The SF Universe of Becky Chamber's "The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet"

Daniel interviews Becky Chambers about her book "The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. " Volume 1 of the Wayfarers series which won the Hugo award for best series. You can purchase a copy of the book here.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, I have a question for you about aliens. Oh,
I'm always ready to gobble that up. When you meet
another human culture, it means a lot to share a
meal together, you know, like if you visit somebody or
in a different country, it's important, you know, to sit
down and eat together. But if aliens visit, would you
be willing to try their food even if it looks

(00:30):
super gross? You know, the fate of the earth might
be on the line. You don't want to offend them.
I'm not sure I could take a bite and smile.
I think maybe we should send our Ambassador of Weird
snack Foods. Oh wow, that sounds like a prestigious title.
Who did you have in mind? I just admitted the
form to nominate you. Sounds delicious. Hi am Jorge. I'm

(01:07):
a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comments. Hi I'm Daniel.
I'm a particle physicist. But I honestly do like weird
snack foods. What's the weirdest snack would you ever eat? In? Then?
I don't even know what it was. Because we have
some Japanese markets here where there's nothing in English, and
sometimes we just go in and get a few bags
of weird really Japanese roulette with the snack Japanese snack roulette,

(01:31):
And I'm like, is this a salty snack? Is it
baby food? Is it dessert? I don't even know. Does
it have fish in it? Does it have fish and
cheese on it? Everything has fish in it. Everything is fishing.
It's the Japanese market. It's all extracted from shrimp somehow. Yeah, yeah,
but I love it. Yeah. Well, Welcome to our podcast.
Daniel and Jorge talk about snack foods, eat, weird stuff,

(01:53):
and the universe. No. Welcome to our podcast. Daniel and
Jorge explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio,
which we talk about all the amazing and tasty and
weird things about our universe that we find ourselves in.
You have woken up as a conscious being in this universe,
imbued with curiosity, and look out into the cosmos and
wonder why is it like that? Well, we are here

(02:15):
to tell you why, right? And what does it taste like?
That's important? Does that ever cross your mind? Daniel? I
wonder what aliens taste like? You know, maybe they won't
eat us? Maybe no, No, I'm trending more and more vegetarian.
But I have wondered. You know, sometimes they talk about
like a teaspoon of neutron star ways as much as whatever,
and I wonder, what does that taste like? You know,

(02:36):
what is a teaspoon of neutron stars? Probably probably kind
of heavy. Maybe you should spread it on toast or something,
you know, mix it with a little cream. I don't know,
sparkling a toast to toast. But yeah, welcome to our
podcast in which we talk about all of the amazing
things in the universe, all the delicious things, and all
of the things that may not yet exist or happen

(02:57):
in this universe. And we like to talk about the
real universe, the one that's actually out there that scientists
are trying to figure out, because it's filled with crazy
puzzles and amazing mysteries and mind blowing discoveries. But sometimes
the best way to explore our universe is to think
about other hypothetical universes that might be and also might
be our universe. Yeah, because businesses, I think you we

(03:20):
think of them as explorers, you know, the universe, trying
to discover new things, but even more out there, I
would say maybe the advanced scouts of the human consciousness
and search for knowledge are sort of the the inventors,
you know, the artists, the writers who think of what
could possibly be possible and what would happen if we
found them. That's true. Artists certainly are at the forefront

(03:43):
of what is possible and what might be impossible. I'm
glad that you think about physicists as explorers, though sometimes
you describe me as an explorer from the couch, like
a couch explorer. You probably know that couch really well,
you know every it's well suited to the shape of
my bottom. That's true. So if it's physicists explore the
universe from the couch, then artists explore the universe from

(04:05):
from from their brains, from inside. Nobody uses typewriters, um,
but you know, from their computers, from their fingers and
the keyboards. No. It really is a mental exercise, though,
to think about how the universe is and how the
universe might be. And that's why I'm such a huge
fan of science fiction, because to me, the fun puzzle
of science fiction is figuring out how does this universe

(04:27):
work that some artists or some writer has created. And
that's the same puzzle we're facing in our actual universe,
and so the mental exercise is very similar. It's a
big physics, scientific detective mystery. And so today on the program,
we're having the third of our series of interviews and
reviews of famous, well known science fiction novels, otherwise known

(04:49):
as Daniel's Excuse to talk to all the authors. He's
a big fan of uh welcome to Daniel becomes a
fanboy live in front of the people and loves every
minute of it. Now, this has been super fun. We
talked already to Ann Lecky, who in The Hugo and
the Nebula, for her great book Ancillary Justice, and we
recently talked to Blake Crouch about his really fun book Recursion.

(05:13):
And so today we're excited to talk to you about
another book. Yeah, it's a pretty and it's a kind
of a different science fiction type of book. I haven't
read it, and so I'm looking forward to hearing about
it from you, but you're you're telling me that it's
it's it's sort of hard science fiction, but it's also
kind of a humorous book, Like it has a sense
of humor which you don't usually associate maybe unless you

(05:34):
think about Douglas Adams, right, and and The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy. Yeah. Well, you have some science fiction
books that take themselves very seriously, and you know, I'm
a big fan of those. And then you've got the
ones that don't take themselves that seriously. You know, Star Trek,
where they're sort of like winking at you when they're saying, well,
you know they have seriously, Well, then do you know

(05:56):
how to reverse the polarity on the taw generator? Yeah?
Just uh, Daniel, I'm not I'm not a scientist. I'm
just an engineer. Um. And then you have your sort
of like wacky science fiction hit Tiger's Guide to the Galaxy,
for example, filled with crazy characters and silly hijinks and
and all sorts of stuff, and this one, I think

(06:16):
sort of stretches all those genres. It's like very hardcore
about the physics and how that universe works. She really
tried hard to make it realistic and interesting. But then
it's also mostly about the emotional story of these characters
and the bonds they make together and their antics and
the silly food they eat together, and so it's a
really human story. Sounds like it's a sitcom space opera,

