August 27, 2020 • 50 mins
Daniel and Jorge talk about the science of the novel "The Best of All Possible Worlds" by Dr. Karen Lords.
https://karenlord.wordpress.com/the-best-of-all-possible-worlds/
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, did you know the difference between psychic and
physics is only one letter? I feel like I should
have sensed that. Well, let's try what number am I
thinking of? I gotta go with forty two. No, not
even closed colder zero point forty two. Um. Starting to
(00:28):
think the difference between psychic and physics is a lot
more than one letter. You know, after all these years
working together, sometimes I still have no idea what you're thinking.
And that's probably for the best. Hi am more handmade
(00:54):
cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel.
I'm a particle physicist and not particle psychics. I mean,
you can read the minds of particles, or you can
predict what particles will do. I can do neither, actually,
and I don't think either of them are possible in
our universe. I guess it makes sense to be a
psychic of not particles, because everything's made out of particles.
(01:15):
That's true. And I noticed that a lot of psychics
tend to like to use physics like sort of pseudo
terms in their you know, marketing. I once sat next
to somebody on an airplane and told me she was
a quantum psychic. Really, it was like, that's better than
all those classical psychics out there, you know. I mean
she was lying and not lying at the same time.
(01:35):
She was both full of it and full of it
at the same time. Well, I guess that that's better
than being a Newtonian psychic. But welcome to our podcast
Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
Heart Radio in which we take the whole universe and
try to insert it into your brain. We're not relying
on your psychic powers. Instead, we are taking you on
an audio tour of everything that's incredible, that's amazing, that's
(01:59):
mind blowing about the universe. We think that wonder belongs
to everybody, that your curiosity is just as deep and
powerful and as important as those of us toiling away
in the scientific trenches, and so we want to answer
your questions and help you explore all the incredible stuff
in our universe. Daniel, are you saying that we're all
connected mentally? You knowing we are, I hope, all living
(02:21):
in the same universe and working on the same science. Right,
So in that sense, yes, we do have a shared
mental challenge and including our curiosity about the world. About
the universe, about the cosmos, and so in this podcast,
we like to talk about all the amazing and incredible
things out there for us to discover and to learn about,
but we also like to kind of sometimes think about
what could be or what might be in the far future. Yeah,
(02:44):
because a big part of exploring the universe, about satisfying
your curiosity is tapping into your creativity to thinking about
what could be out there were kinds of ideas. Should
we be thinking about what is the future of the
universe and of humanity? Yeah, because you know, sometimes I
think people associate signs not with creativity, or they think
(03:05):
they're the two of them are separate, But actually sciences
are very creative. I mean they have kind of have
to be when facing the unknown. They have to come
up with possible ideas of what could be or what
might explain what we're seeing out there. And so today's
episode is another one of our series of interviews with
science fiction authors. That's right, and we like to tap
into a broad set of creative minds out there. Everybody
(03:27):
has a different idea for what the future might hold,
or how we might react to it, or what life
would be like under various circumstances, which hey is important
because if we're designed in the future, if we are
steering the fate of our humanity, we should think about
what it would be like to live under various futuristic regimes,
even if they are a little trippy. So to the
on the podcast, we'll be tackling the science fiction universe
(03:52):
of Karen Lord. That's right. Karen Lord has written a
wonderful book. It's called The Best of All Possible world
Olds and I recently had a chance to read it
and to chat with her about So the Best of
All Possible world So it's definitely fiction. I feel like
we're definitely not living our best sells right now. Well,
you know, there's dystopian fiction, and then there's optimistic fiction,
(04:13):
and the opposite of dystopian utopian fiction. Utopian fiction. Yeah. Absolutely.
I heard a wonderful interview actually by Kim Stanley Robinson,
a famous science fiction author, and he felt like dystopian
fiction was sort of lazy because it just makes you
feel better about our world than the world in the
show you're watching or the novel you're reading. And he
prefers to write utopian fiction because it inspires us to
(04:36):
try and make our world better. I see regular fiction
is more like comfort fiction, whereas maybe it should be
more like fomo fiction exactly, should be like, look what
they have achieved. Everybody in this novel has healthcare and
the house and all this great stuff. Surely we can
do that. Look how green their grass they've genetically engineered
(04:57):
to be. That's amazing. That's right. Sometimes you just want
to keep up with the science fiction. Jones is right,
and there are definitely things we can do to improve
our world, and sometimes it's the role of science fiction
to think about that. So Karen Lord is a science
fiction author, and she hails from Barbados. That's where you
conducted the Enemy. You didn't go there, but that's where
she was. That's right. The budget for trips to Barbados
(05:19):
was set to zero for some reason. I'm not quite
sure your chat, Daniel, and this is your chance to
cook the books and get a vacation. No. So I
chatted with her over the internet, as I always do.
But I got a little bit of the taste of
Barbados because you could hear the sound of it in
the background. Wow. Just doubles as an m m R.
What's the right s mr SMR. That's right. I'm not
(05:43):
a fan of acronym. That's funny you said that because
I heard that some folks listen to our podcast as
they go to sleep because our voices soothed, not because
we lack excitement in our because before That's right, So
sit straight up and listen to this important podcast interview.
Stop falling asleep, Wake up, Wake up. And Karen Hard
(06:05):
has an interesting background. She's also sort of an academic
kind of like you. Definitely, she has a couple of degrees,
including a doctoral degree I read in the sociology of religion. Yes,
she has a really eclectic and fascinating background. I mean
she has an undergraduate degree in physics. Let's like really
set her science, you know, in the appropriate context. But
(06:25):
then she also has degrees in sociology and religion and history,
and so it's really fascinating and you can definitely feel
it in her writing. Her writing is different from the
kinds of writing I've read before. So it's really a
pleasure for me to sort of branch out and read
something different. And it's different in sort of two ways.
One is that it really focuses on what it's like
(06:46):
to be there, and the interpersonal connections and how society
is built and you know, how people treat each other
in this new context where life is very different from
our own. More about relationships kind of yeah, and what
it would be like to live there. It's less about
like how do you build this kind of starship and
traverse the universe? And more like, well, what's it like
to sit next to somebody for sixty years on a
(07:07):
spaceship and argue with them about it makes the coffee
or whatever? You know? I feel like maybe have a
good idea of that. Daniel han't hand um. And also
it's quite different because it's really infused with her knowledge
of her culture. This is the second book she wrote.
The first book she wrote was actually a retelling of
some of her cultural mythology in a science fiction content.
(07:31):
And so you'll see as we talk about the details
of this book that actually blends mythology and science fiction
a little bit. And she starts from mythology and then
takes it forward using science fiction, which is quite fast.
Is it kind of like explaining mythology as science fiction
or just taking it further? It's just sort of taking
it further. It's like you don't have to explain the
beginning of the universe and the whole context of how
(07:51):
things were made, because you can just sort of assume
mythological origin for things, but then going forward everything has
to follow the physical rules of the universe. So it's
a really fascinating blend. Interesting alright. So her book is
called The Best of All Possible World, and a big
part of it is this idea of psychic powers and telepathy,
and so we were sort of wondering what people think
(08:14):
of telepathy out there. Yeah, I was curious if people
thought if somehow in the far future, humans might evolve
this kind of power, and so I asked a bunch
of volunteers on the Internet to speculate baslessly on this
possible future scenario. And if you'd like to participate in
baseless speculation, please write to us two questions at Daniel
and Jorge dot com. I think you just renamed our
(08:35):
podcast Daniel Baseless Speculation with Daniel and Jorge. That's the subtitle, alright,
So think about it for a second before you listen
to these answers. If someone asks you if you thought
humans would ever evolve telepathy, what would you answer. Here's
what people had to say. I believe that it's possible,
but it would be thousands or millions of years from now.
(08:59):
I think at that point we would qualify as a
very different species. I think it's definitely not impossible. UM
or something that will take a lot of time to develop,
maybe like thousand or maybe a million years time humans
we have developed a chip or something that we could
implant in humans UM to use for telepathy. I do
(09:19):
not believe that humans will ever evolve telepathic powers evolved
as kind of a loaded word there. Evolution takes place
over many, many generations, so that kind of thing would
taken extremely long time for any kind of evolution. Could
be possible that we could a genetically engineer some sort
(09:41):
of heightened intelligence, heightened brain abilities. Humans have already evolved
telepathic powers. I don't want to brag, but at Burning
Man one year, there was a girl about fifty yards
away riding her bike away from me, wearing a bikini
and a cowboy hat, and in my head I said,
(10:03):
please come talk to me, and she turned and looked
at me, turned her bike, rode over park next to me,
got off her bike and gave me a hug. Boom.
I wish I had telepathic powers to know the answer
to that question, but I'm pretty sure science will come
to prove that that just cannot happen. I don't think
we could evolve telepathic powers unless we embraced human enhancement
(10:26):
and achieved it through something like cyberessic augmentations. Keyword here
is evolved, And I would say to that no, because
I don't see how telepy telepathy would in any way
aid any human survival and reproduction. However, I could imagine
us using technology to develop this ability, but in terms
(10:47):
of natural evolution, now, I don't think so. I kind
of hope not, because part of what's so fun is
figuring out when someone else was thinking, not knowing it.
All right, now, Daniel, did these people record their answers
and send to you or did they just beam it
straight to your brain? I am in tune with the
whole universe, man, so I didn't even need to reach out.
It just like just set downs, free streamed all these
(11:10):
universes just speaking to me. You know, these were all
emailed to me over the internet. All right, Well, pretty cool.
A lot of people seem to have a lot of
optimism about this, Like nobody said it's impossible, and you know,
they think that maybe one day you could happen. Yeah,
people feel like there's obviously potential out there for all
sorts of crazy stuff to happen, that it's not physically
(11:32):
impossible in our universe. And then there's a whole other
thread of people wondering if it's better done with technology.
Right right, I guess there's two ways that we can
evolve telepathy. One is through evolving our brains biologically, and
one is is kind of augmenting our brain. Yeah, and
I was curious what you thought about these various options
that we're going to dig into, giving your background in
(11:53):
engineering and of course in bio mimicry and so, so
how you saw these various options going forward. Right, So
let's get into his book. Um, So the title again
is the best of All Possible world And so, Daniel,
what's the basic premise of it? So the basic premise
is that the book takes place in a sort of
our universe and in our galaxy, but humans or human
(12:14):
like aliens are distributed through the galaxy. It's sort of
a setting like Star Trek the next Generation. They are
all these worlds and they're all populated by human like creatures.
