a difference between a fantasy novel and
a science fiction novel? Like, where do you draw the
line the number of dragons? I think, what, did you
have a sci fi novel with dragons in it? Nobody's
ever done that. No, you totally could have a science
fiction novel with dragons, And in fact, the one we're

(05:39):
talking about today, the science fiction novel has a lot
of weird creators in it. I think though, the difference
between science fiction and fantasy, again according to Be and
lots of people out there in the podcast verse can disagree,
is that a science fiction universe is more like science
that you set up the rules and then your universe
follows those rules, whereas in fantasy you have magic and
so basically you know, the rules can be anything at

(06:01):
any point. It's just sort of a different style there,
because you're either living in a world where you have
to follow the rules or you're living in a world
where you sort of discovering crazy stuff at every moment. Well,
I feel like, you know, sometimes fantasy has some rules,
you know, like I know that sometimes they try to
have rules about how dragons can breathe and what they
need to eat and things like that. So maybe it's

(06:22):
a little bit of a fuzzy line. Well, I would
say that the best fantasy novels are the ones where
the magic does have rules, where there's something about it,
there's a reason it works this way, and their limits
to what you can do. You can't cast this kind
of spell in that situation. You need this kind of
ability combined with that one to do something. But in
my book, that makes them science fiction and not fantasy,

(06:42):
so once you start following the rules, it becomes science fiction.
All right, Well, we're talking about his latest book, which
is called Doors of Eden, and it has to do
with the multiverse, this idea that there are different universes
besides ours, and it's it's the idea that the universes
are all different or they're all kind of different versions
of ours. Yeah, they're all sort of different versions of Hours.

(07:05):
And he really focuses on the role of evolution and
how evolution goes down a different path and each multiverse
and that's what gives this sort of a fantasy or
sort of critter based element, and like thinking about which
creator might have become intelligent and become dominant in each
of these multiverses. Like if the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped
out by an asteroid, could they be maybe the dominant

(07:29):
species in our planet right now and have developed intelligence
and a physics podcast. They probably wouldn't be talking about
bananas though. I can't see a t rex eating a banana,
because how does it get it up to its mouth
and it's like it's holding it, it peels it, and
then it's just like they can't feed themselves. They's just
I don't see it working. Well, they're intelligent enough to
have a podcast. I would imagine, Daniel, they could figure

(07:50):
out a way to peel a banana. Sometimes the simplest
problems are the hardest to overcome. Yeah, So it's the
idea of the multiverse, and there are many different versions
of the more diverse and so we'll get a little
bit more into this topic. But we were wondering how
many people out there believe the multiverse is possible, and

(08:10):
more importantly, if we could ever travel between these different universes.
So I went out to the Internet and I asked
our listeners and folks like you if they thought it
was possible to go from our universe to another. Not
just whether the multiverse is real, not just whether other
universes exist, but whether we could actually ever visit them.
So think about it for a second. Do you think

(08:32):
we can travel between universes in the multiverse. Here's what
people had to say. No, I don't think we ever
will be able to do this. For us to be
able to do that, we would have to know or
have an idea of like a barrier. I really don't
see us doing this any time soon or even in
the future. I wish though, no, because fundamentally the multiverse

(08:56):
would be causely separated. Well, what don't they know? If
there is a multi verse, I can barely travel through
the actor the universe, So traveling through the multiverse sounds
a bit too much. But well, maybe single particles. If
there is a multiverse, I would say no, because if
we could travel through the multiverse, it would have to

(09:17):
be redefined as just being the universe. Oh I am
I don't think we can because I just don't know
how we would get there. Do we build a bridge,
we have to open up a thing where do you
even find out where the opening to the multiverse is? No, No,

(09:39):
I don't think so. And even if we could, with
this pandemics thing in quarantine fourteen days, it is not
worth it. So for once, our listeners are pretty consistent. Yeah, well,
I like the one who said we can barely deal
with this universe. I can't even wrap my head around
multiple universities. It's a good point. Maybe we should figure

(09:59):
this one out of we branch into other ones. But
then again, maybe other universes have physics as easier to unravel.
Just like takes fifteen minutes and boom, theory of everything
figured out. Maybe there's a universe where they figure out
of egg seed for this pandemic, and then we can
learn from that. I guess right, that's a positive thing.
That's a positive thing. Yeah. I like that idea. But

(10:20):
nobody really seems to think that it's possible to go
from our universe to another universe. They sort of all
scoff at the idea that you could ever actually travel
from this universe to another one. All right, well, let's
get into Adrian's book here, Doors of Eden, and so
it's about the multiverse, and you're saying that are these
what kind of multiverse this is? This like a universe

(10:41):
is just like ours but maybe had different initial conditions,
or is it like the quantum universe where it gets
split off every time a particle makes a left or
right decision. It's a very specific kind of multiverse. It's
one in which Earth exists and the basic laws of
physics are the same. And it doesn't have to do
with want of mechanics. It has to do more with

(11:02):
thinking about how evolution might have gone differently, Like if
you start with Earth with primordial bath of little bugs
and life develops then if you run that experiment a
lot of different times, what kind of life might develop,
what might win the evolutionary sweepstakes, and what might eventually
become intelligent because it makes sense to think about how