(06:38):
a little bit sitcom space opera. Yeah, and you provide
the laugh track. I laughed a lot while reading this book.
Oh really, you actually laugh out loud? Yeah? I left
a lot. I woke up my wife several times while
reading this book. Really. Wow. Well, maybe maybe I'll check
it out. But it's kind of an interesting story for
a book because the author self published it first online

(07:01):
or is your kickstarter, and then it got picked up
by a publisher and then it sort of took off
and won a Hugo Award for the whole series last year. Yeah,
it's a real inspiration for everybody out there who wants
to be a mainline science fiction author and thinks they
have what it takes but isn't sure and doesn't know
how to break in. Here's the story of somebody who
has just started writing and then it took off on

(07:23):
its own. It's sort of like an Andy Weird story, right.
She owned herself, she published to be a kickstarter, and
then later somebody sort of influential found it and funded
the rest of the series, and now she's a winning
massive prizes and getting paid to do this full time.
So it's a it's a really exca prestigious podcast. I mean,
that's living the dream, is she can I get invited

(07:44):
to a prestigious podcast that sounds like fun talking about
ut Daniel whoop. Sorry, yeah, damnit, Daniel fake until you
are not a podcast host. No, it's um. She has
a fun story and she has a lot of personalities
I think you'll hear in the interview. And she's really
done a great job of carrying that personality into her

(08:04):
characters and creating realistic characters in a fascinating science fiction universe. Awesome.
And so today on the program, we'll be talking about
the fun science fiction universe of Becky Chambers. The Long
Way to a Small Angry Planet, And even just that title,

(08:25):
it really drew me in from the very beginning, Like
that sounds like a good story, doesn't it. The Long
Way to a small Angry Planet. I guess it's the
play between like long small angry. Yeah, it's kind of funny.
I used to think of a like a bitter, bitter,
little shriveled up planet. Well, it tells you that there's
going to be a journey involved, and you already like that.

(08:45):
It's like tolkn esque, right, it's a long way. The
story is going to be about traveling, and when you
get there, there's gonna be something exciting because this planet
is piste off really interesting. Well I'm hooked already. Um,
So let's talk about what the basic idea of the
novel is and then let's talk about the signs of it,
and then we'll play the interview for you guys. Um,

(09:08):
but what is this a small angry planet? It is?
It's not us? Is it? Is it Earth? We are
not the angry planet. No, So to set the scene
in her universe, we all live in the galaxy. But
the galaxy is filled with aliens, all sorts of crazy aliens.
Aliens that have more legs or fins, are all sorts
of weird stuff. But they're sort of human like, you know,

(09:28):
they're very understandable. They have a similar sense of humor,
they eat in a kitchen, they sleep, Um, they can
be like interspecies romance. So you know they're alien, but
they're also not that alien. Is it? Is it more
like Star Wars or Star Trek in terms of its
budget for um, you know, special makeup, in effects. I'd

(09:49):
say it's a little bit more Star Trek that way,
you know, like the Klingons are like humans, but with
little ridges on their heads and they tend to be grumpy,
that kind of thing. All the aliens are like humans,
perturbed in some interesting went. I see. It's not like
your your fallen in love with the blob of of
scenting gas. I got nothing against that. You know, between
consenting blobs of scenting gas can do whatever they like.

(10:11):
But in this book, there are no sentient blobs of
aliening gas, only sentient blobs of water and minerals in carbon. Yeah,
and it's fascinating, and you know, I think that that's
sort of unrealistic. We'll get into that later, but yeah,
for sure, I feel like you lost me already. But
I think that she did this on purpose to sort
of make the aliens approachable, because the book is mostly

(10:34):
about this gang that lives on a ship and they're
like a work gag. They have a job. They're building wormholes,
and you know, they've got a contract. They've gotta work
together and sort of sort of like what it's like
to be on this ship together with this crew that's
multi species. It totally is a sitcom. Here's what wormholes. Yeah,

(10:55):
and um. In order for that to work, you know
that the aliens have to be able to talk to
each other and share experiences and relate to each other.
I see what you mean. They'd sort of not just
look alike a little bit. They're humanoid, but they're also
you know, sort of um share kind of a human sensibility.
You know, it really hard to talk to a centient

(11:17):
blob that you know prioritizes different things than us. Yeah,
and will also be hard to have an alien be
your cook on your ship if they had no idea
how to make human food, or if they had no
interest in human food. Um. And so she enforces this
sort of to make this this overlap, okay, and you
know she acknowledges that she winks to it in the book,

(11:38):
Like everybody's wondering why all the aliens so human? Is
there some sort of like common ancestor, you know, she's
aware ofeness. So I thought that was done pretty well.
But that's sort of The galaxy right choked filled with aliens,
is all sorts of kinds, more than I can keep
track of. But the core structure of the book is
about how you get around the galaxy, and like, how

(11:58):
do you get from solar system to solar system. Oh,
I see, because that you were saying they work at
a wormhole factory or a wormhole station or where do
they work. They work on a ship that builds wormholes.
And so, of course to get from one solar system
to another takes a long time. If you're traveling at
less than the speed of light, take millions of years

(12:18):
to get across the galaxy, you know, it's some small
fraction in the speed of light. Or even if you're
moving at the speed of light, it would take you, you
you know, a hundred thousand years to get across the
milky Way. That's not really good for building a galaxy
sized society. So you have to have some way to
connect these solar systems, and in her book they do
a via wormholes, and you know, wormholes we've talked about
on the show, and we'll talk in a minute about

(12:39):
whether they're realistic. The thing that's really cool about this
book that's different from a lot of other books that
have wormholes in them is that she doesn't just sort
of hand wave her way to wormholes, like, oh, and
there are wormholes. She she talks about like, how do
you actually build a wormhole. She has instructions in the
book about how to do it. Yeah, and the characters

(13:00):
in this book live on a ship and work together
building wormholes. So they're like flying this wormhole construction ship
around the galaxy and each one is kind of a
pain in the butt. I mean, later when people use it,
it's pretty easy. But actually constructing the wormhole, she's stopped
through like how you would do that and the difficulties,
and you know, built up this whole bureaucracy and infrastructure