You know, they have two legs, and they have a head,
and they speak various languages, etcetera. But they have mostly
ten fingers. But there are big differences. Some of them
are much taller and stronger and faster, some of them
(12:36):
are smaller. Some of them have telepathic or other psionic pounders.
Now do they say that they all came from Earth
or people on Earth came from some other source? So
she doesn't describe this in detail in the book. She
leaves it a bit of a mystery, which I sort
of like, I like being dropped into a universe and
not just like having it explained to me. I like
figuring it out for myself. And for me, it was
(12:57):
a mystery I was trying to solve while I was
reading the book, Like is this the far future where
humans have spread through the galaxy and then evolved into
these various forms because of their separation, or is this
some alternative universe where you know, humans evolved in parallel
and lots of different places. And so I was trying
to figure that out through the book, and I never
actually put my finger on and you'll hear in the interview,
(13:17):
I asked her about that very question. And it's kind
of interesting because you see you wrote here that Earth
is embargoed. It means that we're we're like blocked or canceled.
They canceled, that they canceled Earth. Yes, so the book
takes place from the point of view of one of
these human like aliens, and in the book, nobody's allowed
to go to Earth and Earth is like embargoed, Do
you know, allowed to to interact with Earth because the
(13:38):
folks who live there are not very well behaved? What
exactly we were on a timeout? Yeah, precisely, So nobody's
allowed to visit us or you trade with us or
communicate with us, but like Earth links know that they're
embargoed and canceled, you know, or did we do something?
And no, we didn't. It's not dealt with directly in
(13:59):
the book. And then I asked her about it in
the interview, and it's actually her personal explanation for maybe
our current situation, you know, the Fermi paradox, Like if
the galaxy is filled with lifelike planets, how become nobody
is talking to us, nobody has visited, we've overseen anybody.
She thinks that maybe because we're on a time out.
What people people are avoiding us. Boy, So she wrote
(14:22):
this a little bit as likely, Hey, maybe this is
what's happening in our universe, that there are aliens out there,
but they're choosing not to. We don't shave up, we
won't get invited to the party, that's right. And so
in this world that she's built, you have all these
different kinds of human like aliens, and they have all
these different powers. Some of them can read minds, some
(14:43):
of them can influence what you think. They can do
like emotional control and feel things or coerce you into
doing things. It's really quite interesting. And then she builds,
you know, a realistic society. She builds workplaces and relationships
and all sorts of stuff and takes you through really
what it would be like to live in that world.
I guess my biggest question would be how do you
(15:05):
trust anyone? You know? Like, how do you trust that
they're not reading your mind or influencing you or making
you say some things. It's hard and it really changes
the nature of relationships. And she has really interesting examples
in there about like abusive marriages where one person controls
the other or you know, romances and what that's like
and infidelity, and so it's really an interesting deep dive
(15:27):
into what it would be like to live in that society.
And that's what I meant earlier, that she's really thought
carefully about the experience of a person in that situation.
And I'm always really impressed when somebody pulls that off,
because you have to do too hard things at once.
One is imagine what it's like to be a completely
different kind of person with a different kind of brain,
and also make it accessible to us, right, I mean,
(15:50):
if you imagine what it's like to live as a
weird o blabo alien, it would be totally incomprehensible to us.
You couldn't write a novel, you know, from the point
of view of something that thinks fun to mentally different.
So you have to sort of like bridge that gap
to make it accessible to like, you know, the readers,
us actual human beings. Right. It's not an easy thing
to do, you know, from a literary construct point. You
(16:10):
depend translate in a way a whole different way of thinking. Yeah,
so they play mind games with each other and we're
the ones getting a time out. Who's making these decisions? Yeah,
well you know, the ones with the power are the
ones making the decisions. Um. But as you read it,
you'll also find that these characters, even though they're not
technically human or they're very different from us, their society
(16:32):
is a lot in common with ours. You know, they
build bureaucracy to have conflicts. The book begins with a
really devastating act of war and genocide, and so then
there's politics and factionalism and you know, like workplace romance
and all sorts of stuff. So it's very relatable and unfortunately,
I think you know what. Fortunately, all right, well let's
(16:54):
get into the science of this novel, The Best of
All Possible World by Karen Lord, and that's get into
your interview with Karen Lord. But first let's take a
quick break. All Right, we're talking about science fiction author
Karen Lord and her book The Best of All Possible World.
(17:16):
And so it's it's a world where everyone has psychic
powers in a way, Daniel, And so what's the science
of it? How do you explain the psychic ability that's
pervasive among all these aliens species. Yes, so one question
is just like physically or biologically, is it possible to
evolve this kind of ability? I mean, evolution essentially explores
random mutations and chooses the ones that are best fit
(17:38):
for the environment. But it can't do things that are impossible.
You can't spontaneously evolve the ability to travel faster than
the speed of light, right because it breaks the laws
of physics, or like evolve the anti gravity or maybe
or maybe it's called legs Daniel. But you know, you
can't break the laws of physics even with evolution. But
you know, fundamentally, I don't think there is anything physics
(18:01):
wise that would be preventing us from communicating more directly
brain to brain. Interesting. We have a lot of ways
to translate the thoughts in our brain into information and
transmit them, so we recreate the thoughts in somebody else's brain.
We're doing one right now. I'm boiling down my thoughts
into these sound waves and sending them into your brain
through your device, through the internet, you know, through the
error in cell phone signals, and then into my ears
(18:24):
and into my brain precisely. And so that's a little indirect,
and I guess telepathy would just be like somewhat more direct.
You know. Imagine your brain broadcasts something invisible instead of
using it through sound waves we use electromagnetic radiation or something.
It's not inconceivable to imagine evolving a new part of
the brain that can transmit e M waves because, after all,
(18:46):
you know, the brain is a bunch of wires, right
that you use electromagnetic signals to interact. It's basically a
little circuit. Wait, so you're talking not not through tech
but through actual biology. Do you think there's a way
to have a biological like radio transmitter and receiver. Yeah,
I think there's no physics objection to having a biological
radio antenna in your head. Yeah, I guess, yeah, maybe,
(19:08):
I guess. You know, your body could learn to I
don't know what, like make an antenna inside of your head,
like accumulate metals in a certain way. And you don't
even necessarily need metals, right to generate a signal radio signal,
you just need a current current that's oscillating and then
to be receptive to it. And so there are lots
of ways to do that, and lots of things that
(19:29):
are conductive. You know, water for example, is very conductive,
and so there you could certainly engineer if you were
going to sit down and design it. There's no physics
or engineering principle I'm aware of that would prevent it
from happening. The whole separate question of whether it would evolve,
whether it's the benefit to it and the energy use
you know, makes it worth it, whether there you could
(19:49):
find yourself in an environment that would need that, and
evolution would provide the selective pressure to encourage that. But
from a physics point of view, I don't see why
you couldn't have telepathy. Wow, yeah, I guess that there
are studies of birds, right, birds who can sort of
sense the banetic field of the earth, and they do
it by repredating some you know, some metal inside of
(20:10):
the brain reading the right currents, I think, right, yeah, yeah,
And this is different from other things, you know, like telekinesis,
the ability to move objects with your mind. Like, I
don't see a physical basis for that at all, you know,
sending messages back and forth emailing brain to brain. Yeah, totally,
we could in theory evolve that using our brain. I see.
(20:31):
So telepathy yes, so like kinesis no, But that's the
phone that's the more fun, because you want to tap
on somebody's shoulder from the other side of the room
and trick them. I just be like, if you're telekinetic,
the best thing you can do with it is move yourself.
You can fly, right right, of course? I wonder telekinesis
is basically flying, yeah, Or you could just sit on
(20:52):
your couch and clean your room at the same time.
You could, yes, technically, would you though? It brings the
whole new challenge to being lazy? Right Like you do
you think it feels like an effort to lie in
bed and clean your room without moving your body? Well,
I always wondering, you know, because these things take energy, right, Like,
even if you're theopathic, you would need to You would
(21:13):
be burning a lot of energy to send these signals
out probably, And and I don't know what it would
be like from the evolutionary point of view, whether evolving
this thing would be efficient or not. But you know,
you could imagine some scenario where it's really crucial to
survival because you can't communicate using sound for whatever, they
find themselves on a really noisy planet or or something,
(21:34):
and you have to evolve some alternative way to communicate
or in response to some you know, predator or something.
I mean, you can imagine vary scenarios, but it would
take a lot of time, right, Like evolution takes generations
and generations and generations. So this is not like by
this is like far in the future of humanity, or
if humanity exists on different planets, they would have to
(21:54):
have split a long time ago in order to have
a chance to have this court of evolution. All right, So,
but then it's also possible to get telempathy through technology. Yeah,
I think, you know, engineering will probably beat biology in
the race. They're like, if you wanted to design and
implement something to make it possible to send a message
without talking to just think it. I think it's not
(22:15):
that far in the future to be able to do that.
We have the basic elements of that, I think already
in hand, right, No, I mean we have it right now.
I don't know if you've seen those studies or those
experiments for people who are like paraplegic, they put a
brain sensor under in their cortex and they send you know,
spatial signals and they are able to sort of move
(22:36):
a robot arm around. It's like, that's happening right now. Yeah,
there's sort of two steps you need there. One is
like to control an external device to use your brain
signals to send information right to some prosthetic for example,
And you're right, we can do that. You can train
your brain to send the right signals to control a prosthetic,
which is amazing. And the other side of it is
(22:58):
to interpret messages in your brain, like to receive messages.
And people have been doing this already with like cochlear implants.
They attached a fake ear to somebody's head and just
like zap it into the brain the nerve, and the
brain learns to interpret those messages as sound. Yeah, they
did that with the like retinel I implants too, And
so you know, there's a lot of steps between here
(23:20):
and you know, brain email your friend, but it's there.
But the technology is there. The technology is there, and
a lot of you know, complicated signal processing, like how
do you take what's in somebody's brain interpret in a
way to send it out and all this kind of stuff.
But there's really fascinating studies they've done there. They did
one with movie trailers where they showed people a bunch
(23:40):
of movie trailers and image their brains while they were
doing it. Yeah, and then they tried to train and
network to guess which movie trailer they were watching just
from the brain image, and they could totally tell. They
could totally tell you really probably just depending on the
voice of the narrator in the world they all start
with in or the voice changes a little bit. Yeah,
(24:03):
but so I think that technologically, you know, I don't
know how many years away we are, you should say,
because you're the engineer. But I don't see an obstacle
to making this happen. If we wanted to know, if
you're willing to drill into your brain and add some
sort of prosthetic device to your brain, then yeah, you
could probably tap into the Internet with your mind. Yeah.