(11:22):
that could be really influenced by random events. You know,
a cosmic ray comes in and mutates this creat or
not that creator, or a DNA transcription error gives you
this mutation and not that mutation, Or an asteroid comes
or it doesn't. These little details can really affect downstream,
have a massive influence on what ends up surviving and
what ends up being intelligent. So in the book, then

(11:45):
it's like a universe just like ours, but instead of
like a mammal here and with limbs and skin, were
actually like dinosaurs with scales and big teeth. Yes, and
this is where the novel really shines. Chakowski has a
background in zoology and he's very, very creative, and so
there are some very inventive other universes there with crazy critters,

(12:05):
you know, walrus like creatures that build computers that are
mostly out of ice, or bugs that become like the
size of planets and float through the universe, or all
sorts of other crazy stuff. I don't want to spoil it,
but it was really inventive, like ideas I'd never considered,
ever thought of before, but seem kind of plausible. In
each case, he's really thought through how this thing could

(12:26):
evolve and what the environmental requirements were to sort of
select for that thing to happen. It's very richly imagined.
It's almost like he's visited these things and just like
scribbled down notes and come back to tell us about
But they're all based on Earth, or are these like
dragons coming from space? These are all based on Earth.
So in each case he's imagining life here on Earth

(12:50):
evolving in lots of different ways and ending up with
lots of different kind of intelligence creters. And so then
what's the plot? What's the story about? The story starts
here on our Earth with people who are like us,
and there are cracks that open up between the multiverse,
so instead of having completely paralleled separate universes, there starts
to be overlaps, places where creators can go from one
to the other. And the story begins following some cryptozoologists,

(13:14):
people who look for weird creatures like big Foot or
the Lockneest Monster, and they find some weird creatures, like
actually alive, strange things you wouldn't expect in our universe,
and they follow them back and find these doors between
universes where you can jump from one to the other.
And the basic plot of the book is to figure
out why are these universes overlapping, what or who is

(13:35):
controlling it and for what purpose? And is it a
good idea or a bad idea? And then it just
goes crazy as we jump from universe to universe and
meet all sorts of crazy creatures. Interesting so they're not
naturally occurring cracks. It's like somebody's opening the doorways between universes.
That's one of the big mysteries driving the book, and
so I won't spoil it for our listeners, but it's
a fascinating question. Yes, all right, Well, let's get into

(13:58):
the signs of the book and then we'll get to
your interview with Adrian Chaikowsky, author of Doors of Eden.
But first let's take a quick break. All right, we're

(14:18):
talking about the science fiction work of Adrian Chaikowsky, and
specifically the book Doors of Eden, in which the multiverse
exists and it's fun and there's all kinds of amazing
different creatures in it, and the cracks between the universes
are starting to show. It's fun sort of the same
way like Jurassic Park was fun in those movies. Like

(14:40):
it's fun, but it's dangerous. You know. Some of these
critters are not exactly friendly. Oh, I see, all right.
So it takes place in our universe, and there's these
doorways to other multiverses that are opening, and there are
creatures from those multiverses coming into and out of our world. Yeah,
that's right. And our humans sometimes go into those multiverses
and come back after many years suddenly changed, and so

(15:02):
there's a lot of going back and forth. But the
basic sort of scientific premise is what if you could
explore multiple paths at once. You know, it's like when
you have to make a decision in life, You're like
should I order mac and cheese or should I order
pizza or whatever, and you imagine, like, maybe this has
a big role in my life. Maybe there's another version
of me where I ordered the pizza and something happened

(15:22):
and and now I'm a totally different person. And this
sort of gets to explore all these different paths the
way the Earth might have gone if evolution had worked different.
All right, Well, let's have a lot of questions about
the science, I guess, and so let's dig into that.
And so, first of all, maybe we should recap a
little bit about this idea of a multiverse, because there
are a lot of different flavors of multiverses in physics theories.

(15:45):
Yes there are, and multiverse is a hot topic these days,
not just in science fiction novels, but in theories of physics.
It's something we talk about a lot. So explain to
us what is the current definition of a multiverse. So
there's lots of different ways to think about the multiverse,
and essentially, at the hands on what question you're trying
to answer? The whole idea for the multiverse comes from
a lack of explanation of things we see in our universe.

(16:09):
Like we look at things in our universe and we
measure them, and we wonder like, why is it this
way and not some other way? You know, Like we
measure the rate of expansion of the universe driven by
the cosmological constant, and it's a number, and it's kind
of a weird number. It's like kind of a small number,
and we wonder like, well, why isn't that number just
one or seven or twelve? Like why this number and

(16:32):
not some other number? Right? Like it could be something else,
But why isn't it that? Or what isn't this? And
one possible answer is, oh, there's a reason it has
to be this way, we just don't yet understand the
physics of it. And that's, you know, my favorite explanation,
because that's the cleanest, it's the simplest. It tells us
why our universe has to be this way, but we
don't have that explanation yet. We haven't figured it out yet.