(13:21):
around how that would work in the economics of it,
And so you are on a journey of building a
wormhole in this book. Yeah, you call it a wormhole engineering,
which sounds like an awesome title for a degree. I'm
a wormhole engineer. Oh man, are we creating more kinds
of engineers already? You can't have enough? And I thought

(13:43):
you would like that because it's not just like, well,
the physicists say it's possible, so therefore we have them
in our world. It's like, well, how would you actually
make one? You know, physicists say a lot of things possible.
Space elevators are possible, other orbits are possible. How do
you actually make it? Happen, So she not just thought
that through but makes it sort of the central driving

(14:04):
plot of the book is this crew building this this
difficult wormhole to an angry planet. Okay, so I'm getting
the sense that it's sort of a mix of Star
Trek cheers and Discovery Channel documentary about how to build
bridges in the best possible way with with food apparently
as well. Yeah, yeah, I think the author drinks a

(14:27):
lot of tea, So there's a lot of discussion of
different kinds of tea and weird alien tea and all
sorts of stuff. All right, So so that the novel
is spends a lot of time and in the mechanics
of building a wormhole, which sounds pretty interesting. And then
you also noted here that um, they do have faster
than light travel, but they don't use it. Yeah, it's
sort of a toss away in the book she mentions

(14:47):
briefly like, and of course, some scientists figured out how
to do faster than light travel. They built a faster
than light drive, but it led to all sorts of
like bureaucratic complications. Because it's violet, it's causality, has time
travel and basically just gives everybody a headache, so they
outlawed it, which always works obviously oddline things totally makes

(15:09):
them all go away and nobody ever tries it. Or
that's right FTL prohibition. And I asked her about that
in the interview. You'll hear her response, Um, I thought
it was pretty fun, though, I'll be honest, if fast
and light travel was possible, I would definitely be ignoring
the laws against it, like I would like to go
to another for sure, once you take a bootleg ride
to another planet fast like Well, I don't know, what

(15:31):
are these alien prisons look like if you get caught.
I don't know. We sound good. Alien prisons are never good.
But if you have a faster than light drive, how
are they going to catch you? Right? You can always
get away from them, true, true, And you can buy
late postalities, so your kid, I don't know, raised them
before they catch you. I don't know, yeah, exactly. All right, Well,
let's get into the signs of it and whether or

(15:54):
not it's plausible from your point of view, and then
we'll get to the interview with biking. But first let's
take a quick break. All right, we're talking about Biggie
Chambers debut novel, Long Way to a Small Angry Planet,

(16:17):
which won the Hugo for Best Series. The series is
called Wayfarers, right, Yeah, and there's three books in the
series and they all have fun titles, and they track
the exploits of this crew and the rest of the
galaxy and all the stuff that happens in to these people.
Is a sequel called The Longer Way to a Smaller,
angerer Planet or a Short Way to a Large Happy Planet. Um, no,

(16:39):
this she has more clever titles. The next ones are
called A Closed and Common Orbit, and then the Record
of a Spaceborn Few And I gotta say she has
a bit of a knack combing up for cool titles.
These are those are good titles. Yeah, they tell a
story onto themselves. Yeah, they summarize the whole book in
just a few words. It's cool. Alright. So then, um,

(17:00):
you're telling me that a lot of the book is
about building wormholes and the engineering of it, and so
let's let's dig into that. Is it sort of plausible
what she talks about in the book, Um, not just
wormholes as an idea, but just the way she's talking
about describing how you would build one. Well, I would
say on the large scale, yes, and then wormholes are

(17:21):
totally theoretically possible in our universe and nobody knows how
to build one at all. So she's operating and sort
of a void there for like how you would actually
build them. If I had to guess how wormholes worked
and how you would construct them, I don't think I
would have come up with the solution she found. But
you know I can't criticize it. Well, maybe let's reach

(17:42):
out for the audience. A wormhole is, right now, a
theoretical kind of shortcut in space, right, like the ideas
that you somehow connect space here to a bit of
space somewhere far away, and the laws of physics actually
allow you to do that, that's right. And the motivation
is to get somewhere far away without going through all

(18:04):
the space between here and there. And the idea is
to somehow shorten the space between here and there, not
like a warp drive, which like squeezes it, but to
actually make a connection between here and there, and like
a bad door, like a back door. And there's sort
of two different mathematical ways to think about them we
can talk about. But general relativity says that they're possible,

(18:26):
Like if you write down the laws of general relativity
to tell us how space bends and how space is connected,
you can find a solution to those equations that connects
too far away points in space via this wormhole, and
you have a black hole on one side and a
white hole on the other side. Well, and and so
one thing I've always wondered about about wormholes is does

(18:46):
a math math suggest that they're you know, you're connecting points,
and so you're connecting points. How can you fit anything
through it? Or can you make warmholes that are bigger
than a point? Yeah, that's one of the problems. If
you just make a wormhole that's a point, it will
collapse that it's unstable. They will not stay open, and anyway,
you can't get anything through it if it's just a point.