I don't know if you noticed, but I actually worked
in the lab after my PhD. I was a research
(24:26):
scientist at a neural prosthetic lab. I wasn't aware that
did you work on the human phase? I just tell
people I worked in the little base port that in
the matrix where you insert the connector that that was
my thing. I see, So you're actively working for our
AI overlords. I was. That's why. That's why I quit it.
Until they like the matrix. You pull the plug. I
(24:49):
pulled the plug. Yeah, But you know, the hard part
in all of this is actually your body rejects anything foreign,
So you can put implant in your brain, but after
a while, your body is going to be like, this
is not supposed to be here, and it it actually
like covers it in cells and scar tissue that makes
it unusable, and so they have to like pull it
out again, insert it again, or figure out one way
(25:11):
for either your body to accept it or for it
to kind of adapt to your body. Do those folks
have to take immuno suppressants forever um? Yeah? Probably, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well.
I also thought it was interesting, like how long have
people have been thinking about telepathy, Like is it a
new idea or an ancient one? And I was surprised
to learn that it's sort of a recent concept. The
(25:31):
idea of like sending messages invisibly burined brain sort of
appeared like about a hundred and fifty years ago. Really
was the first mention it. It was sort of in
the late eighteen hundreds when people realized that like X
rays and radio waves and invisible particles were actually real,
that you really could send invisible information, that we were
basically living in an invisible universe. It's constantly surrounded by
(25:55):
things happening around us. We weren't aware of that. They thought, well, oh,
maybe it's possible then to send information brain to brain.
And if you look at like the history of science fiction,
this kind of concept didn't appear in science fiction until
about the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds. But there
have been sort of like mystics, right, and mythology also
(26:15):
that must have you know, talked about this idea of
reading your mind or making you controlling you. Yeah, and
those people always have like special magic powers. But the
idea is that it entered, you know, sort of science
fiction across the threshold into like, maybe this is something
which could actually happen in the future for normal, regular
people once we realized that we were surrounded by these
(26:38):
invisible fields and particles that maybe we could learn to manipulate.
All right, well, let's get back to Karen's book, and
so what I guess, what's the basic story of the
book before we get into her interview. The basic story
of the book is that one of these planets with
human like aliens is devastated by an attack that wipes
out almost the entire species, and so refugees from that
planet then come to another world, and they have to
(26:59):
learn to sort of live on that planet and interact
with those folks. It's a lot of like clash of
cultures and acclamorization. It brings different kinds of aliens into
contact and conflict and have to learn to live together
and find a new home. So it really highlights in
a nice way the differences between them as to figure
out how to learn together and get to know each
other and have some romance, all right, some refugee romance,
(27:22):
some pan alien romance. Oh boy. All right. Well, let's
get into your interview with Karen Lord, author of the
Best of All Possible world and here it is. Well,
it's my absolute pleasure to welcome today to our program,
doctor Karen Lord, the author of today's featured book, The
Best of All Possible Worlds, and also the book Redemption
(27:45):
in Indico. Dr Lord, thank you very much for joining
us and welcome to our program. Thank you so much
for inviting me. First, we just like to get to
know you a little bit. Tell us how did you
get into science fiction writing. You have a sort of
impressive academic background of a PhD and a master's in
philosophy and a master's in science well, I think that
(28:06):
any time you grew up as a reader, you kind
of end up I'm going this direction anyway. So I
was reading Satisfiction from very very far back. And as
for writing it, I think you do that thing in
school where you try to write things and you just
realize how extremely bad you are, so you wait to
grow up a bit and then um. It was quite
(28:27):
by accident that I, you know, sometimes I would go
back to writing, and then I would get busy and
how about the work to do? And then I'll go
back to it. And then one month I was actually
doing Um, I was taken a pause from a master's
and I said, I need to keep my hand in
writing long documents. So this month I'm going to try
(28:49):
National Novel Writing Month, and I'm going to tackle that
that folk tale that I always loved as a kid
and see if I can expand it. And that's how
the draft of Redemption an Indigo came to being. And
I didn't have any particular plans for it except to
just try to see what I could do yes, and
just sort of snowball from there. Hopefull that's wonderful. What
(29:12):
is your academic background? What fields do you have your
degrees in oh dear, so this is going to make
me look like a dilatant. And my only excuse is
that this is all over very long period of years.
My first degree is a batult of science. It's actually
a specialist in history of science of technology, a major
in physics and a minor in astronomy. Then after that
(29:35):
my first masters is Science and Technology and Policy. And
then I did an m film which was actually in
sociology religion. Um that there was a bit more history
plus sociology. And then my PhD also sociology religion. Wow, fascinating.
That is quite an amazing collection of topics for our listeners.
(29:56):
We usually like to ask a science fiction author to
sort of orient them cells in the science fiction in
the space of science fiction writers. So let me ask
you a few questions that we ask all the authors. You,
I assume, of course, are familiar with the transporter technology
in Star Trek. Yes, and so is it your view
that those transporters actually transport your atoms somewhere else or
(30:19):
kill you, disassembly you kill you, and then clone you,
recreate you somewhere else. Well, to answer that question properly,
you would have to talk about the nature of being
wouldn't share, yes exactly. So um, I do have some
writings in fact, something I'm working on right now with
the colleague where I am talking about what does it
mean to be discorporate? But so conscious, Um, where does
(30:40):
your consciousness reside when you're not in a physical body.
Some of that can be looked at mystically, and some
of it could be looked at scientifically, especially if you
plan to go forward a few centuries. So in that case,
would you if somebody invented this technology, would you be
willing to step into a transporter? So that's an excellent
question because right now I wouldn't be willing to step
into a plane. I think. I think that part of
(31:05):
it depends on who built it, because it still has
to be reliable there, and we've had plenty of episodes
about what goes wrong when it doesn't work properly, so
you understand that there's always sort of risk once it's
sort of built by human hands. But then again, sometimes
it's a question of balancing your risk of your opportunity.
How else are you're gonna get to see the universal
(31:28):
so you're gonna go there into the galaxy? So let's
just say it would be very, very tempted, and depending
on how much I could trust the manufacturers, I might
to go for it. Right, So you look at the
brand name before you step in exactly. I want to
dig into that a little bit more, but at first
we have to take a quick break. Okay, and we're back.
(31:56):
I'm interviewing doctor Karen Lower, the author of the book
The Best of All Possible World. Well, you have some
knowledge of the history of science, which is fascinating. So
I'd like to ask you, then, what technology exists in
science fiction only that you would like to see become
reality in our future. That's a tough one because you know,
we've had our jet taxs phase, and then we realized
(32:20):
we didn't really want those that much, and then we
had our kind of whole busness would you call it again? Well,
that that thing which became the iPad, which basically came
off of Star Trek, that kind of came into being.
I almost feel as if I want to be surprised.
I don't want the things that we think we can
invent just from our point of view. I want something
(32:42):
to come completely unimagined and unimaginable. I surprised me. That's
the sort of thing I really want to say. I'm
asking your question, is really bad we are? I'm not
doing it, yes or no. I'm just sort of always
she was in the weird option. You know, the weird
option is always the most interesting one. So, and the
last in this series of questions, what's your personal answer
(33:03):
to the Fermi paradox? If the galaxy is so big
and there are a lot of earth bike planets, why
haven't we been visited yet by aliens? So well, I
wrote that into my books. Because we're so badly behaved,
we don't deserve to be visited. We're too dangerous to
be visited. Where do you go into that ant's nest
(33:23):
in the garden that you know, the waver between avoiding
it and wondering if you should call the exterminator. Well,
that's sort of terrifying and disappointing to think that they're
aliens out there with great knowledge that they're just keeping
from us because of our poor behavior. Wow, I'm disappointed
in us. Well, then let's tear into your novel, which
I read and thoroughly enjoyed. It's called the Best of
All Possible Worlds and The novel takes place sort of
(33:46):
in the deep future, where humans have a wide variety
of mental and physical abilities, including like psionic powers like
telepathy and emotional manipulation. What gave you the idea to
use this concept new novel. Did you start from the
acience and the concept and then developed the story, or
was there a story you wanted to tell and you
created sort of this concept in framing in order to
(34:07):
tell that story. I think it was a little bit
of both. I didn't want my aliens to be fully alien.
I wanted it to be a concept where the aliens
are still human. They're so recognizably human. But then you
needed to have a degree of difference that would allow
for the usual fare of the other. That is always
an interesting thing to play within story. So I remember
(34:29):
someone telling me that people had kind of abandoned the
psionics aspect of science fiction for a while. Then I
was sort of bringing back this old school thing, and
I hadn't thought of it that way. I was just
interested in something that would allow me to play with
the power dynamics between people, the question of you know
what if this person really did have some kind of
superior or different mental ability that made you feel at risk,
(34:53):
made me feel as if they could harm you, And
how would that play out in terms of being in
a society with them. It's really a story will fall
of empire in some ways, so the people from the
empire have to look as if they are somehow ahead,
and being just technologically ahead wasn't cuting it for me.
And so I noticed that in the in the story
you tell in this future, you describe the problems these
(35:15):
folks face are sort of familiar. There's culture, class, there's conflict,
there's identity questions, there's workplace romance. Is that because you
think that those problems will be with us forever, that
they're part of what makes us human? Or is that
just because you wanted to tell a story to people
who live today and you wanted to make it sort
of accessible. Well, I kind of hate to tell you this,
but it's not as far in the future as you think,
(35:38):
because remember it doesn't take place on Earth, right because
Earth is embargoed because we're kind of, you know, so immature,
we need to be left ourselves for a bit. So
although I haven't come out and said exactly when it
takes place, there are some hints in terms of where
the cultural references stop to make you kind of realize that,
wait a minute, it might not be as far in
(36:00):
the futures. I think. So it's it's close enough for
people to have the same flaws and foibles and usual pitfalls,
and so there was one sort of factual detail I
was a little bit confused about in the stories are
these humans or are these aliens? Because they're sometimes described
as human cultures, but they do definitely seem like they
have abilities that humans don't currently have, which is what
(36:22):
made me think maybe it happened in the far future.
They are definitely human. At the time, I was interested
in some genetic research that was coming out talking about
I'm gonna mispernounce all these names. By the way, I'm
an author. I always read my words. I never seen them,
and then just up front it's a sign of being
well read. Yeah they'll go with that. Um, but yes,
(36:45):
I was. There was there was research on the genetic
traces that the neander dolls and the dinners with them
had left behind, and part of me was thinking, um,
what if there was a template that they were supposed
to be at least three or form closely related human
species that could in fact, you know, to use the
(37:05):
cruster into breeding and mixed a mixed genetic material and
what have you. What if there was another planet that
was like mostly in Neantal or mostly Dinnis within what
would that look like? So in the back of my head,
although I haven't put it in the story, that's what
these different so called alien planets are, These different strains
of humanity that are somehow kind of you know, hard
(37:28):
hardwired into that the whole egg of creation I see.
