301 - Mickey 7 Author Edward Ashton - No Win Scenario

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On this special episode of No Whin Scenario with Trevor
and Don.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
I posted about how Robert Patterson was going to be
starring in a film based on one of my books.
I must have gotten two thousand replies in the first
hour and a half after that, you idiot is the
greatest actor of our generation is starring in a film
based on your book and you can't even spell his name.

(00:26):
They were so mad.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
I haven't listened to anything you've said in the last
twenty seconds.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
Damn it, Trevor.

Speaker 5 (00:33):
We had a sick line.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Two friends who hate each other, rude talking science fiction.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
It has become this cultural phenomenon.

Speaker 5 (00:41):
Along with some special guests. I appreciate what Star Trek
did to me.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I would love to have this book get planned.

Speaker 5 (00:48):
And that wasn't acting, That wasn't real.

Speaker 6 (00:50):
Do you know what?

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Our YouTube channel is absolutely not No Win Scenario with
Trevor and Don.

Speaker 4 (00:58):
Okay, we're not doing that.

Speaker 5 (00:59):
Boom, Hey, hey, Trevor, Hey, who where we are? Look
over there?

Speaker 4 (01:06):
What do you see?

Speaker 5 (01:07):
I see the West Soon cinema.

Speaker 4 (01:09):
What's playing?

Speaker 5 (01:10):
Well, Mickey seventeen's playing? You want to go see it? Yeah?
I've been wanting to see it for a while.

Speaker 7 (01:15):
You know it's based on that book Mickey seven.

Speaker 5 (01:16):
Right, Yeah, I read half of it.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, you've got about two hours lectury the rest of it.
Because I think ed Ashton, the author is going to be.

Speaker 5 (01:23):
There, No way he's going to be there. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
I think we should crash the whole thing and just
like ask him a million questions.

Speaker 5 (01:29):
Yeah, I got a couple of questions I could ask.
All Right, let's go, Okay, let's go. Oh shit, Trevor, Yes,
can't cross the street.

Speaker 4 (01:35):
We're gonna die.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Any other thoughts?

Speaker 5 (01:40):
Every time I'm around you, I want to die.

Speaker 4 (01:45):
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the season three premiere of
the No Win Scenario Podcast. I'm Don Scheckter, and with
me as always is my dark shadow, my little friend here, Trevor.
Hi every week, Trevor. Everyone stop talking. Okay. We are
live today at the West Newton Cinema in West Newton, Massachusetts,
with Edward Ashton, the author of Mickey seven, and an

(02:07):
audience who's just watched Mickey seventeen. So Ed thanks again
for joining us today.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Thank you so much for having mere. I really do
appreciate the opportunity. I'm gonna steal from your book please
do oh, thank.

Speaker 4 (02:18):
You You're about me section at the end. Edward Ashton
is the author of the novels The Fourth Consort Now
Goes to war Mickey, Seven, Anti Matter Blues, Three Days
in April, and the End of Ordinary. His short fiction
has appeared in venues ranging from the newsletter of an
Italian sausage company to Escape Pod, Analog Science Fiction Effect,

(02:39):
and Fireside Magazine. In his free time, he enjoys cancer research,
teaching quantum physics to sullen graduate students, and whittling. I
got to stop those sausage company. What's before we get
into your work? Like I've seen that everywhere your website.
Can you explain your true?

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Sorry? True sorry? My first published piece a very long
time ago. I did sell to the newsletter in Italian
sausage cause. Why they decided they wanted to print fiction
in their newsletter, I do not know. It was an
initiative that one of their executives I thought would increase
brand awareness or something. I don't know, but they paid

(03:16):
me one hundred dollars and a three foot by three
foot sheet pizza, and I still consider that to be
one of my best paydays ever. I was very proud
of that one.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
That's amazing. And other than getting paid in pizza, any
lessons from that experience that stayed with you?

Speaker 2 (03:29):
I did. Actually I learned an important lesson shortly after that,
which is that actually money can be exchanged for goods
and services, and if you're paiding cash, you can buy
all the pizza you want. That was a big lesson
found lesson. Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 4 (03:45):
I love it. Okay, Well, this has got to be
wild to have your novel, your story get made into
this major motion picture released by Warner Brothers. How does
it feel? I know this is just your fifth time
seeing it in the theater since it was released, my
second time. I think it gets better every time. How
did it feel?

Speaker 7 (04:00):
I mean, there's really no words to describe.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
This experience. I've said this before, but I still cannot
rule out the possibility that I'm right now in an
intensive care unit with a heavy drip of morphine and
Jennifer's just getting ready to pull the plug. I appreciate
you waiting until I got to see the film first.
That was all I really ever asked out of this process.
I mean, I don't know if you're aware of sort

(04:24):
of how this came to be. But this novel was
turned into my agent in December of twenty nineteen, just
the raw pdf, unpublished, didn't have a contract, nothing. Twenty
three days later, Warner Brothers said option of this for film.
And I cannot explain to you how much that is

(04:46):
not how this business works. Ordinarily, you know, the book
is published, it becomes the best seller, people get excited
about it, then the studio comes calling. This was completely
backwards from that, and it's the improbability of the experience
is so great that I really cannot express it.