(19:08):
So what you need is to keep it open and
to expand that hole. And the way you need to
do that is somehow have some sort of negative pressure.
You need negative gravitational pressure, which is not something we
know how to do, but theoretically people think, well, maybe
if there were particles that had negative mass. We call
this exotic matter, and we talked about it recently on

(19:30):
the program. Then if those existed, maybe they could hold
it open and keep it stable and have the opening
be big enough that you could pass an object through,
maybe even a spaceship. But there's a lot of steps there, right,
And she sort of has that into her book. You
were telling me, like you in her book, you open
a wormhole and then you have to throw buoy's in
there to keep it open. Yeah, so maybe let's talk

(19:51):
about the idea she has for a wormhole, and then
let's talk about whether that lines up with wormholes in reality.
So in her imagining wormholes, the way they work is
that our space, our three dimensional space, is sort of
embedded in a higher dimensional space, the way like a
sheet of paper is two dimensions and it's embedded in
our three dimensional space. And in three dimensions, you can

(20:11):
twist a sheet of paper and you know, you could
leave the surface and come back somewhere else. And imagine,
for example, if that surface was rolled up, if that
two dimensionals sheet was like a roll of toilet paper,
then you might actually be really close to other places
on that two D surface without realizing it, because you're
close sort of in three dimensions, right, because you're you're
folded in that higher dimensional space. And actually you're sitting

(20:35):
right next to each other, but to us it seems
far away because you have to go all around the
toilet paper first. Yeah, and so she calls this the
space between space, the sub layer, and in her universe,
you can punch a hole and sort of move off
the surface of our three dimensional space into this higher
dimensional space, transit through this weird subspace, and then punch

(20:57):
another hole and get back. And the the job of
these ships is to punch that whole and then to
navigate through that space, which is pretty tricky, dropping buoys
along the way so that ships that come later can
just follow the buoy's. So you're saying, we're sitting in
a bigger space, but I guess is that possible or
is it possible we're sitting in a bigger space. So

(21:18):
it is possible that we're sitting in a bigger space,
And by bigger we don't mean like larger, like more
three D space, but that there are other dimensions, There
are different ways to move the way that a two
D sheet of paper is sitting in a three D space.
Try to imagine our three D space in some four
D or five D or ten dimensional space, and as
we talked about once in the program, we don't know

(21:39):
how many dimensions of space there are. There could be three,
there could be eleven, there could be twenty six, there
could be more. We just don't And it is like
like it is that you know, like you and I
are far apart from each other right now, but maybe
there's a dimension that if I just take a step
in that direction in this higher dimensional space, suddenly I'm
next to you. Yeah, if if this three D space

(22:02):
happens to be folded in that higher dimensional space so
that we're close in this higher dimensional space, you have
to find those folds, And is that part of the plot,
like finding those folds? Yeah, And apparently it's very difficult
to navigate, and only certain kinds of beings know how
to do it, and that part is kind of hand wavy.
In the book, she doesn't get into the details. It's
just sort of like everybody who gets into the subspace

(22:25):
sort of like loses their sense of time. But there's
this special category of sentient beings that know how to
navigate it and find their way and build these wormholes.
If you eat the spice, then let's see it's actually
if you get this weird brain virus that they pass
on to their children. It's quite fascinating virus. Yeah, yeah,
And so that's that's one way of thinking about wormholes

(22:46):
is like moving in some higher dimension and imagining that
the constraints of our universe are only because we're not
seeing the full picture, and if we could only move
in this other way, then maybe we could find shortcuts.
See so that's her flavor of warmholes. And you're saying
there's another flavor that physicists have also considered or think
is maybe more realistic. I think it's more realistic. I've

(23:08):
considered it. So you know that's one physicist at least
um And that's sort of an intrinsic one. I mean,
when we talk about bending of space, we don't think
about the bending of space in the context of some
higher dimension. Like when when the Sun bends the space
near the Earth so that the Earth is moving in

(23:28):
an orbit, it's not bending, it's in some higher dimension,
the way like a bowling ball and a rubber sheet
bends a two D space in three D. Instead, the
bending is intrinsic. It's not relative to some external ruler.
It just changes the relationship between bits of space. It
changes how far things are from each other. And so
that's an intrinsic kind of bending instead of an extrinsic bending,

(23:51):
and physicist in general sort of think this one is
more realistic. Well, intrinsic bending is definitely what happens in
our three dimensional space due to math in general relativity,
So that's definitely the kind of bending we have seen.
We don't know if we're in a higher dimensional space.
We've never seen extrinsic bending relative to that, but we
have seen intrinsic bending, and the equations of general relativity

(24:13):
are consistent with this sort of intrinsic connection between two
points in space, a black hole in one, a white
hole in the other, and then at their core those
two points are the same point. Right. But but this
is also thing that we might be living in a
higher dimensional space, right, Yes, that's their dimensions, that's right.
There may be other dimensions. We've never seen them. We

(24:34):
can't rule them out, however, and some theories of physics
predict them, like like bosonic string theory and superstring theory
predict eleven or twenty six dimensions. Those are theoretical ideas
we've never seen those dimensions. We've never seen bending in
those dimensions. We have, however, seen bending in these three
this intrinsic bending. We just change the relative relationship between

(24:55):
bits of space. That's happening all the time. You're doing
that right now with the mass of your bending space.
Right now, you blow mines and bend space. All right, Well,
it sounds like, um, it sounds like you maybe want
to write the opposing novel The Long Way to a
small angry physicist, and in that in that version, if
you build a wormhole, there would be no traveling in between, right.

(25:19):
The one side of the wormhole is the other side
of the wormhole. There's no like working through higher dimensional
space or subspace. It's just instantly connected. Yeah, it's not
about navigating the folds. It's just like you, it's just
joined together. But you know, a fair criticism is nobody
knows how to build that. Like it's consistent with the

(25:40):
laws of physics. That doesn't mean we know how to
make it happen, right, It's a big difference. It sounds
like what she what she did was sort of plausible,
totally totally plausible. Maybe not the favorite theory of physicists
but it sounds like, um, it's plausible, and how she
describes building one, is that sort of realistic or is that,
you know, just her using her imagination At that point
it's her using her imagination because nobody knows anything about

(26:03):
what would happen in these higher dimensions with the laws
of physics would be like there. Um, But you know,
she built a credible idea and she followed it through
and she stuck to the rules of her story. So
you know I give her five stars for that. Well, well,
I am certainly interested in reading this book now and
so again the book is called The Long Way to
a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. And so, now, Daniel,

(26:25):
you spoke to Becky recently and asked her a bunch
of questions I did. She was kind enough to give
me some of her time and to share with me
how she built her science fiction universe, why she made
the choices she did, how she designed her characters, and
also to tell me, in her own words, a bit
about her personal journey from totally unknown, struggling writer to
Hugo winning science fiction author. Wow, I guess he's not