(16:54):
And another way to make sense of it, instead of
finding a physics argument for why it has to be
this way is to say, well, it's just arbitrary and
maybe it set sort of randomly when the universe began. Yeah,
Like maybe it's just like a random throw of the die, yeah, right,
or like a random flip of the coin. And then
you're wondering, why is it heads not to Yeah, And
that feels sort of like a cop out, like it's saying, well,

(17:15):
there is no explanation, so maybe there can't be an explanation,
or maybe it's just random, and that's the explanation that
sounds reasonable to me, but physicists have a very uncomfortable
time dealing with that answer. Yeah, because it feels sort
of like giving up, because you could use that argument
for anything. You know, why is the Earth going around
the Sun? I don't know, Maybe it's random. You know,

(17:36):
why are photons act this way? I don't know. Maybe
they just do because they do. It feels like a
non answer. It feels like you're saying, don't ask any
more questions because there are no more answers. But we're physicists.
We like to ask questions, We would like to figure
things out. But I guess my problem with this is
it doesn't feel like the best way to answer that
question either, Like, you know, why does the Earth go

(17:56):
around the Sun? You can dig into it and you
find out about gravity and orbits and things like that.
But if you get to a number that you can't explain,
why can't it just be the way it is? Because
it is? Why does it? Why do you have to
invent the whole other set of universes to explain it? Well,
it could just be the way it is, the reason
why a whole other set of universes sort of scratches

(18:17):
that itch. Especially works when the number is weird. Like
if you measure a number and it's sort of like
makes sense to you, like the number is one, you
know these dimensionless numbers, You're like, okay, well the number
is one. But if the number is really weird or small,
then it seems unlikely. And then to explain it, you'd
like to imagine like, well, maybe there are lots of
other versions and we're just sort of an unlikely random choice.

(18:40):
There many of these things and we just happen to
be in one that's weird. And so that it doesn't
really answer the question. You still have the arbitrary nous,
you still have the randomness, but then you have a
whole population. So instead of being the only one out
on this weird tail, we're out of the weird tail
of a large group and most of the universe is
normal and we're the weird ones. So it sort of

(19:01):
gives you some kind of an explanation, but it's not
totally satisfactory. See, it's more like why are we special?
And the answer is we're not. Yeah, I feel like
that's kind of what you're trying to It's like, yeah,
it's like it's weird that we're special, but maybe we're
not special. Maybe there's a whole bunch of other universes. Well, actually,
I think it's more like the other way around. It's saying,
why are we special? Isn't it strange that we have

(19:23):
only one example? And this example is special, and so
saying oh, yeah, well we are actually special, and there
are other universes out there with this special thing doesn't happen,
and so that explains, like why it's happening in this one.
You know, it's not a totally satisfactory answer. And I
think part of the reason it survives is because it's
so mind blowing. It's like, whoa, You're gonna take the

(19:45):
whole universe and multiplied by a thousand or multiply by
an infinite number of varieties. It's sort of philosophically mind blowing,
and that's why I think it's so popular. All right, Well,
there are many different kinds of multiverses, and we had
a whole podcast that out the different kinds of multiverses.
So if you're curious, please go back. There are lists
of episodes and find it. But I guess I'm curious

(20:07):
about the one that Adrian Chikovski uses in his novel
The Doors of Eden. What kind of multiverse is it?
Is it like a parallel is it in another spot
in space? Is it like a quantum kind of separation?
What kind of multiverse is it? I think it's most
similar to the quantum multiverse, actually, because it has the

(20:27):
same laws of physics. So it's not like the multiverse
where the universe is different laws of physics in different places,
and other universes are just like you know, other parts
of space where the laws of physics are different, the
electrons have different masses or something. It's not that kind
of configuration like in his book. Your electrons can go
to another multiverse and still be electrons, and there's still light,

(20:49):
and there's still particles, and everything is familiar. So the
laws of physics are the same. It's just sort of
like another role of the die. So in that sense,
it's most similar to the quantum all diverse. The quantum
multiverse is the one where every time a quantum particle
does something random, you know, the electron goes left or
goes right. It doesn't actually just randomly choose one. It

(21:10):
does both. In the universe splits into two, one where
it goes left and one where it goes right. And
so in this universe, that's kind of what is happening,
is that they're they're quantum multiverses, and in these different universes,
you know, a primordial cell split this way and not
that way. Yeah, it's sort of like biology quantum multiverse,
where you're imagining that the random processes, which are fundamentally

(21:33):
quantum mechanical, are having a macroscopic effect on the biology
and on the evolution, which leads to all sorts of
different stuff. And you know that I think is totally
plausible because a lot of the mutation that comes in
evolution is based on quantum mechanical principles, you know, the
chemistry of these things interacting or cosmic rays flipping a
bit in DNA, so that's totally possible. Yeah, I guess

(21:55):
these things all depend on really tiny events and really
tiny random events. Yeah. And in this sense, the multiverse
is sort of trying to scratch the same itch as
what we were talking about earlier. Instead of thinking like, well,
why is this fundamental parameter of the universe point one
instead of one or two, it's thinking why are we
in this universe and not the other one? Right. Why

(22:18):
are we in the universe where the electrone went left
instead of the one where it went right? How does
the universe randomly choose one of those things? Is there's
some like quantum die at the core of the universe
computer And so the quantum multiverse tries to answer that
question by saying, we're not special. It's not like the
universe picked left. It picked both. We just happened to
be in the left one, and the people on the