And so in this back story you've imagined, how do
humans get on those other planets? Is it's some sort
of panspermia where humans have come to Earth and other
planets from somewhere else and we are a common thread
of evolution. I didn't have a connection between the planets
except for between Earth and Singus data and that's when
(37:49):
I use the old hand wavy portals thing. As for
humanity springing up on those other worlds, I kind of
couched him myth. It is sort of an egg met
is sort of you know, authors on this actually these
four core planets and walla um. But there's nothing to
suggest that it's reality. Is probably just a story that
(38:09):
you know, parents to older kids or something from some
old religion, and nobody really takes it seriously. I like,
I like to leave those things a little vague. But
but then again, you get this idea that it's not
a case of except for you know, three three the planets.
It's not a case that there's a slow tradition of
interconnection and that allows you to have, um, some quite
(38:31):
separate cultures, which is fascinating to play within his own way. Yeah, absolutely,
that was that was really fun to read about. I
see now that you're saying it's a sort of a
structure of a story where we're talking about divergent evolution
and how these cultures become different and then they come
together and they have those clashes, which is definitely a
familiar kind of story. Um. But thinking about the future
of humanity, do you think you know in a hundred
(38:54):
years or a thousand years that these are things that
might happen to humanity, that we might evolve scion abilities
or telepathic powers, or or anything else that features in
your novel. You know, I am both interested in actually
prediction the future and quite terrified vacarium because just just
(39:16):
last year I wrote a story which got published in
January called the Plague Doctors about a pandemic um. So, yeah,
so I'm really careful about that. But the other thing
I was riffing off is that nothing that ive described
in those books hasn't already been claimed by humans on
Earth right now. Different degrees and it, of course, but
aspects of of empathy, aspects of you know, twins reading
(39:38):
each other's minds across the distance, what have you. That's
why it's one of our most loved tropes because it
doesn't come out of nowhere. It comes out of people
in real life saying but I have this ability, or
I have a little touch of this ability. Um. So
I thought, well, you know, maybe we too. Maybe it's
in process of being developed. Let's just imagine it got
(39:58):
a little further now what a society looks like. Yeah, fascinating,
And I like how you connected it also to the
transportation technology. You made all these references to these mind ships,
and I was desperate to know more about this. Can
you tell us a little bit about your faster than
light mindships, what they are, how they work? I can, indeed.
But you know, the scary thing is that first one
(40:19):
you invited me and you said, Oh, that's what the
science invest for all possible world. I thought, how am
I going to talk about the science invest without talking
about the science in the Galaxy game, which is a sequel,
because that's when I really started to talk about the
transportation technology and the mind ships without spoiling too much
of a sequel. Um, what comes out about why how
(40:39):
the mindships work and how certain other forms of transportation
work is that you have to have a collective consciousness.
So going back to your question to me, but the
Star Trek transport technology, Um, where's your consciousness school when
your corporal forms is disassembled? So the idea there is that, Okay,
(41:00):
if we have a form of technology or form of ability,
you let's say, in this kind of basically a space whale,
but it's more like a sting ray, so we won't
call it, won't call a space whale. But if we
have that ability and we're moving across di mensions, because
of course to make this work we have to have
our faster than light transportation, how do you could your
(41:21):
consciousness together? And that was why I say it came
maybe we have to have a larger than human consciousness
to survive that kind of travel that has to be
collective consciousness. I wasn't fact inspired by something in real life.
There's something called Portuguese Man of War, which is like
(41:42):
a jellyfish, but not a jellyfish. It's actually a collective organism.
It's not one creature. It's like a colony creature. It
also gives you the most horribly painful and vile sting
you can imagine. But um, you know, I got over
that and I took a science and I put it
into the book and I said, you know what if
you know there were these advantages to becoming a colonic creature,
(42:02):
so that not only do you have a future where
humanity has these kind of scionic powers developing, but you
also have a creature that has a form of intelligence
that can combine with human intelligence to form a collective consciousness.
And this has some benefits in some way. This has
some advantages of um, you know, going through the galaxy
(42:25):
at but an ease that just ordinary mechanical solutions would
not achieve. So so that was what I was playing with,
And that then begins to explain why, for example, the
humans of that planet develop in a certain way because
it's partly their interaction with the animals that become the
mindships that cause them to become so strong telepathically. It's
(42:48):
a fascinating twist that the mindships themselves are sent into
their essentially animals. When you construct the universe of your novels,
and you're building this and putting your story into it,
how important is it to you that the science in
there be plausible, not necessarily that it follows the same
laws of physics that we have, but that there are
some laws of physics of that universe that it obeys.
(43:11):
I'll tell you what I find important. There has to
be a cost. There has to be a cost, because, um,
if you have free and easy travel, for example, then
you almost cannot build a similar to Earth society and
and play with it as a story. You've removed some
of the constraints that make us who we are. So
in some respects you are. You're even when you're making
(43:33):
up a technology, you're using something that mirrors a present
day constraint and restriction that we have in terms of
technology that we're using. As for the details, as for
the you know, exactly how does this work? I often
say to people, you know, ask someone how a TV works,
They don't know. I don't know. It doesn't affect their lives.
(43:55):
You know, they're just happy that they get their entertainment.
So you you need to be careful how much you
immerse yourself in the details of even the stuff you
make up as well as the stuff that is real,
and ask yourself, Okay, to what extent is this going
to advance the story or development to the plot. However,
I want to put in a good word for social science,
(44:18):
because I might read a story which expronunced to me
in great detail how a TV works, and that's nice.
But if the relationship between two of the characters is
simply implausible, or if the society has this weird gap
of who's doing this labor or where is this money
(44:38):
coming from, that's what trips me up. Because even though
we don't necessarily know the have the vocabulary to understand
exactly how our world is structured and and why it
works the way it does. When the gaps are there,
you can sense it and it doesn't feel quite real,
doesn't feel quite right. So for the proper or suspension
(45:00):
of disbelief, at least on my side, and I think
it's gotten worse and more hung head into sociological study.
I need to have a plausible society. I need to
have a plausible psychology of the individual as well, and
that has to be all affecting how the plot unfolds.
If the science of the individual and the collective isn't right,
(45:21):
I definitely can't write it. That's fascinating. I agree with
you that the story has to take place in the
context of some obstacles, some constraints that make the story
move forward, that those have to be consistent for the
story to make sense, even if you haven't worked out
the scientific details. But I think that touches in it
really fascinating way on something you said earlier. You're telling
me that you're wanting to construct a story that makes
(45:43):
sense to us here today, that resonates with us, that
makes sense to us, that speaks to who we are
as people in our struggles. But also, science fiction is
about extrapolating into the future and wondering what we'd like
to be human in the five years or a thousand years.
Are we limited in our ability to think about what
the US are like for humans in a hundred years
and five hundred years, and considering the enormous changes and
(46:05):
experiences of our person just over the last fifty or
hundred years. I think that not every writer, not have
respectative fiction writer has the gift to really extrapolate to
see what things look like. But I also think that
if you write something to show, to hold up a
mirror toory your society as as it is now, sometimes
(46:26):
that is what survives. And the reason I mentioned this
is one of my favorite books is flat Land. And
for a book that was written in like, you know,
the mid eighteen hundreds, that book holds extraordinarily well, not
just of course, in terms of mathematics, which is entirely accurate,
but the sociology and all he's doing is critiquing Victorian society.
(46:49):
But so many of the aspects that he talks about
and the guys of flat Land society are still with
us today. So you could say, you know, if you're
just going forward a hundred fifty years, you can talk
about society and it's still will have some of the
same problems and the same challenges, some of the same
things that we're trying to work out. I think in
a way that's why I wanted to introduce these alien
(47:13):
humans who had constructed such different societies that they were
influencing the mostly Earth societies to think differently, to to
imagine a different way of being. Sometimes I do wonder
whether we need some kind of I don't want to
call it quite an external shock or maybe an external
inspiration to realize, okay, this is how it can be
(47:34):
done differently. Well it certainly we'll be fascinating when the
aliens decide that we're worth it and come talk to
us and tell us wonderful. Well, thank you very much
for talking to us about your book. When you tell
us a little bit about the projects that you have
going on now that might be coming out soon. There
is a manuscript that I have just written which would
be touching again on the world of bestwell possible wills
in the Galaxy game, but you know, with the pandemic
(47:57):
and all things, but all delayed, so I probably shouldn't
talk about it yet because we're looking at two or
so before you'll see it. Um. I've been working on
plenty of zoom Tight conferences and festivals and so forth.
So coming up in September, the Focuslet Fest, which is
based on for them Tobago, is going to be happing
(48:18):
an all virtual festival and you could expect to see
me there. I'll probably tweet about it closer to the
time when I can can give up the dates and
what have you. And and prior to that, there's also
the Booklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. I may have called that wrong,
but I think I have it right. That is going
to be the weekend before. So again, those are things
that if anybody follows on my Twitter, I'll be sure
(48:41):
when I have, like you know, the nice shiny graphics
and all the all the right dates and times, I'll
be tweeting forward about that. Sounds good. Well, we're looking
forward to reading the next book in your series and
anything else. You're right, Frankly, it was a pleasure to
read your book and the pleasure to talk to you today.
Thank you so much. Alright, awesome interview, Daniel. It's on
interesting her background and also how she kind of used
(49:03):
the science fiction to talk about societal issues and like
human character issues. Yeah, at the same time an exploration
in the future of our society and also like shining
a light on how we live and the issues that
we face today. And I think one of the points
she's making is that as humans were likely to face
the same kind of struggles and conflicts no matter what
the setting, whether it's on another planet or on a
(49:25):
spaceship or just here on Earth trying to survive. Yeah.
I like how she totally avoided the question of why
do all these Anians look like humans? As I feel
like most science fiction authors due, Yeah, like I don't know,
or is that a central part of the story. Yeah,
I like that. Actually that she owned that. She was like,
you know, assuming mythological beginning to my universe and then
take it forward from the science at that point. It's
(49:47):
a cool It's a really a fascinating blend of like
cultural heritage and mythology and then you know, hardcore science fiction.
So it's definitely not like any other book I've read,
but I really enjoyed. Well again, the book is the
best of all possible war World by Karen Lord. All Right, Well,
we hope you enjoyed that and give it a try.