(26:49):
as angry anymore. She seems like a pretty happy person.
It's been a long way to a large, happy career,
to a large, happy shelf full of awards. Yes, so
thanks Becky for spending your time and congrats on all
your success. Awesome. Well, here is Daniel interviewing science fiction

(27:09):
author Banky Chambers. Okay, thank you very much for coming
on our podcast. Would you mind first introducing yourself for
our listeners. Absolutely. My name's Becky Chambers, and I'm the
author of varied sci fi books. I'm best known for
my Wayfair series, which currently includes The Long Way to

(27:31):
a Small Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, and
Record of a space Born Few. I'm also the author
of a standalone novella called to Be Taught If Fortunate. Well,
congratulations on all of your success. It's been kind of
a journey for you. Can you tell us a little
bit about how you got to be where you are? Yeah,
I still don't know exactly how I got to work.

(27:53):
It all started in two thousand and twelve. I was
working on the Long Way to a Small Angry Planet,
and I was doing freelance writing at the time, which
you know is not the most stable of professions. And
I reached one of those points I think it's familiar
to most freelancers. Where I ran out of paying gigs

(28:15):
for a few months. I was really close to finishing
the book and I didn't want to stop, is what
it came down to, And and pitching and and finding
gigs is something that takes up a ton of time
an effort, and it I knew that I kind of
had a choice there as to which I was going
to focus on. So I turned to Kickstarter and I said, Hey,
I've got this idea for a book. I need two

(28:38):
months to finish it. Would you help me out? And
to my eternal surprise, um, the Internet obliged and I
was able to to finish it and myself published and
put it out there, and I kind of thought that
was it. You know, I I had given my backers
what I said I would make it. You know, I
sold a little bit, but not much. And then I
had the extraordinary lightning strike good fortune of meeting just

(29:03):
the right person at a convention a couple of years later,
and we had beers and chatted, and that was that.
I didn't talk about the book at all. Uh. And
then a few months later she got in touch because
she had read it and offered me my first book
deal and it's been a crazy ride ever since. So, um,
this is now what I do full time, which is
the best job ever. Well depending on which day you

(29:26):
catch me. But yeah, when people ask me, you know,
how do you get published? How do you go about
writing a book? I have no idea what to say, because, um,
it really has been um kind of a crazy ride. Well,
congratulations on all of your success, and I hope that
your story serves, like, you know, an inspiration to other
folks out there who are hoping to break in and

(29:46):
seeing that it's possible from you know, from the outside
to just write something wonderful that resonates with people and
have a take off. Thank you very much. So in
these interviews, we'd like to get to know an author
a little bit by asking them some class sak science
fiction questions. So here's a philosophical question about transporters like
Star Trek style. Do you think that it actually moves

(30:09):
you from one place to another or that it sort
of kills you, disassembles you and clones you somewhere else.
I'm in the disassembling camp, which is really graham. I
hate it, but I feel like that's what happens, and
if so, would you use a transporter? Absolutely not, I'd
be like I'd be like bones in this situation where

(30:31):
I'm like, I don't want to get in that. Ever,
the thing is people use them, you know, every day,
and they don't think too much about it. But I'm
the sort of person who would overthink it, because when
a transporter goes wrong, it goes really really wrong. So
I think i'd I think i'd stick to shuttles unless
I absolutely had to. Well, then, thinking more broadly in
science fiction that you read, what sort of technology that

(30:53):
you see in science fiction would you like to see
actually come into reality? Oh? Are we talking about technology
that's likely or anything anything? Think broadly, I would like
sticking with Star Trek. I'd love a replicator because I
hate cooking and just bring me constant joy, just to

(31:14):
not have to put any thought into dinner, just to
be like I'm having filet mignon tonight or whatever. I
also think artificial gravity would be a good one, because
I really want to go to space and that I'd
love to see Earth from orbit. I'd like to go
out there, but I also get really emotion sick, so
I have a feeling that me and micro gravity might
not be the best of friends. So if you can,

(31:36):
if you can give me somewhere where I can actually
sit on a couch in a couple of and look out,
that would be That would be fantastic. Well, very good.
That sounds like a very nice wish list. It's all
creature comforts now that I'm thinking about. It's nothing revolutionary.
I should have said some sort of medical technology, but no,
I just want to be comfy and eat my steak
right and have a wonderful view of Earth exactly. Well.

(31:56):
I really enjoyed reading your book. It was a lot
of fun. I read a lot of science fiction, and
I don't finish everything that I read, but yours I
found a lot of fun. I was really impressed with
the characters you created, and I loved how you could
really get to know these characters. I mean, they are
all facing really different challenges than anything I've ever faced,
but I still sort of felt like, Hey, these are

(32:18):
real people and they're going through struggles that I can
identify with a little bit, or at least enough to
get to know them. And it seems to me like
quite a challenge to create characters in this alternate universe
that are different enough from us that they're like honestly
in that universe, not in hours, but still similar enough
that we can identify with them. I'm happy to hear

(32:39):
you say that, but yeah, it it is tricky. I
always have to figure out what that, what the anchor
points are right, because, um, yeah, I like to take
you on kind of a journey in that respect. You know,
I want you to think outside of your box. I
want you to consider other cultures and ways of thinking
and other structures of families and all of that. But
there has to be uh degree of relatability, and there's

(33:01):
something where you can get in and really, you know,
even if you know you're very physically different, or if
you're very culturally different, that you can still relate to
them on some level. Um. And so I mess with
that in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it's physicality. Um.
If it's a character that I want you to be
able to trust right off the bat, I'm more likely
to make them buy people because because if somebody walks

(33:23):
up to you looking like a giant lobster, you're gonna
have that moment of book. Um, even if they're the
nicest person in the world. You know, it's things like that,
or just things like maybe sharing food or or um,
you know, just having an honest conversation about well, here's
how my family works, here's how you know, here's how
my language works. Because you can learn a lot about
how a person thinks by the way they speak, etcetera. UM,