(22:38):
right one are thinking why did it go right and
not left? Yeah, And in my mind that doesn't really
answer the question. This whole quantum multiverse thing doesn't really
solve the problem of randomness because we still are in
the left one. You know, maybe the other ones exist,
that's cool, but how come we ended up in the
left one. There's still a specialness to one of those

(22:58):
universes because it's the one that we are living in. Oh,
I see, you think it's still special because your special
I'm the only me I know. So, yes, this universe
is different from all the other universes. Right, well, until
the dinosaurs come, and then maybe we'll meet dinosaur Daniel,
who actually, yeah, there, he's a big advocate for down fruit. Alright,

(23:23):
So in this universe, I guess, then his multiverse and
the ones that they interact with in this novel, I
guess they're probably recent quantum multi universes, right, because like,
if you think about it's kind of like a tree,
like the branches in a tree, Like it's where he's
probably talking about other universes in a very close branch
of the multiverse, because like I imagine, if you go

(23:45):
back to the beginning of time and start splitting the universe,
then those would be super duper different than our universe.
You might not get there might not even be an Earth,
that's right, Yeah, you wouldn't get a Milky Way or
an Earth, or even we might be in the middle
of a giant cosmic void instead of being in the
center of a superstructure. So you're right, he has an
Earth in each of these and the splitting happens sort
of after life begins on Earth. But again I don't

(24:08):
want to spoil too much. One of the fascinating elements
of the book is sort of tracing this back and
figuring out where the first branch happens. Interesting, all right,
And so there are other animals that develop intelligence and
that's all part of the plot to figure out how
that happened. Yeah, all right, Well let's get into your
interview with science fiction author Adrian Chaikovski, author of Doors

(24:28):
of Eden. So it's my great pleasure today to welcome
to the program Adrian Tchaikovsky, the author of Doors of
Eden as well as many other novels. He's the winner
of awards in both fantasy and science fiction writing, and
we're very glad to have him today on the program. Hello. Thanks, sure, so,
thank you very much for joining us. Before we get

(24:49):
started talking about your book, we'd like to get to
know you a little bit better as a writer. Can
you tell us a little bit more about your background,
how you got into writing science fiction. I know that
you have some sort of thing background in zoology and law,
and then before you wrote science fiction, you wrote a
series of well regarded fantasy novels. Yeah, I've got the
sort of background you get when you're rolling randomly on

(25:11):
some fairly banal tables. So yes, I've got I've got
my academic background as zoology and psychology. Um, it's not
the case that the zoology in the background led to
the zoologe in the writing. It's more the case that
they're both symptoms of an overriding fascination with the natural
world that I've had since a very young age. Um

(25:33):
I have. I did work in law for years. I
mean I've been a full time writer for about a
year and a half now, but before that i've been
I was a sort of fairly junior type of lawyer
for about ten years, UM, which came about because when
I was looking for a job, there was an opening
for a legal secretary, and because of the writing, I
had a very good typing speed. And that was basically
that I didn't really decide to become a lawyer at

(25:55):
any point, but there was on the job training available
and it just kind of happened beyond that. Actually, I
think the biggest influence for me becoming a writer has
probably been role playing games, which is my kind of
enduring obsession when I was certainly a teenager and kind
of still is, to be honest, But it turned out
to be a very very good sort of training ground

(26:18):
for designing worlds and designing characters and putting yourself behind
the kind of behind the eyes are very different sort
of people and creatures, and that certainly comes out clearly
and very well in your fantasy novels. What about the
transition to science fiction did you feel like you had
to leave some of that behind and build different kinds
of worlds. Was that a different muscle for you? Did

(26:38):
you feel like the same sort of expression. It's a
bit of a different challenge, certainly when I'm writing science
science fiction, because I mean, there's a kind of a
bit of a slider that you can play with when
you're when you're approaching depending on how science accurate you
wanted to be, you're you're adding extra constraints that you
don't have to work with. So I mean, despite its

(26:59):
subject of the children at time, is certainly intended to
be a fairly hard science book in that not in
that it's full of vastly complex mathematical equations, but in
that the science depicted there is at least intended to
be plausible and possible. So you don't have time traveling,
you don't have faster than light traveling, and of artificial gravity,
because I'm not convinced that things can actually be done

(27:22):
within the bounds of the universe were in and so
if I was approaching a book with those elements, I
would have to shift that slider off to the left
or whichever direction is is the less scientific end, But
within that it's it's not enormously different. It's really just
that you you are, rather than setting your own ground
rules at the start, you're coming into play with a

(27:42):
series of ground ules already there, which are of course
the real Those are the real world, so you have
to research those. And it doesn't mean that it's considerably
more work than just making it up and then ensuring
you're consistent with what you've made up. But there is
a there's a definite satisfaction to basically working with what
what the universe allows and then building something like, for example,

(28:03):
a civilization and giant spiders, and there was a lot
of fun to read about. Well, then let me ask
you a series of short questions that we ask all
of our science fiction author guests to sort of acquaint
you in that universe. First question is philosophical question about
star trek transporters. Is it your opinion that a star
trek transporter kills you and creates a clone somewhere else,