Thanks for joining us, see you next time. Thanks for listening,
(50:16):
and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio Apple Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hey, Daniel, did you know the difference between psychic and
physics is only one letter? I feel like I should
have sensed that. Well, let's try what number am I
thinking of? I gotta go with forty two. No, not
even closed colder zero point forty two. Um. Starting to
(00:28):
think the difference between psychic and physics is a lot
more than one letter. You know, after all these years
working together, sometimes I still have no idea what you're thinking.
And that's probably for the best. Hi am more handmade
(00:54):
cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel.
I'm a particle physicist and not particle psychics. I mean,
you can read the minds of particles, or you can
predict what particles will do. I can do neither, actually,
and I don't think either of them are possible in
our universe. I guess it makes sense to be a
psychic of not particles, because everything's made out of particles.
(01:15):
That's true. And I noticed that a lot of psychics
tend to like to use physics like sort of pseudo
terms in their you know, marketing. I once sat next
to somebody on an airplane and told me she was
a quantum psychic. Really, it was like, that's better than
all those classical psychics out there, you know. I mean
she was lying and not lying at the same time.
(01:35):
She was both full of it and full of it
at the same time. Well, I guess that that's better
than being a Newtonian psychic. But welcome to our podcast
Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
Heart Radio in which we take the whole universe and
try to insert it into your brain. We're not relying
on your psychic powers. Instead, we are taking you on
an audio tour of everything that's incredible, that's amazing, that's
(01:59):
mind blowing about the universe. We think that wonder belongs
to everybody, that your curiosity is just as deep and
powerful and as important as those of us toiling away
in the scientific trenches, and so we want to answer
your questions and help you explore all the incredible stuff
in our universe. Daniel, are you saying that we're all
connected mentally? You knowing we are, I hope, all living
(02:21):
in the same universe and working on the same science. Right,
So in that sense, yes, we do have a shared
mental challenge and including our curiosity about the world. About
the universe, about the cosmos, and so in this podcast,
we like to talk about all the amazing and incredible
things out there for us to discover and to learn about,
but we also like to kind of sometimes think about
what could be or what might be in the far future. Yeah,
(02:44):
because a big part of exploring the universe, about satisfying
your curiosity is tapping into your creativity to thinking about
what could be out there were kinds of ideas. Should
we be thinking about what is the future of the
universe and of humanity? Yeah, because you know, sometimes I
think people associate signs not with creativity, or they think
(03:05):
they're the two of them are separate, But actually sciences
are very creative. I mean they have kind of have
to be when facing the unknown. They have to come
up with possible ideas of what could be or what
might explain what we're seeing out there. And so today's
episode is another one of our series of interviews with
science fiction authors. That's right, and we like to tap
into a broad set of creative minds out there. Everybody
(03:27):
has a different idea for what the future might hold,
or how we might react to it, or what life
would be like under various circumstances, which hey is important
because if we're designed in the future, if we are
steering the fate of our humanity, we should think about
what it would be like to live under various futuristic regimes,
even if they are a little trippy. So to the
on the podcast, we'll be tackling the science fiction universe
(03:52):
of Karen Lord. That's right. Karen Lord has written a
wonderful book. It's called The Best of All Possible world
Olds and I recently had a chance to read it
and to chat with her about So the Best of
All Possible world So it's definitely fiction. I feel like
we're definitely not living our best sells right now. Well,
you know, there's dystopian fiction, and then there's optimistic fiction,
(04:13):
and the opposite of dystopian utopian fiction. Utopian fiction. Yeah. Absolutely.
I heard a wonderful interview actually by Kim Stanley Robinson,
a famous science fiction author, and he felt like dystopian
fiction was sort of lazy because it just makes you
feel better about our world than the world in the
show you're watching or the novel you're reading. And he
prefers to write utopian fiction because it inspires us to
(04:36):
try and make our world better. I see regular fiction
is more like comfort fiction, whereas maybe it should be
more like fomo fiction exactly, should be like, look what
they have achieved. Everybody in this novel has healthcare and
the house and all this great stuff. Surely we can
do that. Look how green their grass they've genetically engineered
(04:57):
to be. That's amazing. That's right. Sometimes you just want
to keep up with the science fiction. Jones is right,
and there are definitely things we can do to improve
our world, and sometimes it's the role of science fiction
to think about that. So Karen Lord is a science
fiction author, and she hails from Barbados. That's where you
conducted the Enemy. You didn't go there, but that's where
she was. That's right. The budget for trips to Barbados
(05:19):
was set to zero for some reason. I'm not quite
sure your chat, Daniel, and this is your chance to
cook the books and get a vacation. No. So I
chatted with her over the internet, as I always do.
But I got a little bit of the taste of
Barbados because you could hear the sound of it in
the background. Wow. Just doubles as an m m R.
What's the right s mr SMR. That's right. I'm not
(05:43):
a fan of acronym. That's funny you said that because
I heard that some folks listen to our podcast as
they go to sleep because our voices soothed, not because
we lack excitement in our because before That's right, So
sit straight up and listen to this important podcast interview.
Stop falling asleep, Wake up, Wake up. And Karen Hard
(06:05):
has an interesting background. She's also sort of an academic
kind of like you. Definitely, she has a couple of degrees,
including a doctoral degree I read in the sociology of religion. Yes,
she has a really eclectic and fascinating background. I mean
she has an undergraduate degree in physics. Let's like really
set her science, you know, in the appropriate context. But
(06:25):
then she also has degrees in sociology and religion and history,
and so it's really fascinating and you can definitely feel
it in her writing. Her writing is different from the
kinds of writing I've read before. So it's really a
pleasure for me to sort of branch out and read
something different. And it's different in sort of two ways.
One is that it really focuses on what it's like
(06:46):
to be there, and the interpersonal connections and how society
is built and you know, how people treat each other
in this new context where life is very different from
our own. More about relationships kind of yeah, and what
it would be like to live there. It's less about
like how do you build this kind of starship and
traverse the universe? And more like, well, what's it like
to sit next to somebody for sixty years on a
(07:07):
spaceship and argue with them about it makes the coffee
or whatever? You know? I feel like maybe have a
good idea of that. Daniel han't hand um. And also
it's quite different because it's really infused with her knowledge
of her culture. This is the second book she wrote.
The first book she wrote was actually a retelling of
some of her cultural mythology in a science fiction content.
(07:31):
And so you'll see as we talk about the details
of this book that actually blends mythology and science fiction
a little bit. And she starts from mythology and then
takes it forward using science fiction, which is quite fast.
Is it kind of like explaining mythology as science fiction
or just taking it further? It's just sort of taking
it further. It's like you don't have to explain the
beginning of the universe and the whole context of how
(07:51):
things were made, because you can just sort of assume
mythological origin for things, but then going forward everything has
to follow the physical rules of the universe. So it's
a really fascinating blend. Interesting alright. So her book is
called The Best of All Possible World, and a big
part of it is this idea of psychic powers and telepathy,
and so we were sort of wondering what people think
(08:14):
of telepathy out there. Yeah, I was curious if people
thought if somehow in the far future, humans might evolve
this kind of power, and so I asked a bunch
of volunteers on the Internet to speculate baslessly on this
possible future scenario. And if you'd like to participate in
baseless speculation, please write to us two questions at Daniel
and Jorge dot com. I think you just renamed our
(08:35):
podcast Daniel Baseless Speculation with Daniel and Jorge. That's the subtitle, alright,
So think about it for a second before you listen
to these answers. If someone asks you if you thought
humans would ever evolve telepathy, what would you answer. Here's
what people had to say. I believe that it's possible,
but it would be thousands or millions of years from now.
(08:59):
I think at that point we would qualify as a
very different species. I think it's definitely not impossible. UM
or something that will take a lot of time to develop,
maybe like thousand or maybe a million years time humans
we have developed a chip or something that we could
implant in humans UM to use for telepathy. I do
(09:19):
not believe that humans will ever evolve telepathic powers evolved
as kind of a loaded word there. Evolution takes place
over many, many generations, so that kind of thing would
taken extremely long time for any kind of evolution. Could
be possible that we could a genetically engineer some sort
(09:41):
of heightened intelligence, heightened brain abilities. Humans have already evolved
telepathic powers. I don't want to brag, but at Burning
Man one year, there was a girl about fifty yards
away riding her bike away from me, wearing a bikini
and a cowboy hat, and in my head I said,
(10:03):
please come talk to me, and she turned and looked
at me, turned her bike, rode over park next to me,
got off her bike and gave me a hug. Boom.
I wish I had telepathic powers to know the answer
to that question, but I'm pretty sure science will come
to prove that that just cannot happen. I don't think
we could evolve telepathic powers unless we embraced human enhancement
(10:26):
and achieved it through something like cyberessic augmentations. Keyword here
is evolved, And I would say to that no, because
I don't see how telepy telepathy would in any way
aid any human survival and reproduction. However, I could imagine
us using technology to develop this ability, but in terms
(10:47):
of natural evolution, now, I don't think so. I kind
of hope not, because part of what's so fun is
figuring out when someone else was thinking, not knowing it.
All right, now, Daniel, did these people record their answers
and send to you or did they just beam it
straight to your brain? I am in tune with the
whole universe, man, so I didn't even need to reach out.
It just like just set downs, free streamed all these
(11:10):
universes just speaking to me. You know, these were all
emailed to me over the internet. All right, Well, pretty cool.
A lot of people seem to have a lot of
optimism about this, Like nobody said it's impossible, and you know,
they think that maybe one day you could happen. Yeah,
people feel like there's obviously potential out there for all
sorts of crazy stuff to happen, that it's not physically
(11:32):
impossible in our universe. And then there's a whole other
thread of people wondering if it's better done with technology.
Right right, I guess there's two ways that we can
evolve telepathy. One is through evolving our brains biologically, and
one is is kind of augmenting our brain. Yeah, and
I was curious what you thought about these various options
that we're going to dig into, giving your background in
(11:53):
engineering and of course in bio mimicry and so, so
how you saw these various options going forward. Right, So
let's get into his book. Um, So the title again
is the best of All Possible world And so, Daniel,
what's the basic premise of it? So the basic premise
is that the book takes place in a sort of
our universe and in our galaxy, but humans or human
(12:14):
like aliens are distributed through the galaxy. It's sort of
a setting like Star Trek the next Generation. They are
all these worlds and they're all populated by human like creatures.
You know, they have two legs, and they have a head,
and they speak various languages, etcetera. But they have mostly
ten fingers. But there are big differences. Some of them
are much taller and stronger and faster, some of them
(12:36):
are smaller. Some of them have telepathic or other psionic pounders.