Speaker 4 (05:04):
So did you find out? Obviously it's a great story,
great book, but like what happened that made it so
quickly picked up.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
The book. Scout that my agent got in touch with
had worked previously with Jeremy Kleiner and Brad Pitt and
their production company Plan B, who had just joined forces
with Warner brother at that time. And Plan B had
previous experience with director Bank because they had done Oakchet
together in twenty seven, released in twenty seventeen. And you

(05:37):
probably picked up if you've read the book, if you've
seen the film, Director Bong and I share a lot
of sensibilities. We really see eye to eye on a
lot of things in terms of the social commentary, the
dark humor, the sort of fondness for over the top
absurdity from time to time. And apparently Jeremy, when he

(05:59):
got a look at this, just said, this is Bong
And they'd been looking for a chance to work with
director Bong again. And director Bong, as it turned out,
of course, he had just come off Parasite, he had
just won four Oscars and was considering what his next
project would be, and he'd started working on another project

(06:21):
which was a sort of a true crime thing, and
around that time came to sort of a crisis of
conscious and after interviewing some of the people who had
been involved in the actual incident that was based on,
and decided that this wasn't something he could move forward with,
so he needed something else. One of the first things
he said to me when I met with him was

(06:43):
I want to thank you. You saved me from that
other project. So it was just a confluence of good fortune.
Really again difficult to believe.

Speaker 4 (06:50):
And so where were you when you found out?

Speaker 2 (06:54):
I was sitting at my breakfast table and I got
a text and it was from my agent. It was
just a link and it said click here. And I'm
not an idiot. I've done cyber safety. I don't like
this is a fishing attack, right, Obviously I'm not going
to click that, but then hat it's Paul. So I
clicked it, and it was a link to a Deadline
article saying that Bunkchin hone Robert Pattinson, We're going to

(07:16):
be doing this project based on Edward Ashton's novel. And
my wife was sitting across the table from me, and
she the first thing she said was, oh my god,
who died? Because the blood just drained out of my face?
And I know this is this is a good cardiac arrest.
This is the kind that we like.

Speaker 7 (07:29):
So uh no, it was just that I literally got
a text.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
I got to stop you right there? Did you see
Pattinson or Patterson? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah, that's that's okay. Now you're trying to get me
in trouble. I've already been down this road.

Speaker 4 (07:43):
One audience, anyone know this story? What happened?

Speaker 2 (07:46):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (07:47):
Not internet crowd lets maybe.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
So when I saw this, I opened up my social
media accounts and I posted about how Robert Patterson was
going to be starring in a film based on one
of my books, and I have never been roasted the
way that I was roasted for those I mean I

(08:09):
must have gotten two thousand replies in the first hour
and a half after that, you idiot, The greatest actor
of our generation is starring in a film based on
your book and you can't even spell his name. They
were so mad I did.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
Wasn't a publicity stunt?

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Oh god, no, no, no, no. I was the villain
of the Internet for a week. No, this is this
was awful. I will say, we've we've all made nice
Roberts fan clubs or all my friends now, and that
the head of Robert Pattinson Worldwide actually came to one
of my book signings just to give me a hug.
So we're we're all we're all friends now. But it

(08:46):
was it was a very rough introduction.

Speaker 4 (08:48):
Amazing. I'm so glad we covered that one. Trevor, you
did a grid job. Stop it. So what was the inspiration?
What was the inspiration behind Mickey seven?

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Two different things, so that the basic themes of the
book are really based, like most of most of my
work is based on my own sort of weird obsessions.
I've always had a thing about the tele transport paradox.
So the tele transport paradox is a philosophical question. It
goes back to seventeen fifty. Actually, I was originally posed
that at least of the Euross reference I could find

(09:20):
to it as a query to the English Royal Philosophical Society,
and the question was, if one could transpose one's soul
into a new vessel identical to the first, would this
be the same person or a new being altogether? Which
it's amazing to me that they were thinking about this,
you know, hundreds of years ago before any of this
was remotely practical. You know, Ray Curswell right now really

(09:45):
wants to do this and thinks that it is possible.
He wants to upload his brain into into a computer
system that the man takes like I don't know, three
hundred pills a day and try to survive long enough. Yeah,
it's crazy. So this is something that actually is actually
potentially possible now is not remotely then, but it's something
that philosophers have been chewing over ever since. And the

(10:05):
way that I posed it in the book, which if
you read the book you probably saw this is as
if you imagine then when you go to sleep at night.
You don't just go to sleep, You die, and someone
else wakes up in your bed the next morning. They
have all of your memories, they look just like you.
They think they're you, but they're not. You've been extinguished
the night before, and the same thing will happen to
that person the next night. Can you prove to me

(10:28):
that that's not exactly what happens? And the answer is no,
you can't. Your life would be no different whatsoever if
that was exactly the way that the world works. And
that's what the teletransport paradox is. And that is the
central question of Mickey's life, because that's exactly what happens
to him. He dies, and then he wakes up and
he feels like himself, and he has all of his
memories and he remembers dying even But is that the

(10:51):
same point of view? Is it the same person behind
his eyes looking out? And that's a question that we
can't answer.