(28:25):
or that it actually transports your atoms to your destination.
The cynic in me definitely goes with the first one.
There's a glory that the China Navel book called Krack
and where this is a kind of a minor issue
that has explored in an absolutely glorious scene in the book.
But yeah, I mean it is, it's it's it's kind

(28:45):
of hard to justify. And I appreciate it's in this
series because it's a lot cheaper to show on the
screen than actually having things like all bit planet shuttles
and things like that. But um, yeah, that the technology
is frankly terrifying when you start to think through the
implications on it. So if you think it is something
that kills you in clones, you would you be willing
to step into a transporter. I honestly think that one

(29:06):
of the great lessons of modern civilization is there are
very few terrifyingly unawysed things people won't do. Just cut
down on the commute. That's probably too You probably become
totally commonplace to kill yourself and be cloned at your
workplace every day. Well, in the vein of science fiction

(29:27):
tech becoming real, what technology that you see in science
fiction would you most like see become actual reality something
we can actually use on a purely practical level. I
think teleportation, if it was reliable and freely available, would
make a colossal amount of difference portals even though, or

(29:48):
even even better. One of Peter Hamilton's recent book Salvation
is a world where basically portal technology to anyway you
can get your portal as you would do is it
is just perhaps commonplace. And you have examples where there's
one action scene going through a house where every room
in the house is in a different place and the
doorways are just portals to take you from continent continent

(30:11):
and even into other other planets, just like stepping through
a room. Yeah, that's seen reminding me a lot of
sort of Hyperion where they have a house with rooms
in different solar systems. So on the topic then of
transport across solar systems, what's your personal answer to the
Fermi paradox? That is why I haven't aliens visited Earth yet.
Do you think that they aren't out there, or there

(30:32):
aren't interested in nurse, or that is not long lived enough.
I believe that there's life. That life is probably not
that rare in the galaxy, in the universe. I mean
not that rare still means obviously there are vast tracts
of universe with very little life in it, because that
have the universe works. But I believe that intelligent life
such as might be sending signals that we could theoretically

(30:54):
pick up. It's probably a lot rarer. There's um The
Cohen and Stewart book Evolving an Alien Involving the Alien Sorry,
talks about intelligent and extelligent, and the idea of having
that great overarching, fabricated civilization that would allow you to
kind of extend your reach beyond the planet you evolve
on is probably quite difficult to do. And we see

(31:17):
lots of examples of intelligence in the natural world where
there's no obvious sort of even looking pressure for them
to go about inventing cars and mobile phones, because they're
doing fine with the level of tool use from the
level of problem solving that they've got. I think the
other problem is that alien life is alien. It's entirely
possible that it's out there and we've even run into

(31:38):
its signals and not realized that's what they are. Because
there's a lot of background noise in the universe. In
order to have any kind of meaningful search at all
with the kind of the setting program and so forth,
you effectively have to restrict your options so that you're
looking for something that's very human. Indeed, and obviously anything
that evolves on an alien planet is going to be
de facto less like us than the most alien thing

(32:01):
on this planet. Although the counter argument, I think is
that there's a potential of convergence because we all live
in the same universe, and maths and physics is probably universal,
and therefore we might be able to communicate conceivably with
something very alien at some level, purely because we have
a common language in the basic principles of the universe.

(32:23):
And there's a fascinating tension there because if we met aliens,
we might only be able to converse with aliens that
are similar to us, which means they might not have
that much more insight into math and physics, whereas we'd
love to talk to the aliens that thinks so differently
about the universe that their insights into how it works
are shattering and mind blowing. But that may effectively be impossible. Yeah,

(32:44):
as far as I can work out from someone entirely
outside the discipline. It's interesting looking at the way that
animal behavior studies have gone fairly recently, because for a
long time it was a bit of a desert, certainly
from when I was studying back in the in the nineties,
because the ominent paradigm was the idea that animals couldn't
really think or feel, and maybe humans could think and feel,

(33:05):
but that was still up in the air with some researchers,
but animals certainly didn't. You weren't allowed to anthropomorphizers, which
basically kind of killed off any attempt at at looking
at animal behavior in any kind of meaningful way. And
this is purely my personal people, and I will probably
annoy of ours number of Bavil scientists who will justifiably
tear me a strip, But certainly now there appears to

(33:28):
be a bit more of an open idea to all
that's actually try and understand why they're doing things from
the point of or they living creature rather than a
sophisticated robot basically. And the reason I'm saying this is
if we were to want to try and understand an alien,
even an alien that was desperately trying to make itself understood,
you kind of need practice. You need to be looking

(33:49):
at other minds and on. You know, we've got some
effectively some training wheels other minds here on Earth, and
we could conceivably, Yeah, we could, we could, and we
are I think now trying to work on understanding. I
see that the lesson is pay attention to your cat
because it could help you understand the aliens. Well, then
let's talk about your novel, because this brings us to

(34:10):
very similar themes. I really enjoyed reading Doors of Eden, congratulations,
and the novel features sort of multiple parallel worlds, which
is a familiar concept in science fiction. But you introduced
a couple of very clever and new elements exploring how
intelligence might develop differently in each of these parallel worlds,
and how that intelligence could potentially control and bridge those worlds. So,