Now do they say that they all came from Earth
or people on Earth came from some other source? So
she doesn't describe this in detail in the book. She
leaves it a bit of a mystery, which I sort
of like, I like being dropped into a universe and
not just like having it explained to me. I like
figuring it out for myself. And for me, it was
(12:57):
a mystery I was trying to solve while I was
reading the book, Like is this the far future where
humans have spread through the galaxy and then evolved into
these various forms because of their separation, or is this
some alternative universe where you know, humans evolved in parallel
and lots of different places. And so I was trying
to figure that out through the book, and I never
actually put my finger on and you'll hear in the interview,
(13:17):
I asked her about that very question. And it's kind
of interesting because you see you wrote here that Earth
is embargoed. It means that we're we're like blocked or canceled.
They canceled, that they canceled Earth. Yes, so the book
takes place from the point of view of one of
these human like aliens, and in the book, nobody's allowed
to go to Earth and Earth is like embargoed, Do
you know, allowed to to interact with Earth because the
(13:38):
folks who live there are not very well behaved? What
exactly we were on a timeout? Yeah, precisely, So nobody's
allowed to visit us or you trade with us or
communicate with us, but like Earth links know that they're
embargoed and canceled, you know, or did we do something?
And no, we didn't. It's not dealt with directly in
(13:59):
the book. And then I asked her about it in
the interview, and it's actually her personal explanation for maybe
our current situation, you know, the Fermi paradox, Like if
the galaxy is filled with lifelike planets, how become nobody
is talking to us, nobody has visited, we've overseen anybody.
She thinks that maybe because we're on a time out.
What people people are avoiding us. Boy, So she wrote
(14:22):
this a little bit as likely, Hey, maybe this is
what's happening in our universe, that there are aliens out there,
but they're choosing not to. We don't shave up, we
won't get invited to the party, that's right. And so
in this world that she's built, you have all these
different kinds of human like aliens, and they have all
these different powers. Some of them can read minds, some
(14:43):
of them can influence what you think. They can do
like emotional control and feel things or coerce you into
doing things. It's really quite interesting. And then she builds,
you know, a realistic society. She builds workplaces and relationships
and all sorts of stuff and takes you through really
what it would be like to live in that world.
I guess my biggest question would be how do you
(15:05):
trust anyone? You know? Like, how do you trust that
they're not reading your mind or influencing you or making
you say some things. It's hard and it really changes
the nature of relationships. And she has really interesting examples
in there about like abusive marriages where one person controls
the other or you know, romances and what that's like
and infidelity, and so it's really an interesting deep dive
(15:27):
into what it would be like to live in that society.
And that's what I meant earlier, that she's really thought
carefully about the experience of a person in that situation.
And I'm always really impressed when somebody pulls that off,
because you have to do too hard things at once.
One is imagine what it's like to be a completely
different kind of person with a different kind of brain,
and also make it accessible to us, right, I mean,
(15:50):
if you imagine what it's like to live as a
weird o blabo alien, it would be totally incomprehensible to us.
You couldn't write a novel, you know, from the point
of view of something that thinks fun to mentally different.
So you have to sort of like bridge that gap
to make it accessible to like, you know, the readers,
us actual human beings. Right. It's not an easy thing
to do, you know, from a literary construct point. You
(16:10):
depend translate in a way a whole different way of thinking. Yeah,
so they play mind games with each other and we're
the ones getting a time out. Who's making these decisions? Yeah,
well you know, the ones with the power are the
ones making the decisions. Um. But as you read it,
you'll also find that these characters, even though they're not
technically human or they're very different from us, their society
(16:32):
is a lot in common with ours. You know, they
build bureaucracy to have conflicts. The book begins with a
really devastating act of war and genocide, and so then
there's politics and factionalism and you know, like workplace romance
and all sorts of stuff. So it's very relatable and unfortunately,
I think you know what. Fortunately, all right, well let's
(16:54):
get into the science of this novel, The Best of
All Possible World by Karen Lord, and that's get into
your interview with Karen Lord. But first let's take a
quick break. All Right, we're talking about science fiction author
Karen Lord and her book The Best of All Possible World.
(17:16):
And so it's it's a world where everyone has psychic
powers in a way, Daniel, And so what's the science
of it? How do you explain the psychic ability that's
pervasive among all these aliens species. Yes, so one question
is just like physically or biologically, is it possible to
evolve this kind of ability? I mean, evolution essentially explores
random mutations and chooses the ones that are best fit
(17:38):
for the environment. But it can't do things that are impossible.
You can't spontaneously evolve the ability to travel faster than
the speed of light, right because it breaks the laws
of physics, or like evolve the anti gravity or maybe
or maybe it's called legs Daniel. But you know, you
can't break the laws of physics even with evolution. But
you know, fundamentally, I don't think there is anything physics
(18:01):
wise that would be preventing us from communicating more directly
brain to brain. Interesting. We have a lot of ways
to translate the thoughts in our brain into information and
transmit them, so we recreate the thoughts in somebody else's brain.
We're doing one right now. I'm boiling down my thoughts
into these sound waves and sending them into your brain
through your device, through the internet, you know, through the
error in cell phone signals, and then into my ears
(18:24):
and into my brain precisely. And so that's a little indirect,
and I guess telepathy would just be like somewhat more direct.
You know. Imagine your brain broadcasts something invisible instead of
using it through sound waves we use electromagnetic radiation or something.
It's not inconceivable to imagine evolving a new part of
the brain that can transmit e M waves because, after all,
(18:46):
you know, the brain is a bunch of wires, right
that you use electromagnetic signals to interact. It's basically a
little circuit. Wait, so you're talking not not through tech
but through actual biology. Do you think there's a way
to have a biological like radio transmitter and receiver. Yeah,
I think there's no physics objection to having a biological
radio antenna in your head. Yeah, I guess, yeah, maybe,
(19:08):
I guess. You know, your body could learn to I
don't know what, like make an antenna inside of your head,
like accumulate metals in a certain way. And you don't
even necessarily need metals, right to generate a signal radio signal,
you just need a current current that's oscillating and then
to be receptive to it. And so there are lots
of ways to do that, and lots of things that
(19:29):
are conductive. You know, water for example, is very conductive,
and so there you could certainly engineer if you were
going to sit down and design it. There's no physics
or engineering principle I'm aware of that would prevent it
from happening. The whole separate question of whether it would evolve,
whether it's the benefit to it and the energy use
you know, makes it worth it, whether there you could
(19:49):
find yourself in an environment that would need that, and
evolution would provide the selective pressure to encourage that. But
from a physics point of view, I don't see why
you couldn't have telepathy. Wow, yeah, I guess that there
are studies of birds, right, birds who can sort of
sense the banetic field of the earth, and they do
it by repredating some you know, some metal inside of
(20:10):
the brain reading the right currents, I think, right, yeah, yeah,
And this is different from other things, you know, like telekinesis,
the ability to move objects with your mind. Like, I
don't see a physical basis for that at all, you know,
sending messages back and forth emailing brain to brain. Yeah, totally,
we could in theory evolve that using our brain. I see.
(20:31):
So telepathy yes, so like kinesis no, But that's the
phone that's the more fun, because you want to tap
on somebody's shoulder from the other side of the room
and trick them. I just be like, if you're telekinetic,
the best thing you can do with it is move yourself.
You can fly, right right, of course? I wonder telekinesis
is basically flying, yeah, Or you could just sit on
(20:52):
your couch and clean your room at the same time.
You could, yes, technically, would you though? It brings the
whole new challenge to being lazy? Right Like you do
you think it feels like an effort to lie in
bed and clean your room without moving your body? Well,
I always wondering, you know, because these things take energy, right, Like,
even if you're theopathic, you would need to You would
(21:13):
be burning a lot of energy to send these signals
out probably, And and I don't know what it would
be like from the evolutionary point of view, whether evolving
this thing would be efficient or not. But you know,
you could imagine some scenario where it's really crucial to
survival because you can't communicate using sound for whatever, they
find themselves on a really noisy planet or or something,
(21:34):
and you have to evolve some alternative way to communicate
or in response to some you know, predator or something.
I mean, you can imagine vary scenarios, but it would
take a lot of time, right, Like evolution takes generations
and generations and generations. So this is not like by
this is like far in the future of humanity, or
if humanity exists on different planets, they would have to
(21:54):
have split a long time ago in order to have
a chance to have this court of evolution. All right, So,
but then it's also possible to get telempathy through technology. Yeah,
I think, you know, engineering will probably beat biology in
the race. They're like, if you wanted to design and
implement something to make it possible to send a message
without talking to just think it. I think it's not
(22:15):
that far in the future to be able to do that.
We have the basic elements of that, I think already
in hand, right, No, I mean we have it right now.
I don't know if you've seen those studies or those
experiments for people who are like paraplegic, they put a
brain sensor under in their cortex and they send you know,
spatial signals and they are able to sort of move
(22:36):
a robot arm around. It's like, that's happening right now. Yeah,
there's sort of two steps you need there. One is
like to control an external device to use your brain
signals to send information right to some prosthetic for example,
And you're right, we can do that. You can train
your brain to send the right signals to control a prosthetic,
which is amazing. And the other side of it is
(22:58):
to interpret messages in your brain, like to receive messages.
And people have been doing this already with like cochlear implants.
They attached a fake ear to somebody's head and just
like zap it into the brain the nerve, and the
brain learns to interpret those messages as sound. Yeah, they
did that with the like retinel I implants too, And
so you know, there's a lot of steps between here
(23:20):
and you know, brain email your friend, but it's there.
But the technology is there. The technology is there, and
a lot of you know, complicated signal processing, like how
do you take what's in somebody's brain interpret in a
way to send it out and all this kind of stuff.
But there's really fascinating studies they've done there. They did
one with movie trailers where they showed people a bunch
(23:40):
of movie trailers and image their brains while they were
doing it. Yeah, and then they tried to train and
network to guess which movie trailer they were watching just
from the brain image, and they could totally tell. They
could totally tell you really probably just depending on the
voice of the narrator in the world they all start
with in or the voice changes a little bit. Yeah,
(24:03):
but so I think that technologically, you know, I don't
know how many years away we are, you should say,
because you're the engineer. But I don't see an obstacle
to making this happen. If we wanted to know, if
you're willing to drill into your brain and add some
sort of prosthetic device to your brain, then yeah, you
could probably tap into the Internet with your mind. Yeah.
I don't know if you noticed, but I actually worked
in the lab after my PhD. I was a research
(24:26):
scientist at a neural prosthetic lab. I wasn't aware that
did you work on the human phase? I just tell
people I worked in the little base port that in
the matrix where you insert the connector that that was
my thing. I see, So you're actively working for our
AI overlords. I was. That's why. That's why I quit it.