Speaker 4 (10:57):
And are you drawn to this because of the plosophical
questions or because of some.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
You know, I'm just a weird guy.

Speaker 7 (11:06):
That's it's it's just it's it's just because I love this.

Speaker 4 (11:08):
Was like a star trek thing, you know where it's like,
you know, transporters at the same thing, and it's only
been around since the sixties, but being around for so
long as a thought.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
That that was probably where I first was introduced to
It was watching Star Trek when I was a little kid,
and and like it was clear to me when I
was six years old that that transport of being was
a murder machine that was not a transportation device. You know,
I could see like that dude dissolve, Like I saw
him dissolve that that that looked really painful. There's no
way you would And I think there's like, isn't there
a character in the Star Trek who won't get on

(11:36):
the transporters?

Speaker 3 (11:36):
Just sorry Trek or we'll be here till four a
m okay, I just don't do it.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
But yeah, that that's where I first saw the pitch up.

Speaker 4 (11:45):
Great. So when you're looking in all your novels, like
where do you start, like what do you have the inspiration?
And and and build a story around that idea where
you know, I get to it.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
I usually start. I usually start with an image, whether
it's a story or a novel. I usually said, I'm
a very visual person and I think visually that the
start of this novel was an image of a man
broken and freezing at the bottom of a cross. That
picture was stuck in my This was twenty fifteen. This

(12:20):
goes back a ways, way before the novel was anywhere
near drafted, and that picture just stuck in my head
for a while, and I knew this was something I
wanted to write about. So I wrote maybe five hundred
words just of his internal monologue. I didn't know where
he was. I didn't know if this was on Earth
to someplace else, if it was the future of the present.
I didn't know how he got to the bottom of

(12:41):
that crevass, and so I just sort of went and
like that kind of went okay, and I thought, you know,
he needs a friend. So I introduced Burto and Berto
wouldn't save him. And I couldn't figure out why won't
Berto save him? That's what a jerk. And that's when
I came up with the idea of the expendable. Berto
won't save him because he's inexpendable. And the title Mickey
seven initially was just sort of his his like communicator handle.

(13:06):
I had no concept that it was because he had
been killed seven times. That wasn't until later, until after
I'd already written almost an entire short story around this,
and I'm like, oh, okay, seven he's died seven times.
That's why.

Speaker 7 (13:19):
So I'd like to say that I had a plan
for all this, but I don't.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
I never do. I think. I think all this stuff
gets plotted out somewhere in mayamigal or something or am
i bandula alongata and and it just floats up to
the surface at some point. But it looks to me
like I'm just kind of making this up as I go.
But that and I know that that some people don't
work that way, A lot of novelists don't work that way,
but that's always the way I've operated.

Speaker 4 (13:46):
Well, so, what's so you have this like, you have this,
this this vision, this image, you start working it out.
What's your process for actually getting to your first draft?
Is it from there? You're are you outlining? Are you
writing the entire go through? And then countless editing?

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Know, I find my way through a novel the way
that you would find your way down a dark, foggy
road in the middle of the night. I trust that again,
the work's getting done somewhere it's getting done in the
back of my head. I live in the woods, and
I spend a lot of time walking with with my
wife and our dog in the woods and there there

(14:20):
there are plenty of times where she'll just stop and
she'll say, you're finishing a chapter right now, aren't you?
Like I've been talking to you for ten minutes. You
haven't heard it. Damn word. I've said, it's okay, You're
done now though, right And I said, yeah, I'm done.
I just I just figured out this one, and then
I can talk again. But that's you know that the
processing is going on in the background, and it does

(14:41):
sort of take over my system sometimes.

Speaker 4 (14:45):
Why science fiction, That's a good question. I actually thank
you very much.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
With everybody I actually start, i'd been when I when
I when I first started publishing, I actually was writing
literary fiction, more sort of contemporary literary fiction, and I
get a little bit of a reputation in mostly writing
short stuff. One of my short stories wound up on
the curriculum for the University of Vermont MFA program. And

(15:12):
then I had a kid, and suddenly I couldn't justify
spending hours staring at a keyboard every day. When these
little people. I eventually had three of them wanted to
play with me and thought I was cool. And I
didn't write a word for fourteen years. And then, much
to my.

Speaker 7 (15:28):
Surprise, and this will probably shock a lot of you.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Apparently teenagers don't think their dads are the coolest thing
in the world and don't want to hang out with
their dads all day. And so some time came back
to me. And I won't go through how Gen takes
all the credit for me starting to write again. She does,
and she's ready to do so.

Speaker 7 (15:46):
But I started working again.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
And when I started writing again, I decided I wanted
to do not what I thought was you know, was right,
or was or had been taught was the sophisticated thing
to do. I wanted to do what I love, and
what I'd always loved was science fiction. And so that's
that's where I started up.