(34:32):
first I want to ask you what gave you the
idea to use this concept in your novel. Did you
start from the science concept and try to build a
story around it, or was there a story you wanted
to tell that needed sort of this mechanism very much
the first basically I wanted for quite a while to
write a big, sort of speculative evolution book. There was

(34:52):
a convention I was at years ago in London where
they had a very good speculatory revolution track of talks,
and they had some of big names in the business
in Dougal Dixon and themo Customer and so forth, to
discuss just various sort of speculative world that put together
and how they had thought through the biology and so forth.
And I've avoid been fascinated by pale intelligion, particularly things

(35:16):
like I really enjoyed Steven J. Gould's book Wonderful Life
and his slightly off the wall exploration of the Burgess
Shale fauna and things like that, and the possibility that
he raises there that there's no the evolutionary course of
life on this planet is in no way re ordained,
and it's not even necessarily that well the best thing

(35:36):
one At any given stage, there's a lot of chance,
and it could have at any given point it could
have gone completely differently, and we could be sitting here
as the end result of a completely different evolutionary train.
And that's kind of what I wanted to explore in
the book. And then, of course, you know, that's the
under arching story that the the human scale plot then
gets kind of built up around. But really the heart

(35:59):
of it is the kind of experiments in speculative evolution
and just thinking through balancing things going differently with the
kind of rules and principles that we at least think
that would apply to revolution under any circumstances. And it
seems to be something of a theme in your other novels,
Children or Time and Children are Ruined. These examples are

(36:21):
sort of varied evolution, intelligence arising in spiders or an
octopi or and so. Do you think that intelligence is
sort of inevitable and a million parallel universes you would
get intelligence on Earth in some significant fraction of them,
or do you think that any species is essentially capable
of it? I mean, I suppose the key point for

(36:42):
me as a writer's intelligence is narratively useful. If all
of that had gone on without intelligence, then it still
can be a very interesting piece of speculative evolution, and
it doesn't plug very well into any kind of human
level narrative if you have worlds and worlds without anything.
And I mean whenever you see these kind of broad
takes on sort of multiple strands of evolution and so forth,

(37:04):
I mean, there's a book I read recently by Daniel
Benson call Junction, which does it with a number of
different eight completely alien worlds where you get to see
the kind of what they've come up with, and there
isn't intelligence is that is not universal. In fact, it's
almost not there at all. But there is at least
one example, and you always I think in box by
one example where you meet something that is obviously thinking

(37:26):
in some way and building in some way and doing
something that brings it to that kind of human level,
even if it is very alien. Indeed, I mean, in
all honesty, and this is very much going by the
Cohen and Stewart's metric of all, look what has happened
in the past before people, before kind of early hominids,
there's no real suggestion that intelligence had turned up. And

(37:49):
it may have done, and it may just not aun
less new traces. If if you had intelligence that didn't
lead itself to a kind of a manufacturing base and
a building building of tools and structures and so forth,
in the same way that some of my intelligence and
doors of Eden don't lend themselves to building things like that,
we wouldn't know and you know, several of the civilizations
I post it wouldn't necessarily leave any kind of fossil

(38:10):
trace that you would identify as intelligence. But there's certainly
no evidence that intelligence has turned up in the half
a billion years of life that we've got a record for,
and therefore I suspected probably isn't inevitable at all. And
there is, obviously, when we're talking about the Fermi paradox earlier,
there's always that rather dour idea that well, when it

(38:32):
turns up, it basically then just accelerates until it destroys
itself and knocks herself backed down into a point where
it isn't really a civilization anymore. And that also, I mean,
I kind of didn't give that idea much credence where
I first heard it decades ago, and now I'm looking
at thinking, yeah, okay, I see the point there that
that does seem to be what we're on the right doing.

(38:53):
So fine, all right, Well I want to talk about
that some more with our guest, Adrian Shakosky, But first
let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back and we're

(39:15):
talking to Adrian Chaikowski, science fiction author of the book
Doors of Eden. The other sort of element, structural element
of your novel is this concept of many worlds and
having parallel universes and so you made a comment earlier
about being limited in science fiction to sort of writing
to the rules of our universe. Is it critical to

(39:36):
you when you write your science fiction that you follow
the rules of our universe, that you that the physics
be plausible, or do you feel free to sort of
create your own physics and then followed those rules? Yeah,
I think. I mean, I live in I live in
a kind of morbid dread all sort of picked up
my actual scientists forgetting the science wrong. And I think
there's if you're writing something and you have the science

(39:57):
role and someone reading the book understands that, then that's
going to kick him out of the immersion for the
reading experience. Now, there's always going to be a level
of stuff where again I don't know the questions to ask,
and I'm getting it wrong. With that real and knowing
I'm getting it wrong, but I kind of fellished my
duty as a writer to get it as right as
I possibly can and therefore keep the number of disappointed

(40:21):
scientifically minded readers to a minimum. I guess, well, that's
very kind of you. As a physicist. I certainly enjoy
reading scientist fiction novels where they are consistent with the
rules that they lay down. So if they create new
laws of physics, that's wonderful, that's creative, But then it
troubles me if then they depart from those in order

(40:42):
to get some story effect that they'd like to achieve,
regardless of the rules that they've set for themselves. Yeah,
I mean, my current project is more of it on
the space opera side. So the kind of the physics
slider is set off towards where I can kind of
I'm inventing stuff to do with kind of sort of
hyperspace travel and that kind of thing. But it's a