Until they like the matrix. You pull the plug. I
(24:49):
pulled the plug. Yeah, But you know, the hard part
in all of this is actually your body rejects anything foreign,
So you can put implant in your brain, but after
a while, your body is going to be like, this
is not supposed to be here, and it it actually
like covers it in cells and scar tissue that makes
it unusable, and so they have to like pull it
out again, insert it again, or figure out one way
(25:11):
for either your body to accept it or for it
to kind of adapt to your body. Do those folks
have to take immuno suppressants forever um? Yeah? Probably, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well.
I also thought it was interesting, like how long have
people have been thinking about telepathy, Like is it a
new idea or an ancient one? And I was surprised
to learn that it's sort of a recent concept. The
(25:31):
idea of like sending messages invisibly burined brain sort of
appeared like about a hundred and fifty years ago. Really
was the first mention it. It was sort of in
the late eighteen hundreds when people realized that like X
rays and radio waves and invisible particles were actually real,
that you really could send invisible information, that we were
basically living in an invisible universe. It's constantly surrounded by
(25:55):
things happening around us. We weren't aware of that. They thought, well, oh,
maybe it's possible then to send information brain to brain.
And if you look at like the history of science fiction,
this kind of concept didn't appear in science fiction until
about the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds. But there
have been sort of like mystics, right, and mythology also
(26:15):
that must have you know, talked about this idea of
reading your mind or making you controlling you. Yeah, and
those people always have like special magic powers. But the
idea is that it entered, you know, sort of science
fiction across the threshold into like, maybe this is something
which could actually happen in the future for normal, regular
people once we realized that we were surrounded by these
(26:38):
invisible fields and particles that maybe we could learn to manipulate.
All right, well, let's get back to Karen's book, and
so what I guess, what's the basic story of the
book before we get into her interview. The basic story
of the book is that one of these planets with
human like aliens is devastated by an attack that wipes
out almost the entire species, and so refugees from that
planet then come to another world, and they have to
(26:59):
learn to sort of live on that planet and interact
with those folks. It's a lot of like clash of
cultures and acclamorization. It brings different kinds of aliens into
contact and conflict and have to learn to live together
and find a new home. So it really highlights in
a nice way the differences between them as to figure
out how to learn together and get to know each
other and have some romance, all right, some refugee romance,
(27:22):
some pan alien romance. Oh boy. All right. Well, let's
get into your interview with Karen Lord, author of the
Best of All Possible world and here it is. Well,
it's my absolute pleasure to welcome today to our program,
doctor Karen Lord, the author of today's featured book, The
Best of All Possible Worlds, and also the book Redemption
(27:45):
in Indico. Dr Lord, thank you very much for joining
us and welcome to our program. Thank you so much
for inviting me. First, we just like to get to
know you a little bit. Tell us how did you
get into science fiction writing. You have a sort of
impressive academic background of a PhD and a master's in
philosophy and a master's in science well, I think that
(28:06):
any time you grew up as a reader, you kind
of end up I'm going this direction anyway. So I
was reading Satisfiction from very very far back. And as
for writing it, I think you do that thing in
school where you try to write things and you just
realize how extremely bad you are, so you wait to
grow up a bit and then um. It was quite
(28:27):
by accident that I, you know, sometimes I would go
back to writing, and then I would get busy and
how about the work to do? And then I'll go
back to it. And then one month I was actually
doing Um, I was taken a pause from a master's
and I said, I need to keep my hand in
writing long documents. So this month I'm going to try
(28:49):
National Novel Writing Month, and I'm going to tackle that
that folk tale that I always loved as a kid
and see if I can expand it. And that's how
the draft of Redemption an Indigo came to being. And
I didn't have any particular plans for it except to
just try to see what I could do yes, and
just sort of snowball from there. Hopefull that's wonderful. What
(29:12):
is your academic background? What fields do you have your
degrees in oh dear, so this is going to make
me look like a dilatant. And my only excuse is
that this is all over very long period of years.
My first degree is a batult of science. It's actually
a specialist in history of science of technology, a major
in physics and a minor in astronomy. Then after that
(29:35):
my first masters is Science and Technology and Policy. And
then I did an m film which was actually in
sociology religion. Um that there was a bit more history
plus sociology. And then my PhD also sociology religion. Wow, fascinating.
That is quite an amazing collection of topics for our listeners.
(29:56):
We usually like to ask a science fiction author to
sort of orient them cells in the science fiction in
the space of science fiction writers. So let me ask
you a few questions that we ask all the authors. You,
I assume, of course, are familiar with the transporter technology
in Star Trek. Yes, and so is it your view
that those transporters actually transport your atoms somewhere else or
(30:19):
kill you, disassembly you kill you, and then clone you,
recreate you somewhere else. Well, to answer that question properly,
you would have to talk about the nature of being
wouldn't share, yes exactly. So um, I do have some
writings in fact, something I'm working on right now with
the colleague where I am talking about what does it
mean to be discorporate? But so conscious, Um, where does
(30:40):
your consciousness reside when you're not in a physical body.
Some of that can be looked at mystically, and some
of it could be looked at scientifically, especially if you
plan to go forward a few centuries. So in that case,
would you if somebody invented this technology, would you be
willing to step into a transporter? So that's an excellent
question because right now I wouldn't be willing to step
into a plane. I think. I think that part of
(31:05):
it depends on who built it, because it still has
to be reliable there, and we've had plenty of episodes
about what goes wrong when it doesn't work properly, so
you understand that there's always sort of risk once it's
sort of built by human hands. But then again, sometimes
it's a question of balancing your risk of your opportunity.
How else are you're gonna get to see the universal
(31:28):
so you're gonna go there into the galaxy? So let's
just say it would be very, very tempted, and depending
on how much I could trust the manufacturers, I might
to go for it. Right, So you look at the
brand name before you step in exactly. I want to
dig into that a little bit more, but at first
we have to take a quick break. Okay, and we're back.
(31:56):
I'm interviewing doctor Karen Lower, the author of the book
The Best of All Possible World. Well, you have some
knowledge of the history of science, which is fascinating. So
I'd like to ask you, then, what technology exists in
science fiction only that you would like to see become
reality in our future. That's a tough one because you know,
we've had our jet taxs phase, and then we realized
(32:20):
we didn't really want those that much, and then we
had our kind of whole busness would you call it again? Well,
that that thing which became the iPad, which basically came
off of Star Trek, that kind of came into being.
I almost feel as if I want to be surprised.
I don't want the things that we think we can
invent just from our point of view. I want something
(32:42):
to come completely unimagined and unimaginable. I surprised me. That's
the sort of thing I really want to say. I'm
asking your question, is really bad we are? I'm not
doing it, yes or no. I'm just sort of always
she was in the weird option. You know, the weird
option is always the most interesting one. So, and the
last in this series of questions, what's your personal answer
(33:03):
to the Fermi paradox? If the galaxy is so big
and there are a lot of earth bike planets, why
haven't we been visited yet by aliens? So well, I
wrote that into my books. Because we're so badly behaved,
we don't deserve to be visited. We're too dangerous to
be visited. Where do you go into that ant's nest
(33:23):
in the garden that you know, the waver between avoiding
it and wondering if you should call the exterminator. Well,
that's sort of terrifying and disappointing to think that they're
aliens out there with great knowledge that they're just keeping
from us because of our poor behavior. Wow, I'm disappointed
in us. Well, then let's tear into your novel, which
I read and thoroughly enjoyed. It's called the Best of
All Possible Worlds and The novel takes place sort of
(33:46):
in the deep future, where humans have a wide variety
of mental and physical abilities, including like psionic powers like
telepathy and emotional manipulation. What gave you the idea to
use this concept new novel. Did you start from the
acience and the concept and then developed the story, or
was there a story you wanted to tell and you
created sort of this concept in framing in order to
(34:07):
tell that story. I think it was a little bit
of both. I didn't want my aliens to be fully alien.
I wanted it to be a concept where the aliens
are still human. They're so recognizably human. But then you
needed to have a degree of difference that would allow
for the usual fare of the other. That is always
an interesting thing to play within story. So I remember
(34:29):
someone telling me that people had kind of abandoned the
psionics aspect of science fiction for a while. Then I
was sort of bringing back this old school thing, and
I hadn't thought of it that way. I was just
interested in something that would allow me to play with
the power dynamics between people, the question of you know
what if this person really did have some kind of
superior or different mental ability that made you feel at risk,
(34:53):
made me feel as if they could harm you, And
how would that play out in terms of being in
a society with them. It's really a story will fall
of empire in some ways, so the people from the
empire have to look as if they are somehow ahead,
and being just technologically ahead wasn't cuting it for me.
And so I noticed that in the in the story
you tell in this future, you describe the problems these
(35:15):
folks face are sort of familiar. There's culture, class, there's conflict,
there's identity questions, there's workplace romance. Is that because you
think that those problems will be with us forever, that
they're part of what makes us human? Or is that
just because you wanted to tell a story to people
who live today and you wanted to make it sort
of accessible. Well, I kind of hate to tell you this,
but it's not as far in the future as you think,
(35:38):
because remember it doesn't take place on Earth, right because
Earth is embargoed because we're kind of, you know, so immature,
we need to be left ourselves for a bit. So
although I haven't come out and said exactly when it
takes place, there are some hints in terms of where
the cultural references stop to make you kind of realize that,
wait a minute, it might not be as far in
(36:00):
the futures. I think. So it's it's close enough for
people to have the same flaws and foibles and usual pitfalls,
and so there was one sort of factual detail I
was a little bit confused about in the stories are
these humans or are these aliens? Because they're sometimes described
as human cultures, but they do definitely seem like they
have abilities that humans don't currently have, which is what
(36:22):
made me think maybe it happened in the far future.
They are definitely human. At the time, I was interested
in some genetic research that was coming out talking about
I'm gonna mispernounce all these names. By the way, I'm
an author. I always read my words. I never seen them,
and then just up front it's a sign of being
well read. Yeah they'll go with that. Um, but yes,
(36:45):
I was. There was there was research on the genetic
traces that the neander dolls and the dinners with them
had left behind, and part of me was thinking, um,
what if there was a template that they were supposed
to be at least three or form closely related human
species that could in fact, you know, to use the
(37:05):
cruster into breeding and mixed a mixed genetic material and
what have you. What if there was another planet that
was like mostly in Neantal or mostly Dinnis within what
would that look like? So in the back of my head,
although I haven't put it in the story, that's what
these different so called alien planets are, These different strains
of humanity that are somehow kind of you know, hard
(37:28):
hardwired into that the whole egg of creation I see.