Speaker 4 (16:04):
Did I also read that it was maybe a little
too much civilization that was played?

Speaker 2 (16:07):
That I read that? Is that?

Speaker 4 (16:09):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah, there was there was a stage in between spending
all my time taking care of my kids and starting
to write again, where I was spending all my time
playing SIEV five. Yeah, that's the best of the sims.
Yeah it was. It was a good one. It was
a good one. But yeah, Jen did it at one
point say, you know, if I wanted to be a
single parent, I would have gone to a sperm bank.
And and that was that was. That was when Civilization

(16:31):
got deleted from my laptop and I decided to do
more more productive things with my time.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
I have a question for you, Bom June Hoe has
had like a thirty year career and is internationally renowned
and directed one of the best true crime films I've
ever seen, Memories of Murder. And if if nobody's seen
Memories of Murder, or if you yes, exactly, if you
haven't seen Memories of Murder. It's available through the Criterion collection.

(16:56):
It's a masterpiece. But he is not and he takes
things and he has his signatures, he has his themes,
he makes his films his own. Were you initially concerned
that an auteur was taking was adapting your book?

Speaker 2 (17:15):
So let me just rephrase your questions. Lately, you're saying,
was I an obscure midless author concerned that an Oscar
Winny director wanted to make a movie out of my book?

Speaker 4 (17:28):
And how much pizza, did he get.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
I guess I'm referring to the famous Stephen King. Stanley Kubrick.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
I hate to break this to you, and via disappointment,
I am not Stephen King. I do not have Stephen
King's career or cloud in this world. No, I you know,
as as someone in my position to say that I'm
worried about what Bong jin' ho will do to my work. Yeah, would.
I don't know if that made me the worst person
in the world, but it will put me in the

(17:55):
bottom ten for sure. And I don't. I don't. I
don't want to be there.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
To book in the movie share similar themes of have
and have not. And I saw right away what Bong
saw in the book.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, and that's of course, that's that's the other side
of it. I don't. I don't know. I don't know
enough directors to say who is the sort of director
that I would have been worried that he was gonna
absolutely butcher my work. But it was you know. I
will admit to occasionally having nightmares that I would have
been the man who destroyed bunks and host career. But
I was never worried that he would be the one

(18:30):
who had destroyed my right that that was never a
concern for me.

Speaker 4 (18:32):
Gotcha, Well, obviously as a rational person, you know, any
adaptation of your book's going to go different places. It's
hard to put novels into films, you know. It's hard
not to see the movie's interpretation of Marshall right with
the red hats and the little dance, which I think
catched the first of viewing there as you know, a

(18:54):
nod to a certain political group. Right now, how did
I feel what was going on your head? Because the
Marshal in your book is I think quite different than
what we see up here. Certainly it ends differently for both.
I'm just curious about sort of your reactions seeing it.
I'm assuming you saw in London for the first time

(19:14):
and that or did you see it at a time.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
No, London was London was the first time I saw it.
I'd read the script, of course, and I'd been there
to see some of the filming. I didn't see any
of Mark Ruffalo's performance when I was when I was
there on set. Yeah, obviously, the characters, several of the
characters are very different. Berdo Timo, very very different characters.

(19:36):
I think one one, you know, I said, Director Bowing
and I see eye to eye on a lot of things.
One thing where we differ, I think, and this probably
has something to do with literature versus film. I tend
to write characters in shades of gray. I don't really
believe in sort of a pure good and a pure
evil character. I feel like everyone works from their own motivations.
They have to have their own internal motivation, and everybody

(19:59):
thinks they're on the right side history. Marshall in my book,
he wants up being wrong. He's on the wrong side,
but he really believes he's doing what's best for the
colony and for the survival of the humans. There. You know,
director Bong takes things a little more from those shades
of great to black and white, and you know, the

(20:19):
good characters are good and the bad characters are bad,
and I think that I think that probably works better
on the screen. I think it's really hard to see
those shades of gray on the screen.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
There's quite dichotomy in the film between seventeen and eighteen,
but in the book it's far more subtle between seven
and eight. Or at least that's what what I got.
Did that What did.

Speaker 5 (20:39):
You think of that?

Speaker 3 (20:39):
Dichotomy being kind of more black and white, and how
Pattinson handled that performance of these two extremes.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
So that was really a matter of different aspects of
the question that director Bam wanted to address versus what
I wanted to address. So what I was.

Speaker 7 (21:00):
Looking at in putting, in putting these two.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
Characters side by side, was really the question of identity
in personhood and are of these really the same person?
And so to make that a difficult question, I had
to make them very very similar. They're different by they
have six weeks of experience that is not shared between them.
And my question is, well, how much different am I
than I was six weeks ago? How much different am

(21:23):
I than I was six months ago? I mean, I
am tremendously different than I was when I was twenty
two years old. My wife has said many times she
would not have gone out with me once, let alone
marry me, if she met me when I was twenty two.
I'm a very different person out. I feel like I
am a different person than I was a year ago
or two years ago, even although the differences are more
subtle six weeks even more subtle. Yet, director Boum wasn't

(21:46):
interested in that particular question. He wanted to look at
this more of a as a coming of age story
and from he saw going And that's also part of
the reason why he went to Mickey seventeen and said
of Mickey seven, and he wanted to emphasize the transition
from seventeen to eighteen as being from a boy to
a man. And you know, eighteen is sort of a

(22:07):
symbolic age for taking on the age of adulthood. So
he was like, hit a little bit different symbolic and
philosophical question than I was. And I totally understand that, right.