(33:44):
So those are the things I've I've really I really
enjoy teasing out, um figuring out finding that good balance
between I want to make this weird. I want to
make you stretch your brain a bit, but I also
want you to feel like this is a person you
could be friends with. It's seems like you spent a
lot of time thinking about how the various aliens would
interact with each other, which food from this species would

(34:06):
work for the other one, and how social ideas from
one culture could be different from another. I imagine in
our universe it would be much more difficult than what
you describe. I mean, I think real aliens would be
so vastly different that you couldn't have tea with them
or share a kitchen. But if you want to have
a culture and have them interact in some way, then

(34:27):
you have to Is that what motivated you to make
them all sort of human like, to make them frankly
a bit unrealistically human. Absolutely, it's it's very intentional on
my part, and it's not with the Wayfarers universe, it's
not reflective of what I think life in the universe
would actually be like. Much as I'd love to go
have tea with an alien, I don't think that would

(34:49):
would be possible. I imagine something much more like UM,
say Arrival, for example, where they're they're so odd and
they're so alien that that it's it's upsetting and disconcerting,
and even though you're trying to figure each other out,
it's it's difficult and painful and um and you never
even when you get there, you can't really explain it
to anybody else. I think if if we were lucky

(35:11):
enough to exist at the same time as another civilization
level species, that's more what it would be like. UM.
But with the Wayfarer's books, the the intent is to
to follow in the footsteps of things like Star Trek
and for Escape and Star Wars, all these wonderful multi
species universes that I grew up with, and to make

(35:32):
you feel like you could be part of it. That
you could easily inhabit it um. So it is a
very conscious choice on my part to um to make
them more a little more human than I than I
think they would be. Well, I think you succeeded because
I would love to hang out with your aliens and
have a meal with them. I mean, in general, I

(35:53):
would love to hang out with aliens. I have so
many physics questions for aliens. I would like to ask
the alien ins about wormholes and interstellar travel and all
that stuff. So it frustrates me to imagine that they
might show up on Earth and then we'd have like
no way to talk to them. But let me turn
them into the physics of your universe, because I'm a
physicist and our show is mostly about physics, and I

(36:16):
was really intrigued by the physics of the universe that
you built in your novel. My take on it is
that in your novel, to get around the galaxy, you
use wormholes. But these wormholes require like actual work to construct.
This is unusual to see in the science fiction book
to really think about how the wormholes would get built.
I mean, in your universe, you have to like punch

(36:37):
a hole into this sub layer of space this space
between space and then make these connections sort of manually
before people can actually use them for transport. Is that
how you describe sort of the major physics of your universe?
I would, I would, Okay, awesome. I wanted to make
sure I got that right. So what gave you the

(36:57):
idea to build your universe your story around that? I mean,
did you start from this sort of science and engineering
concept of having wormholes that are difficult to actually build?
Or did you have a story you wanted to tell
and you needed something with that sort of story structure
in it. So it's it's started with the characters um
In Uh, you know, I I wrote this crew first

(37:20):
and like them. Alatton was like, okay, well where do
they live and what do they do? Um and propulsion
became the first obvious question, you know, because that that
shapes so much of what kind of science fiction story
you're telling. Are you living in a Star Wars future
in which or past? I guess because it's a galaxy
a long time ago, but um, you know, are you

(37:41):
living in a in a Star Wars style universe where
you can get anywhere instantly? Or are you talking sort
of a generationship style thing where it's going to take
you decades or centuries to get between systems. These are
very different kinds of stories, and so I wanted to
be somewhere in the middle bit closer to to faster
travel well, and that I didn't want it to take

(38:01):
years to leave a system, you know. I wanted you
to be these people, to be able to hop between
planets from chapter to chapter. And wormholes just seemed like
the obvious fit. Wormholes have been something or something that
have captured my imagination for a really long time. Um
some of my my biggest or like entry points into

(38:23):
into science fiction. Um, you know, we're um Carl Sagan's contact. Um.
The movie came out when I was twelve years old,
and I was wrapped, um and and uh you know,
then read the books and whatnot, and then you know,
round about the same time, um, Deep Space nine was
on TV and I watched that every week. So Wormholes
were just sort of this this I don't know, they

(38:44):
had a moment there in my tweens and and and
stuck with me. So um yeah, it just it felt
like the obvious choice for me personally, and also something
um that I thought would be fun to play with.
Let's take a quick break, we'll be back. So tell

(39:13):
me what's fascinating to you about wormholes. What is it
about wormholes that really sticks in your brain? The whole
concept of it's this sphere, right, it's we think it's
al easy as for us to think of it like
a door that you just kind of open and you
walk through space on the other side. But no, it's
an it's an object, and no matter where you enter from,
you're coming out somewhere else. And that is the most

(39:36):
mind bending, uncomfortable idea to me because it doesn't make it,
you know, to to us uh, three dimensional beings, it
makes no sense whatsoever. And there is a degree of
magic in it. To me, Um, I think it's you know,
I try not to make things too fantastical, but the
fact that you know wormholes are, um you know, something

(39:59):
that sthmatically have been talked about as to whether or
not they could exist, um, gives the universe this, uh,
this wonderful esoteric quality. To me that that just shows
how much we don't know and how much we don't understand,
and how we are very locked tom our dimensional understanding
of things. Yeah, my favorite thing about a lot of

(40:19):
these topics in physics is that they're very counterintuitive. Right,
we don't experience any of these things in our everyday life.
But then learning that our experience is not representative of
what's going on out there in the universe that could
be totally weird and different. That's super fun, especially when
you discover that these things could be real, like wormholes

(40:40):
could actually be happening out there. So I want to
ask you a little bit more about the mechanics of it.
If you don't mind what is going on in this
sort of sub layer, this space between space, How do
you build a wormhole in your universe? All right? So
I'm going to preface this by saying I don't actually
know how to build a wormhole, but however, BS my