And so in this back story you've imagined, how do
humans get on those other planets? Is it's some sort
of panspermia where humans have come to Earth and other
planets from somewhere else and we are a common thread
of evolution. I didn't have a connection between the planets
except for between Earth and Singus data and that's when
(37:49):
I use the old hand wavy portals thing. As for
humanity springing up on those other worlds, I kind of
couched him myth. It is sort of an egg met
is sort of you know, authors on this actually these
four core planets and walla um. But there's nothing to
suggest that it's reality. Is probably just a story that
(38:09):
you know, parents to older kids or something from some
old religion, and nobody really takes it seriously. I like,
I like to leave those things a little vague. But
but then again, you get this idea that it's not
a case of except for you know, three three the planets.
It's not a case that there's a slow tradition of
interconnection and that allows you to have, um, some quite
(38:31):
separate cultures, which is fascinating to play within his own way. Yeah, absolutely,
that was that was really fun to read about. I
see now that you're saying it's a sort of a
structure of a story where we're talking about divergent evolution
and how these cultures become different and then they come
together and they have those clashes, which is definitely a
familiar kind of story. Um. But thinking about the future
of humanity, do you think you know in a hundred
(38:54):
years or a thousand years that these are things that
might happen to humanity, that we might evolve scion abilities
or telepathic powers, or or anything else that features in
your novel. You know, I am both interested in actually
prediction the future and quite terrified vacarium because just just
(39:16):
last year I wrote a story which got published in
January called the Plague Doctors about a pandemic um. So, yeah,
so I'm really careful about that. But the other thing
I was riffing off is that nothing that ive described
in those books hasn't already been claimed by humans on
Earth right now. Different degrees and it, of course, but
aspects of of empathy, aspects of you know, twins reading
(39:38):
each other's minds across the distance, what have you. That's
why it's one of our most loved tropes because it
doesn't come out of nowhere. It comes out of people
in real life saying but I have this ability, or
I have a little touch of this ability. Um. So
I thought, well, you know, maybe we too. Maybe it's
in process of being developed. Let's just imagine it got
(39:58):
a little further now what a society looks like. Yeah, fascinating,
And I like how you connected it also to the
transportation technology. You made all these references to these mind ships,
and I was desperate to know more about this. Can
you tell us a little bit about your faster than
light mindships, what they are, how they work? I can, indeed.
But you know, the scary thing is that first one
(40:19):
you invited me and you said, Oh, that's what the
science invest for all possible world. I thought, how am
I going to talk about the science invest without talking
about the science in the Galaxy game, which is a sequel,
because that's when I really started to talk about the
transportation technology and the mind ships without spoiling too much
of a sequel. Um, what comes out about why how
(40:39):
the mindships work and how certain other forms of transportation
work is that you have to have a collective consciousness.
So going back to your question to me, but the
Star Trek transport technology, Um, where's your consciousness school when
your corporal forms is disassembled? So the idea there is that, Okay,
(41:00):
if we have a form of technology or form of ability,
you let's say, in this kind of basically a space whale,
but it's more like a sting ray, so we won't
call it, won't call a space whale. But if we
have that ability and we're moving across di mensions, because
of course to make this work we have to have
our faster than light transportation, how do you could your
(41:21):
consciousness together? And that was why I say it came
maybe we have to have a larger than human consciousness
to survive that kind of travel that has to be
collective consciousness. I wasn't fact inspired by something in real life.
There's something called Portuguese Man of War, which is like
(41:42):
a jellyfish, but not a jellyfish. It's actually a collective organism.
It's not one creature. It's like a colony creature. It
also gives you the most horribly painful and vile sting
you can imagine. But um, you know, I got over
that and I took a science and I put it
into the book and I said, you know what if
you know there were these advantages to becoming a colonic creature,
(42:02):
so that not only do you have a future where
humanity has these kind of scionic powers developing, but you
also have a creature that has a form of intelligence
that can combine with human intelligence to form a collective consciousness.
And this has some benefits in some way. This has
some advantages of um, you know, going through the galaxy
(42:25):
at but an ease that just ordinary mechanical solutions would
not achieve. So so that was what I was playing with,
And that then begins to explain why, for example, the
humans of that planet develop in a certain way because
it's partly their interaction with the animals that become the
mindships that cause them to become so strong telepathically. It's
(42:48):
a fascinating twist that the mindships themselves are sent into
their essentially animals. When you construct the universe of your novels,
and you're building this and putting your story into it,
how important is it to you that the science in
there be plausible, not necessarily that it follows the same
laws of physics that we have, but that there are
some laws of physics of that universe that it obeys.
(43:11):
I'll tell you what I find important. There has to
be a cost. There has to be a cost, because, um,
if you have free and easy travel, for example, then
you almost cannot build a similar to Earth society and
and play with it as a story. You've removed some
of the constraints that make us who we are. So
in some respects you are. You're even when you're making
(43:33):
up a technology, you're using something that mirrors a present
day constraint and restriction that we have in terms of
technology that we're using. As for the details, as for
the you know, exactly how does this work? I often
say to people, you know, ask someone how a TV works,
They don't know. I don't know. It doesn't affect their lives.
(43:55):
You know, they're just happy that they get their entertainment.
So you you need to be careful how much you
immerse yourself in the details of even the stuff you
make up as well as the stuff that is real,
and ask yourself, Okay, to what extent is this going
to advance the story or development to the plot. However,
I want to put in a good word for social science,
(44:18):
because I might read a story which expronunced to me
in great detail how a TV works, and that's nice.
But if the relationship between two of the characters is
simply implausible, or if the society has this weird gap
of who's doing this labor or where is this money
(44:38):
coming from, that's what trips me up. Because even though
we don't necessarily know the have the vocabulary to understand
exactly how our world is structured and and why it
works the way it does. When the gaps are there,
you can sense it and it doesn't feel quite real,
doesn't feel quite right. So for the proper or suspension
(45:00):
of disbelief, at least on my side, and I think
it's gotten worse and more hung head into sociological study.
I need to have a plausible society. I need to
have a plausible psychology of the individual as well, and
that has to be all affecting how the plot unfolds.
If the science of the individual and the collective isn't right,
(45:21):
I definitely can't write it. That's fascinating. I agree with
you that the story has to take place in the
context of some obstacles, some constraints that make the story
move forward, that those have to be consistent for the
story to make sense, even if you haven't worked out
the scientific details. But I think that touches in it
really fascinating way on something you said earlier. You're telling
me that you're wanting to construct a story that makes
(45:43):
sense to us here today, that resonates with us, that
makes sense to us, that speaks to who we are
as people in our struggles. But also, science fiction is
about extrapolating into the future and wondering what we'd like
to be human in the five years or a thousand years.
Are we limited in our ability to think about what
the US are like for humans in a hundred years
and five hundred years, and considering the enormous changes and
(46:05):
experiences of our person just over the last fifty or
hundred years. I think that not every writer, not have
respectative fiction writer has the gift to really extrapolate to
see what things look like. But I also think that
if you write something to show, to hold up a
mirror toory your society as as it is now, sometimes
(46:26):
that is what survives. And the reason I mentioned this
is one of my favorite books is flat Land. And
for a book that was written in like, you know,
the mid eighteen hundreds, that book holds extraordinarily well, not
just of course, in terms of mathematics, which is entirely accurate,
but the sociology and all he's doing is critiquing Victorian society.
(46:49):
But so many of the aspects that he talks about
and the guys of flat Land society are still with
us today. So you could say, you know, if you're
just going forward a hundred fifty years, you can talk
about society and it's still will have some of the
same problems and the same challenges, some of the same
things that we're trying to work out. I think in
a way that's why I wanted to introduce these alien
(47:13):
humans who had constructed such different societies that they were
influencing the mostly Earth societies to think differently, to to
imagine a different way of being. Sometimes I do wonder
whether we need some kind of I don't want to
call it quite an external shock or maybe an external
inspiration to realize, okay, this is how it can be
(47:34):
done differently. Well it certainly we'll be fascinating when the
aliens decide that we're worth it and come talk to
us and tell us wonderful. Well, thank you very much
for talking to us about your book. When you tell
us a little bit about the projects that you have
going on now that might be coming out soon. There
is a manuscript that I have just written which would
be touching again on the world of bestwell possible wills
in the Galaxy game, but you know, with the pandemic
(47:57):
and all things, but all delayed, so I probably shouldn't
talk about it yet because we're looking at two or
so before you'll see it. Um. I've been working on
plenty of zoom Tight conferences and festivals and so forth.
So coming up in September, the Focuslet Fest, which is
based on for them Tobago, is going to be happing
(48:18):
an all virtual festival and you could expect to see
me there. I'll probably tweet about it closer to the
time when I can can give up the dates and
what have you. And and prior to that, there's also
the Booklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. I may have called that wrong,
but I think I have it right. That is going
to be the weekend before. So again, those are things
that if anybody follows on my Twitter, I'll be sure
(48:41):
when I have, like you know, the nice shiny graphics
and all the all the right dates and times, I'll
be tweeting forward about that. Sounds good. Well, we're looking
forward to reading the next book in your series and
anything else. You're right, Frankly, it was a pleasure to
read your book and the pleasure to talk to you today.
Thank you so much. Alright, awesome interview, Daniel. It's on
interesting her background and also how she kind of used
(49:03):
the science fiction to talk about societal issues and like
human character issues. Yeah, at the same time an exploration
in the future of our society and also like shining
a light on how we live and the issues that
we face today. And I think one of the points
she's making is that as humans were likely to face
the same kind of struggles and conflicts no matter what
the setting, whether it's on another planet or on a
(49:25):
spaceship or just here on Earth trying to survive. Yeah.
I like how she totally avoided the question of why
do all these Anians look like humans? As I feel
like most science fiction authors due, Yeah, like I don't know,
or is that a central part of the story. Yeah,
I like that. Actually that she owned that. She was like,
you know, assuming mythological beginning to my universe and then
take it forward from the science at that point. It's
(49:47):
a cool It's a really a fascinating blend of like
cultural heritage and mythology and then you know, hardcore science fiction.
So it's definitely not like any other book I've read,
but I really enjoyed. Well again, the book is the
best of all possible war World by Karen Lord. All Right, Well,
we hope you enjoyed that and give it a try.
Thanks for joining us, see you next time. Thanks for listening,
(50:16):
and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio Apple Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hosts And Creators
Daniel Whiteson
Kelly Weinersmith
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com