Speaker 4 (22:18):
I gotta say, one of the things I love in
the book, page two oh two, it would just go
right to that is backstory on multiples and why it's
such a huge crime in your galaxy, in your world.
I would have loved to have seen that on the screen.
I know that there's no way they could have had
that much time to kind of go into all that backstory.
You know, were there any sort of babies in your

(22:40):
book that was really themes but little pieces or scenes
or something that you wish that had translate it up there?

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, I mean Manicovis story obviously is it's a favorite
of mine as well, and I would have loved to
see it. But to have Manicicovi story there, you would
have had to have the whole sort of many worlds
universe that I built in the and as you say,
it's that was one of the first things Bonk said
to me was I don't have time on screen to
build all that. I just can't do it. I have
time them coming from Earth. So I you know, I

(23:08):
totally understood that wasn't gonna be in there. I did
appreciate that he still included Manakova because he's one of
my favorite characters. I appreciate and I don't know how
many of you noticed that the placards they were holding
over front him at Ashton PD on them. That was
a nice little easter eg that director Boon dropped in
there for me. So I did appreciate that. I would
have liked to see a little more addressing the ship

(23:29):
of theseus question, which is another thing that really really
interests me and touches little on my scientific work. But
then again, he didn't really get into that.

Speaker 4 (23:38):
Yeah you want to you want to talk for those
who haven't maybe God read the book yet, you want
to explain.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah, sure. So the ship of theseus is again this
is another philosophical this goes back to Plutarch. So this
is this is several thousand years old, and the idea
is Thesis is sailing around the world and as he goes,
bits and pieces of a ship break and he has
to replace him. He has to replace a board here,
ask to replace a line there. By the time he
gets back years later, every single bit and piece of

(24:01):
that ship has been replaced. And the question is is
this the same ship? And the interesting thing to me
is that that is exactly analogous to us, to our lives.
And Plutarch didn't know this, but we know this now.
There's not a single cell in your body right now.
There was part of your body twenty years ago, not one.
You were a completely new organism then you were twenty
years ago. You are the ship with theseus.

Speaker 7 (24:22):
You have been replaced sell by cell by cell.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
And are a completely new thing. Are you the same
person you were twenty years ago? And here's where my
work comes into this. One of the things I work
with is a technique called fMRI. It allows us to
see what part of your brain is working at different
times and doing different things. If we put you in
the scanner and ask you to think about something you
did yesterday or something you will do tomorrow, there's one
particular part of your brain that lights up. If I

(24:46):
ask you to imagine something I'm doing today or tomorrow,
a totally different part of your brain lights up. If
I ask you to remember something that you did twenty
years ago, which part of your brain you think lights up?
It's the other person part. So on some level, your
brain knows that wasn't you, that was a completely different
organism twenty years ago.

Speaker 4 (25:07):
That is freaky.

Speaker 3 (25:11):
Speaking of which, Trevor, your turn on no Win scenario.
We talk about science fiction, but we also talk about
mental health because it's I don't know, it's a very
passionate subject of both of ours. One thing I'd like
to know is is mental health, especially as a creative,

(25:33):
is it taxing? It's the creative process taxing to your
mental health? Or does it invigorate your mental health? Does
it maybe fix things or repair things, or is it
a process that really takes it out of you.

Speaker 7 (25:45):
It's definitely not taxing to my mental health.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
I think you know, I'm the only one in my
family who's never seen a therapist. And I think maybe
that's because I serve as my own therapist through my writing.
If you read my entire of why and you match
it up with times in my life, You'll see that
I'm working through different traumise in my life through my writing.
There was one stretch of about three years where my

(26:12):
oldest kid, who was my first fan and my first reader,
a really perceptive reader, really helpful to me as a critic.
Every time I handed a story to them, the first
they said was which way did I die this time?
Because every single story was in some way was a

(26:33):
father losing their child. And you know this goes back
to and if I could just indulge with like a
two second story. When my kid Kira, when she was
eighteen months old, we took her to the beach and
it was a nice day, it was hot, she was
playing in the sand. I thought I'd take her out

(26:53):
in the water. I walked her out, I got wat
deep and Jennifer was on the beach for the camera
and she told me to turn and smiles. So I
turned around and then she screamed and I was lifted
off my feet and flipped over and slammed headfirst into
the sand, and I lost consciousness and I lost my
child and I came to about, you know, probably two

(27:16):
three seconds later, and I popped up out of the water.
And I can feel my heart start to race right
now just telling you this story. This happened twenty six
years ago, and it is still the sing I once
hung by these three fingers over a sixty foot fall
while I was free solo rock climbing. That moment with
her on the beach was the most terrifying, far and
away the most terrifying moment of my life. Now, I

(27:39):
came up and spun around and everyone's and I saw
a fan of blonde hair on the water, and I snatched.