(41:04):
way around it. Sure. So the the idea is that you, um,
you first punch a hole, right, and that there's this
space between space and you you build a tunnel through
it by using these and and you're building through space
and time. This is important. This is why you have
to be licensed to build a wormhole, because you want
to make sure you're coming out at the right time. Um,

(41:24):
otherwise it causes a lot of problems. So you you
are creating a tunnel through this space between space, and
you drop these booies that basically hold it open right
so that it doesn't because it naturally would just collapse
back and on itself. So, um, you're you're creating this
corridor from point A to point B and then around

(41:46):
the entry and exit points, you have this cage that
keeps space. It keeps the hole open, but it also
keeps it from ripping further, so that, um, you know,
you're not you're not causing damn, you're not getting you know,
having planets get sucked in or what have you. It's
it's a stable Um, it's a it's a stable highway essentially. Now,

(42:08):
as to the mechanics of how any of that works,
I have no idea. But in your mind, is our
three dimensional space sort of embedded in a higher dimension
and you're making a tunnel through that higher dimensional space?
Or are you like connecting three D space in a
new way that's just sort of changing the way the
space is organized? Right? So I I imagine that there

(42:30):
is that there we're talking about a higher dimension as
you said, like that that there's some there's a connective
tissue there that we're not aware of and that UM
instead of like folding space necessarily you you you are
able to um traverse through that you know, the sub layer,
as it's called um, in order to take shortcuts. It

(42:53):
doesn't behave UM. You know, distances don't mean the same
thing there that they do here. UM. So that's that's
that's how I picture it. At least, well, I really
enjoyed it. UM. It was really unusual. Your universe sort
of sits between the various kinds of science fiction universes
I've seen before. One where you can just like sort

(43:14):
of get anywhere instantly, and then another one where you
can sort of and then other ones where like literally
takes forever to get and then other ones where it
takes almost forever to get anywhere. Here, it's like it's
a struggle to get somewhere the first time because you
actually have to build this wormhole. And I sort of
like that that nod did engineering, you know, like, hey,

(43:35):
maybe physicists can come up with the idea for the wormhole,
but actually building one is real work, Like it's the
project of this whole novel, and it's not just like boom,
You've got a wormhole. It's like, let's build one. I
think Jorge would like that thanks to his engineering background.
So then my next question for you is, do you
imagine that this might actually be possible in our universe?

(43:58):
Do you think that it requires different physics or do
you think that these wormholes might actually work in our universe?
I think it would require different physics probably, or at
least it would require UM technology and an understanding of
physics that we do not currently have. That's the caveat

(44:18):
I I The internal caveat I always have with with
all of UM these books is that I just assume that,
you know, centuries and centuries in the future, people have
a much better understanding of how to work with the stuff,
and they're able to do things that now seem impossible
given my understanding of the universe. UM. You know, here

(44:38):
in I don't think what I've written is possible. But
if somebody six hundred years from now wants to prove
me wrong, that would be fantastic. But UM, but I
am definitely UM taking a few flights of fancy with it.
I think, well, I think that's a really important point
about what's possible, Like if physics hasn't said it's impo possible,

(45:00):
but we haven't figured out how to do it yet.
You can just speculate about how it might just take
a few hundred years to figure it out. But it
sounds to me like you're specifically not doing anything that
physics would say no to today. So in that sense,
you're sort of placing it in our universe far in
the future and handwaving you know some of the technological solutions.

(45:23):
Is that fair? Yeah, that's that's it exactly, And and
that too, is done very intentionally and that I want
to make the reader feel like this is a place
they can inhabit really easily, and so that does require
things like, um, you know that the ships all have
artificial gravity so that you can actually like eat off
of a plate on a table, and you know, have
scenes where you're having tea with someone or comfort creature

(45:44):
comforts or you know, um a, a trip between planets
sakes several weeks or months, but it's not going to
take your whole life, you know. Um, these are these
are little um shortcuts that I take to make sure
that the readers having fun and can easily imagine themselves there.
But I'm also trying to not um break the laws
of physics too much, or if I do, I I

(46:06):
often will not add it intentionally with somebody be like,
I don't know how that would work, and then be like,
you know, whatever it works, um, Because ultimately, what I
want is for the reader to feel a connection to
our our universe as it exists, you know. And that's
why I shy away from too much. You know, it's
straying too much into the space, magic realm of things,

(46:26):
because I want people to get interested in the real
thing and I want people to to uh feel that
connection to the larger universe. And so if I if
I mess with the rules too much, I'm worried that
I might shoot myself in the foot in that regard. Okay,
very nice. So then let's talk about the rules in
your universe, because wormholes are such a big part of

(46:47):
the universe. But then you also include faster than light travel,
but then it's sort of outlawed because it creates too
much trouble. Tell me more about why you wanted to
do it that way. Have both faster than light travel
and worm holes in your universe. I think that faster
and night travel would be an absolute logistical and bureaucratic nightmare.

(47:08):
You know, how do you because because since I'm not
breaking the laws of relativity, um, how do you deal
with that? How do you deal with with people aging
at different rates or you know, showing up seventy years
in the future and they've only aged two years or
what you know? That to me is that's a very

(47:28):
different kind of science fiction story, and it would break
the universe as I've written it, in which you can
have people who aren't um, you know, in an in
an interstellar sort of way, you know, like leaving their
families behind and and seeing that their kids have already
aged and died in etcetera. Like that's that's not what
I was intending to write. So, um, I just I

(47:51):
wanted to give that little nod of like, yeah, it's
the thing we can do, but we we decided we
decided not to. It's too much a mess. Oh but
that was agony for me though. I was like, oh
my gosh, what really tell me more about it? And
then you just sort of like put it aside and
it seemed like a tease. I also thought it was
it was pretty fascinating as a solution to this storytelling

(48:13):
issue like fast and life travel would break your universe,
and so you decided to fix it with like a
bureaucratic obstacle. I mean, if I were writing it, I
would be like, you know, handway woo woo, some science obstacle.
I think it's kind of hilarious and creative that you say,
oh no, no, that's possible, we just don't do it
because it's you know, against our cultural rules. That's kind