(41:03):
lot like building a magic system from a fantasy world.
And what I mean exactly as you say, it's all
to do with you've got to be consistent and you
can't suddenly have all. In this case, I can suddenly
do this unless it's been well foreshadowed within the kind
of a sistem you said. So then let me ask
you about the science in this novel. There's the many
worlds or the multiverse in your view, is the multiverse

(41:26):
something that's real in our universe? I do not have
any kind of educated stand point as to to make
a call on that one. In the real universe. I
suspect I do not understand the physics and the maths
enough to say. But to me it seems like I
don't think there needs to be one. I mean, it
comes down to a bit of an Okhm's Raither thing

(41:46):
in that I appreciate that every quantum event kind of
has sort of branching parles off from it, but kind
of uncertainty aside. It seems to me that each you know,
there is a resolution each time, and the resolution probably
takes one path rather than constantly splitting into a multiplicity
of of universes. Every kind of fraction of a second

(42:12):
that the universes is universe is in existence. It's a
very I mean from a human narrative point of view,
it's a very attractive idea to have an effect. What
would be an infinity if that makes any sense of
university to choose from, because you could always find a
universe where some thumb particular version of event has happened.
And of course we're looking at events on a human level,

(42:34):
So you know an event where this will went a
different way or where that that happened, and you could
maybe you could travel there and then maybe you would
you get all these TV shows like Sliders or or
so forth, where you're going through all these parallels where
different things have happened, and that it's it's a it's
a great basis for a story, but the kind of

(42:54):
the scientist in me kind of shies away from the
narrative convenience of its all. So then tell me that
your prices in coming over the concept of this connection
between intelligence and these multiple worlds, how one intelligence one
of these worlds could control or even crack through into
other universes. Um Well, weirdly enough, this is something I'm

(43:17):
getting from Brian Cox, who I suspect will be horrified
to be associated with anything I think like this. But
this is obviously Broncox the scientist rather than Brincox the actor.
So he was talking about he was specifically actually think
talking about ghosts or something like that, but he was
talking about the the the way that in a absurn
they're kind of breaking things, the universe down to its

(43:37):
most fundamental bits so that there isn't effectively there's no
room left for ghosts. If ghosts existed and had any
kind of effect on the actual universe, it should be
detectable because there would be particles or energy or some
kind of ghostly fingerprint on what was left there. And
if you break things right down and there's nothing that's ghostly,
then there are no ghosts. And that was he that's

(43:59):
his kind of philosophy of that. And so it struck
me that if I've got this set up where there
are these multiple timelines existing kind of right next door
to each other, and if, as the book posits, there
are kind of weaknesses and points where they can intersect,
then if you had a sufficiently advanced technology, you pick
it up. And that's kind of what certainly were they

(44:20):
one of the more the more important sort of timeline
cultures in the book. They have a technology that's entirely
based around these kind of junctures between the world because
they were as the evolved, they became sensitive to them.
And again it's another it's a bit like the way
that there's if I've got this right, the biochemistry of

(44:41):
photosynthesis kind of exploit quantum mechanics to a certain extent
to work more efficiently. And if you had a if
you had a world with ghosts, as you had a
world with parallel world or anything like that that actually
was there, things would evolve to exploit it. If you
had ghosts, and ghosts could affect the world in anyway

(45:03):
by by moving things on a table or wrapping on
the walls. Ghosts are therefore a source of energy. You'd
have a thing that fed on ghosts if there were ghosts,
and just just the same way. You know, if in
one of these worlds, because you've got these these parallels around,
there's ascension. Species evolves that is sensitive to the places
where these worlds interact, and then that becomes a place. Well,

(45:24):
that's their energy freelance that they kind of build their
society on, and that kind of thing. So if ghosts exist,
or parallel worlds exist in our universe, you'd expect particle
physicists to discover them first. But also I would I
would expect evolution to have discovered them hundreds of millions
of years ago. I would expect there to be some
kind of single celled organism that flourished in the presence

(45:46):
of ghosts because there's energy. Because you know, if ghosts
can do a thing, make a noise, lower the temperature,
rattlesome chains, that is energy in the system, and energy
in the system is a lunch for something you would
have extreme a file ghost bacteria, is what I'm saying.
That's fascinating. Well, let me ask you one last question

(46:06):
about your portrayal of scientists and physicists. I find that
scientists and science fiction are often portrayed as dangerous, blindly
following their search for the truth, oblivious to the consequence, etcetera. Now,
in your novel, I really enjoyed that your physicist k
exploring the multiverse has a bit more nuance to her
approach though as a scientist. Thank you for that. Can

(46:26):
you tell us a little bit about how you saw
her internal struggles between the desire to know and understand
and also the desire to keep her world and her
loved ones safe. Um, yeah, I mean it's I mean,
I kind of done. As I just read their Children
of Time Children of Time will know, I've kind of
done the more traditional mad scientists with Avon occurred, although

(46:47):
she's not the bad guy at any point, particularly, I mean,
she's a bit wrapped up in our own desires and ambitions,
but she's certainly not the villain of the piece. With Kay,
she's one who has I mean, unlike unlike Evona, and
I guess she's someone who's lived in the in our
real world. She's from here and now this with a