Speaker 7 (27:47):
Up and she thought it was great.

Speaker 4 (27:48):
She was laughing.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
She thought she just had the funnest shride of the world.
But if if she'd had a short haircut, I don't
know if I would have got her. I don't know
if I would have got her back. So I worked.
I'd definitely worked through that in multiple iterations my short
stories of my almost Wow.

Speaker 4 (28:03):
You know, it's it's interesting because so much of your work,
and especially Mickey seven, is about survival and the cost
of human survival and whether maybe whether it's worth it,
and what human kind is willing to do, and how
we treat people. And yet you're funny, which you know,
giving your science background and the seriousness of survival a

(28:25):
species is kind of interesting. How do you balance the
sort of humor versus, like, you know, the seriousness of
what you're getting into.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
I think, I think humor is a really important part
of the work that I do because I do touch
on a lot of dark themes. I mean, this this book,
Mickey seven, in this movie, I have some really dark
stuff in them. I mean a lot of really bad
stuff happens. A lot of bad stuff happens to Mickey.
There's a lot of sort of deep thinking in there.
And I think without the humor wouldn't be palatable. It's
it's I think of it like cooking. I fancy myself

(28:55):
to be an accomplished chef. And one of the things
you have to do in cooking, obviously is balance. You
have to balance sweet with salty. You have to balance
hot with you know, hot with sweet. And I think
of humors sort of like the sweetness that that's that's
baked into the to the k to make it, you know,
to make it palatable.

Speaker 4 (29:12):
Before we get to some questions, I got to ask
you to explain this part of your life. Talk about
like a little bit of your scientific background a little
bit more, and like.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
So I have a I have a PhD in medical imaging.
My if you want to look at what my actual
like where I made contributions to scientific world, it's it's
primarily in a technique called dynamic contrast enhance Magnan crescedence imaging,
which is a technique for looking at blood flow in vivo.
So we use it for cancer. One of the things

(29:41):
that cancer does before it can spread, it has to
grow blood vessels into it, because that's what allows this
els to sort of spread and go flow through your body.
That happens when tumor hits about one centimeter typically, and
so this is a this is a technique that allows
us to image the blood flow inside the tumor, and
that's something that is highly predictive of whether it's gonna spread.

(30:02):
And obviously the spread of tumors is is one of
the main ways that they get you. So it's an
important thing to know. So that that's my scientific background.
My my job right now is developing new new drugs
for cancer proncology.

Speaker 4 (30:17):
What do you hope people get from your writing? Let
me put it that way.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
I'm gonna hope to have a fun time. I mean, yeah,
I write. Writing in my view, should be entertaining. You should.
You should finish a book and say, wow, that was great.
I had a really good time reading that. And if
you got some some philosophical stuff out of it, or
you learned something you didn't know before, that's all great,
that's all gravy. But that the most important thing from
my perspective is is it should be entertaining. You should

(30:40):
have a good time.

Speaker 7 (30:42):
Okay, that's that's my philosophy on all of life, By
all of life, it should be entertaining.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
You should have a good time.

Speaker 4 (30:46):
Awesome. All right, let's see, let's go for some questions.
We've got a mic over there.

Speaker 5 (30:51):
Any questions. How's going?

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yep, you're good. Okay.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
So with the printer, it seems like it's like printing
out the body and the brain. But as curious if
you see memories and consciousness as also being something reducible
to physical matter, or is that more so something reducible
to like information, So.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
From from a physiological standpoint, you know, memories are stored
as waitings on pathways between neurons. I mean, that's that's
what that's what our memories actually actually are. You you know,
you we've got these these connections of form between neurons.
Connections form, connections break, and some connections are strengthened in

(31:46):
their strengthened by repetition. So that's you know, if you
want to know, like what is a memory? A memory
is a pattern of interconnections between neurons that has been
overweighted due to due to repetition and observation. That's a
really crappy answer though, in terms of what we experience
as human beings. To me, memory is something a little

(32:07):
more ineffable than that, a little bit more malleable, and
whether that's something that could actually be extracted and stored,
like like Ray Kurzweil, as I said, one of the
chief scientists at Google really wants to do. He believes
that if he could store all of his memories, upload
them to uh to some incredibly advanced computer system, that

(32:28):
that would be a form of immortality for him. I
think that's nuts. Personally, I don't believe that that would
be immortality. I just believe that would be a computer
system then knew how to break into his bank account
and steal all this stuff. But that again, that's that's
a philosophical question. It depends on whether you're you're a
pure materialist as Curzwhild appears to be, or someone who

(32:48):
believes that there's you know, there's there's more to us
than just the material connections that make up our bodies,
in our brains.

Speaker 5 (32:58):
Anyone else, any question?