(48:35):
of fascinating. I think ultimately, you know, I am so
interested in in astronomy and in the sciences and all
of it, but the science is to me also, you know,
definitely includes the social side, and and that's something um
I obviously really like exploring in these stories and the universes.
I imagine it is kind of a bureaucracy. It's this,

(48:56):
it's this um every you know, they have to get
permits to build wormholes, and it's all reliant on these
treaties and I'm having the right sort of licenses, and
you have to go to piloting school and tunneling school
and all of that. So it's it's the books are
just as much about how to live in this society
that as they are here's all the cool technology we have,

(49:18):
and here's how we jump between planets. And you think
in that universe everyone would sort of follow the rules,
like you wouldn't get FTL pirates or you know, FTL
smugglers or something. People wouldn't be like trying to skirt
the rules and get around them. I think you definitely do. UM.
It's something I've never written, just because the types of

(49:38):
stories I'm writing aren't aren't UM quite the right venue
for that. But I think people do try to get
around I mean there are obviously UM and so some
of the later books UM, there we encounter cultures and
worlds that are estranged from the galactic commons, which is
the main setting that I'm describing, UM, in which people

(50:00):
are doing things that are very illegal UM or that
would be culturally taboo. UM. So I with specifically with FDL, though,
I think that the resources you need to do it
would require, um the right connections or you know, enough
enough money to do it. I think it would be
difficult for your average UM, you know, just sort of

(50:21):
scummy pirate to get their hands on an FTL drive. UM.
You know, it just sort of like be somebody, you know,
like someone getting I don't know, a nuclear weapon something
unless that is going to be so tightly locked down
and it requires, um, such high tech development that, um,
it's going to be hard for the average person to
get cool. Well that makes sense. Well, again, congrats on

(50:42):
thinking through this amazing universe, building it out and taking
us on a fun tour in your book. That's really wonderful.
So congrats on all of your success. It's very well deserved,
and thanks for taking some time to talk to us
before we go. Do you have any upcoming projects you'd
like to tell our listeners about. Sure, So, I'm currently
working on the next Wayfarer's book. It is currently untitled,

(51:03):
but it will be out early next year. Um. I
also have a pair of novella's coming out from tour
dot Com also next year. Those will be solar punk,
not space opera. So that's a a fun departure for me.
So it's a busy year and I'll be stuck in
my writing cave, but I'll have a lot of stuff
coming out wonderful. Well, thanks again for coming on our show.

(51:26):
Thanks so much for having me. All Right, that was
Science Fetching author Becky Chambers, and she sounds really fun
and pretty amazing. Sounds like you guys that have a
really great conversation. Yeah, we had a lot of fun.
She was very kind to spend her time talking to me,
and she clearly thought this stuff through and did her best,
like make a universe that made sense. And he heard
her say she really wanted to set it in our universe.

(51:48):
She was not trying to invent new laws of physics.
You're just sort of trying to fast forward hundreds or
thousands of years to what people might do with our
laws of physics. And I told the respect that it
sounds like she did her research. You know, it sounds
like she's pretty knowledgeable about these high dimensional ideas and
and did she just do a lot of research, thats
that she always been sort of a physics fan. I

(52:11):
think she was. Yes, she's been watching Star Trek and
reading science fiction for a long time and that's led
her to be curious about physics. And so kudos to
her for doing her research. And also you can hear
on the interview she acknowledges when she's at the edge
of her knowledge and the things that she needed a
handwave or like at some point nobody wants to see,
like equations in a science fiction book, right, I mean

(52:34):
where the appendix is. I want the hardest science fiction possible.
That's right. This should be a paper and it should
be published. It should just be equations, the whole novel
to just be long, long equation. Hey, you know, I
always say math is the language of physics. So maybe
some days somebody will write prose and even poetry and
songs in mathematics. No, well, there you go. We can

(52:54):
always dream. No. So she did a great job, and
she totally acknowledged where she ran up to her the
limits for her knowledge, and where she was inventing stuff.
And I think she total a really fun story. I
got sucked into and I wanted to be in her universe.
So I think she did a great job, and I
recommended to all the fans of science fiction out there. Awesome.
And what do you think she's trying to say, Like,

(53:15):
what's the takeaway message from you know, interacting with all
these different types of species and kind of closing closing
the distances in our universe? What does that do to
humans and the human consciousness? I think she was just
trying to imagine, you know, how humans would experience this
other kind of universe, interacting with aliens and trying new things,

(53:36):
and it's sort of like a travel novel large, you know,
like going to Japan and trying weird stuff, and it
sort of has that flavor of it. And I think
she just tried to like paint that on the whole
galaxy instead. And you know, she could have made it
like super aliens. She could have made it like, oh
my god, we go to this planet and they're all
just blobs of gas. We can and talk to them.

(53:57):
We don't know if they're angry or if they're just
happy to see us, so they're just farting all the time.
They couldn't Who knows, she could have made a super alien.
All their jokes are far jokes, and aren't all our
jokes are our jokes too. That's the common great commonality
in Lead. But that's the thing is she wanted to
find the commonality. She wanted there to be aliens we

(54:18):
could relate to, and that was her constraint, because it's
not that much fun to read a book where you
find aliens and then you can't communicate with them at all. Right,
there's no satisfaction there. Well, it sounds pretty cool, so again,
if anyone wants to check it out. It's called The
Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, part of the
Wayfarer series Hugo Award winning Wayfers series by Backy Chambers.

(54:39):
So thanks to everybody who's been sending in your science
fiction recommendations. Please keep it up. I'm reading those books
and if one of them strikes my fancy and we
can get the author on the podcast, we will do
more of these episodes. And thanks again to Baky Chambers
for being on the podcast. We hope you enjoyed that.
See you next night. Before you still have a question

(55:05):
after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's
one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I
Heart Radio. More podcast from my Heart Radio. Visit the

(55:28):
I Heart Radio, a Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
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