(47:08):
writing headache I'm probably not going to repeat, but yes,
the large show of the book is set in the
modern world in roughly the present day, although obviously written
before all of this business. And she's someone who's lived
her entire life with a theorem which has been completely
impossible to prove because effectively she doesn't have the missing piece,

(47:29):
which is the whole parallel world's business. And it's a
theory that's based on some things I've kind of peripherally
picked up about the idea of particular means of encrypting
information and decrypting information and things like that, and and
also kind of based on flat land, which is actually

(47:50):
something I've used a couple of times in my writing,
the idea that if you are able to kind of
a cent or higher dimension in the purely sort of
g M trical sense of dimensions, it will give you
a colossal amount of freedom and influence on a lower
dimension world because of the way you wouldn't be bound
by it, and thence you could get in places and

(48:12):
access places and look into places that would be completely
hidden to someone restricted by the recommentional number of dimensions,
and so that's kind of I've extended that to having
a dimension which is the access of parallel world, and
obviously there are Monday again, it's it's like the evolution.
There are mundane applications to that, such as in this case.

(48:33):
It completely makes a nonsense of any attempt at data
security because you can always get to the data. They
made for a lot of fun twists in the book. Wonderful. Well,
thanks very much for answering all of our questions. I
would love to ask you also about your future project.
You mentioned you're working on space opera again. Is there
anything you can tell us about that or is it
all under wraps announcement of recently just kind of the

(48:56):
main stick is it's set quite a long in the
future where there is a humanity has a starfaring civilization.
There are other species around with star faring civilizations at
roughly the same level, which is again a narratively convenient conceit.
And the mechanics of getting from star to star involved
going through a kind of an hyper space called in space,

(49:19):
and probably there are things that come out of on
space and that are kind of natives there and some
of the things are called architects. You know about the
size of the moon. And what they do is find
planets that people are other sentient life live on and
turn them into avant garde sculptures, which is fatal for
everyone living on it. And they've done this to Earth,

(49:39):
which is what you see at the very beginning of
the book, and they've done it to a number of
viewer planets. And then they went away because we were
able to contact them and say we're here, And as
soon as they realized that people were actually there, they
just went away. And then the rumors have started about
a couple of generations later that actually they didn't go
away all that much. And may you be very in

(50:00):
fact back I see. Well, that sounds like a fascinating concept.
I can't wait to read it. All right. Well, thanks
again for coming out our program. It's very very kind
of you to invite me. All Right, pretty cool interview.
And what was your takeaway from talking to the Dream
Well that was super fun for me because I've been
a big fan of his work for a long time.
I really liked a few things about the interview. I

(50:21):
liked his acknowledgement that alien life is probably really really alien.
You know, that it could be out there and it
could just be like too hard to talk to. And
that's sort of satisfying in one way, because we want
to meet alien life because we hope to discover other
ways of living. But then they'd be frustrating because it'd
be really hard to figure out how to talk to them.

(50:43):
So I thought that was really realistic. And I also
liked that he, you know, respected the rules of our universe.
He wants to write a book exploring how things could
happen in our universe because he didn't feel confident inventing
rules for another universe. I thought that was pretty cool,
and he's done a great job of imagining, you know,
other crazy things that could happen in our universe without

(51:05):
changing any of the laws of physics. Right. Yeah, did
he have any regrets about non including dragons. I didn't
say there were no dragons. Spoiler alert, spoiler alert. And
the other really interesting comment he made was that he
doesn't think it's necessary for intelligence to arise, which I
think is fascinating because in the book that you hear

(51:27):
me talk about in the interview, he has all these
parallel multiverses in which intelligence arises in all sorts of
different creative ways, but he doesn't think it's necessary. He
thinks we could have had Earth and life, a multicellular
life and just all have it be kind of dumb. Yeah,
it's totally possible, right, Like, if you wipe humans out
right now, the Earth would keep going. The Earth would

(51:48):
keep going. And it's not clear whether intelligent life is inevitable.
There's been a lot of fascinating studies recently about how
life began sort of quickly on Earth, but an intelligent
life became sort of late. And that's the us that
life might be inevitable, but intelligent life might be rare.
But then again, you know we're basing that on just
one example, which is why it's so much fun to
think about all the other possibilities and all the other

(52:11):
examples that live in Adrian Sharkovsky's multiverse, and actual intelligence
in an intelligent species might be even rarer yet to be.
Maybe we can tap into the multiverse podcast network and
listen to that dinosaur podcast for better jokes. Maybe we'll
get better jokes from them. That's where all our best
jokes come from. I see you've been talking to dinosaur

(52:34):
Daniel having you, I'm plagiarizing all of his good ideas.
When you do work together. How do you high five?
That's a sore point. Okay, his little arms don't reach
very high, so I try not to make fun of it.
All right, Well, thanks for joining us. I hope that
you enjoyed then and got you to think about all
the different ways that our universe could have played out
and how special it is that we're here. And if

(52:54):
you have a science fiction book that you'd like us
to break down and interview the author, please send us
a suggestion to questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Thanks for joining us, See you next time. Thanks for listening,
and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained the universe is

(53:15):
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from
my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.