Speaker 8 (33:05):
Hey, ed, it's free. I had a question about how
if you base your characters off of people you know
in real life. And I'm mainly just drawing a connection
between Nasha and the stories you're sharing about Jen so far, Like,
I feel like we get to get a bit of
your wife's character and how strong she is, and Nasha

(33:28):
is a very strong character. So just wanted to know
if that was intentional. Maybe there are other characters in
Mickey seventeen that are inspired by people in your life.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Well, if you look in the front of my book,
you will see all places and characters in here are
for legal purposes, fictitious, based on no person's living or dead.
That being said, yeah, I steal from everyone I meet
and everyone that I know there is a real Mickey
who was the initial inspiration for the Mickey and Mickey seven.

(34:01):
If you look at the description uh of Mickey in
the book and then compare it to a picture of
the two of us together when we were nineteen years old,
you'll you'll see some real similarities there.

Speaker 7 (34:13):
Obviously, you know, I fictionalize.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
Everything and it's not really Mickey in there, just like
Nasha isn't really Jen. But yeah, I drew there were
parts in particular and animatter blues. There were parts in
there where I had to ask her permission to write
particular scenes or particular sort of aspects of the story
because it was touching a little close on our on

(34:38):
our relationship, and she was gracious enough to give me
permission to do that. If I ever come that close
to a real person, I will reach out to them.
And like Mickey was aware of what I was doing
here and gave me his blessing as well, even though
I said I'm gonna kill you a bunch of times.
So yeah, it's okay, He's good. So so yes, there, there,
there is there is some real real people who kind

(34:58):
of sneak in here.

Speaker 4 (35:00):
He seen the movie and has he responded to his.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, he he. He flew up to Rochester to be
with me for the premiere event that we did that
we did in Rochester. It was you know, he sat
up in the balcony with me and watched the film
as a Really it's a really special moment for me.

Speaker 5 (35:18):
Can I ask Jen a question?

Speaker 4 (35:20):
Oh, this is where it gets exciting. Everybody we're running
a mic.

Speaker 9 (35:25):
Over do you do you read? Does he submit? Does
he show you chapters of the book as it goes?
Does does he wait until it's done and you get
to read it? Does he give you any insights, any
any hints or anything, or how do you experience his books?

Speaker 6 (35:48):
Well, I'm gonna be very honest. I wait till they're
in arc form. I'm not one of the beta readers.
I'm an academic. I read digital stuff for my job,
and I prefer to the book and to see what
he's created when it's ready. My first two children are
the are the ones who really are part of that process,

(36:09):
who get chapter by chapter or section by section, and
I am interested, but I do prefer to just take
them as they are completed and enjoy that ride, particularly
like the Antimatter Blues I did give my consent, but
each one I've enjoyed more and more, to the point

(36:29):
of the fourth Consort has really been a super fun
read for me.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
So now, and do you pace back and forth while
she's while she's reading it?

Speaker 7 (36:39):
No? No, that's that's very bad form.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
I uh, when once I've handed something off to her,
I I go and disappear and let let her do
her thing. I would I would be far too nervous
to be sort of watching over her shoulder while she
was reading.

Speaker 4 (36:52):
Yeah, I will say, great job with the plugs and
all the books.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
This is great.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (36:58):
Any other questions, I'll ask one if I may. I've
read Mickey seven, enjoyed it very much. You have more
in that universe, if I'm correct that I haven't read it.
Has Did the movie change the direction of the books
at all as things were being decided like how they
would be presented in the movie, or or is the
canon of the books completely separate from the film.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
Now, the books in the film are two entirely separate things.
There is a second novel in the series. It's called
Animatter Blues, which we were just discussing. But you know,
to be clear, this movie was filmed in twenty twenty two.
The late twenty twenty two Animatter Blues was written in
twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, so that, you know,
the publishing cycle is so long. When you see a

(37:44):
book come out, it was written, you know, usually two
years before. So it's a little interesting because the ending
of the movie does not jibe with the setup for
Animatter Blues. So you know, if I had been coordinating
with the movie, maybe would have done something different to
encourage Warner to make a to make a sequel film.

(38:04):
That's that's really not that's really not going to occur
with with the book that I have now and the
way that this movie ends.

Speaker 4 (38:11):
What has the movie being in production and then coming out. Now,
how has that changed the way your life has been?

Speaker 2 (38:22):
I mean, it hasn't changed my life at all. Yeah,
you know, my life is like hanging out in the
woods and walking my dogs and like trying to cure cancer.

Speaker 7 (38:32):
That's that's that's kind of what that's kind of what
my life vocals.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah, but you know, I obviously it's it's been a
huge boon to my writing career. It's been a huge
boon to my writing career. There there is no substitute
for the publicity that something like, you know, a Hollywood
exposure can can provide to a writer. You know, a
really successful like a New York Times best selling book
will sell you know, maybe seventy five thousand copies in

(38:57):
a month. Seventy five thousand copies in a month will
will get you, you know, well up the New York
Times list.

Speaker 7 (39:02):
Right, a movie is a flop if.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
It doesn't have like ten million people see it in
the first weekend. That just the volume of people who
are exposed to something like this and who you know,
maybe stick around long enough to see my name up
there the second card on the on the credits and
think maybe I'll take a look at his books. That
There's just there's no substitute for that from a publicity standpoint,

(39:24):
and that's been hugely helpful.

Speaker 4 (39:27):
Let's take a full circle. Knowing what you know, now,
what would you tell that young author being paid in
pizza to do or do differently?

Speaker 2 (39:38):
I would not tell him anything at all, because everything
that he did has led to where I am now,
and any tweaking of that might have led me to
somewhere else. And I'm really happy with where I am
right now. I really like where my life is. I

(40:01):
love the life that I have and anything different. You know,
there are a lot of bad things that have happened
in my life. Everybody has bad things that happened in
my life. But everything that happens in your life leads
you to the place that you are, and if you're
happy where you are, it doesn't make sense to want
to go back and change the things that lead you there.
And so I would. I would be way too afraid

(40:21):
of the butterfly effect. I would not go back and
say a word to that person.

Speaker 4 (40:24):
Well that sounds really healthy, amazing. Oh man, I can't
end on something that happy, can I?

Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yes, you can, Oh I can.

Speaker 4 (40:34):
I was sneaking one more so, what would you tell
a young writer? We like to talk to people in
the industry who are working at a young age too
sometimes and what advice would you have?

Speaker 2 (40:43):
I mean, as far as being a writer, the important
thing is to understand that when you write, you're writing
because you have something to say and you want to
express yourself. On one of the lectures that I've got
a bunch of book talks that I give, and one
of them talks about the many world hypothesis right the
interpretation of quantum physics. It says, every time you make

(41:05):
a decision, the universe actually splits in two, and so
all possibility. If you've seen Rick and Morty, you know
exactly what I'm talking about, so you know it is
certainly true that in like ninety nine percent of all universes,
this movie never happened. And probably I never got a
second publishing contract after three days in April, and like,
I'm just a humble syrup farmer somewhere or something like that.

(41:27):
And the question is if that had been the case,
if I never made a nickel from my writing, would
I still be writing? And the answer is yes, absolutely
on not one of these people's like, oh, you shouldn't
want to get paid us, or you know, you should
definitely want to get pid us a writer, but you
shouldn't expect it's going to happen, because if you're planning
when you're nineteen years old that my career is going
to be I'm going to write novels, you are probably

(41:48):
going to starve to death.

Speaker 7 (41:49):
It is a really, really tough gig.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
So you know, when you write a book, it's not
like doing a job to make money. If you want
to make money, go work at Starbucks. You'll make a
lot more per hour. It's something that you do because
you need to express yourself. And sometimes sometimes Warner Brothers
will back a dump truck full of money up in
your driveway. It just ran. And that that is a
thing that can happen, is the thing that's very unlikely

(42:12):
to happen, and so you probably shouldn't make it your plan.

Speaker 4 (42:15):
Well said. And finally, because I'm still training, Trevor, what
questions should we have asked you tonight?

Speaker 2 (42:25):
I mean, I feel like I feel like it covered
all the big ones too much.

Speaker 4 (42:31):
No, you did fine, Now I don't.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
I don't think you missed any beats.

Speaker 7 (42:35):
I thought that was pretty good.

Speaker 4 (42:36):
Think he's said, I did pretty perfectly there, Trevor. You
did a great job, though.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
That's the only compliment you'll ever put me to.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
All Right, Well, thank you all for being here, Thank
you Ed, thanks for the Western Cinema for thank you
so much, and everyone feel funny.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
Thank actually, let me.

Speaker 4 (42:52):
Thank Lateen, JB and Jesse and Charles, Charles River Media
and Bruce, Josh and Mike and Jim and everyone. Please
God to subscribe to the no when Stayer podcast, but
app a podcast, Spotify, iHeartRadio and everywhere you get your podcasts.
Thank you, good night, thank you, thank you, thank.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
You, thank you.

Speaker 5 (43:10):
Yes, someone's gonna have to edit this into something usable.
You're gonna add that edit into something useful. Yeah, that's
what you were today. It's better than what you wore.
Look at you.

Speaker 3 (43:22):
We should definitely ask them some questions for the podcast,
and maybe you have some career advice for.

Speaker 5 (43:27):
He trust me, I need it. I need as much
career advice as I can get right now.

Speaker 4 (43:37):
That's sure.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
For everybody in today's world, mental health is everyone's concerned.
If you are someone you know is in crisis, please
use these resources. For US listeners, call one eight hundred
nine five zero six' two sixty four or text help

(44:00):
all one word H E L p L I N
e to six two six four, zero or email helpline
at nammy dot. Org that's N a M i dot.
Org for our international, listeners please visit Suicide stop dot.
Com that's S U i C I D E s

(44:23):
T O p dot com

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301 - Mickey 7 Author Edward Ashton

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}301 - Mickey 7 Author Edward Ashton