Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseThe science fiction universe of "Ancillary Justice"
In this very special new series of episodes Daniel and Jorge interview famous authors. Today we discuss "Ancillary Justice" the debut novel of the talented Anne Leckie. It's the only novel to ever win the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke awards. You can find it here.
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Hey, Daniel, you read a lot of science fiction, right, I certainly do. Is there a phrase in a science fiction novel that when you're reading it you just automatically cringe?
Oh man, I have got quite a lift.
Really as a physicist. If you read this, it makes you a little bit scared.
It makes me worried. You know that I'm not going to be able to enjoy the novel if they don't treat it.
What are some of these phrases that make you afraid? Like the Higgs boson? If somebody mentions the Higgs boson, Oh.
Man, I tossed the book across the room almost every time.
Automatically. How about quantum mechanics or the quantum realm.
Oh boy, don't get me started on that other dimensions. That is definitely near the top of stuff that's handled badly in science fiction.
What if I write a novel about a quantum Higgs Boson dimension.
I'm not even cracking that book open.
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Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I love reading science fiction, especially when it has actual science in it.
But not to fiction.
No, it's awesome if you can have science and then fiction around it. That's why it's called science fiction.
Well, welcome to our podcast, which is a work of unfiction or unfiction.
We strive at least to make this podcast about the real universe and not about fictional universes.
Well, welcome to Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
In which we usually take you on a tour of the real universe that we find ourselves in all the incredible, all the amazing, all the mind blowing things that exist out there in the real universe.
And sometimes we like to talk about sort of a crazy idea is that maybe physicists have or you know wishful thinking that physicists have about how the universe might work or what could be out there in the universe.
That's right, aspirational universes. Maybe we live in this universe, Maybe we live in the universe, whether there are tiny strings vibrating at the smallest scale, or maybe you live in an infinite universe. The truth is, we just don't really know, and so it's fun to consider a whole spectrum of possible What is it UNIVERSEI universe's universe?
Yeah, yeah, you know. They call it now a speculative signs science. Should we call it speculative science?
This is not a speculative podcast. We uh, we don't just speculate. We go out and test, we do experiments. One day people will know the truth, the real answer to how the universe works, but until then we rely on clever people to imagine other possible universes. And that exists sometimes in the minds of theoretical physicists, but sometimes those ideas begin elsewhere.
Because it is sort of fun to understand the universe as we know it and to see to know and to see what's out there. But it's also fun to think about what could be or what might be or what you maybe know. It's impossible, but it's fun to think about the what would happen? How would what would the universe look like if a crazy idea was actually true?
Yeah, And it's more than just like does the universe work this way or that way? It's also like, what did we do with the universe if it does work this way? What kind of awesome tech can we develop? How can we change our lives and the way that we interact with and live in the universe given our mastery of the physical laws.
Yeah, and so as you said, Daniel, it exists not only in the minds of physicists and philosophers, but authors and artists that are out there trying to think about these ideas and what would they mean for the human condition.
That's right, and everybody's familiar with creativity in the minds of artists, but also, of course authors require creativity. They imagine an entire new universe, maybe with different physical laws, maybe with new technology, and that creativity in some ways is parallel to the creativity that's going on at the forefront of physics, and those ideas bleed in. Sometimes we get awesome ideas from reading science fiction, we think, ooh, maybe the universe does work that way, or oh, maybe we could build a ray gun.
Do you think Daniel is a big overlap between science fiction readers and physicists or is it like one hundred percent overlap.
I don't think every science fiction reader is a physicist, but I think.
Is a science fiction reader.
That might be true, that's right.
Not all nerds are or physicists, but a physicists are.
Now And I know of more than one sort of practicing professional physicists who then became a successful science fiction author, So that is a pathway. Like Alistair Reynolds, for example, he was an astrophysicist in Europe before he started writing. And there's one here in my department. Greg Benford's actually kind of famous. He's a professor in my department.
For you guys, is it sort of fun to not be shackled by the laws of physics and just be able to kind of spin stories and not have to worry about being completely scientific.
Well, you know a lot of theoretical physicists already don't feel shackled by the laws of physics because they proposed things we can never test, like.
Writing the laws of physics, they're authoring them.
Yeah, but I think that there's a creativity that's required in physics, and it's a similar creativity that's required in writing science fiction to imagine the way the universe might work. And so yeah, it sort of stretches a different muscle. But also, I think we're just all fanboys and fangirls because we read so much science fiction. It's fun to think about writing some.
Right, So I imagine it's a lot of fun to explore other universes, you know, not just the one we live in, but to imagine new universes. Absolutely, And so today on the podcast, it's the first of a new kind of episode that we're going to try out in which we talk about famous science fiction authors and famous science fiction novels that are out there, and we actually are going to be talking to each of the authors.
That's right. I reached out to some famous science fiction authors and gasp, imagine they actually wrote back to us. And so we have the honor and privilege to talk to some of the brightest minds in science fiction and to explore how they build their science fiction universes. How much physics goes into it.
Yeah, because that's a big question I think a lot of people might have, which is, you know, when you read one of these science fiction novels, you sort of wonder how much of this is true and how much of this is just totally made up?
I know how much of this is They just say quantum mechanics when they don't know what to write.
The quantum realm.
Yeah. I read a lot of science fiction, and you can tell when the author has consulted a scientist, and you can tell when the author has.
Not as consulted Wikipedia.
Or not even you know, relied on the readers to like not really know what these words mean and sort of accept them as a word salad that says plot hole fixed here.
And so, yeah, you're a big science fiction fan, right, Dane? You read a ton of science fiction?
I do.
I read a couple of novels a week.
Oh wow, I read a couple as a kid, mostly Isaac Asim. But yeah, I read I think almost every Isac Asthma of work that's out there.
Why did you stop?
I'm not sure. I think I got into a fantasy for a while, and then I started reading other things in comics.
Well, I guess I never grew up up, and I'm still reading science fiction, and in fact, now on our website you can find a list of science fiction novels that I have enjoyed. I only put novels on there that I liked. I don't pan anybody's work because I know that every novel that's out there is somebody's life and heart and soul went into that book. So I'm not going to say negative things about them. So you can go on our website and under about you can find a list of novels that I recommend.
Yeah, and so this is the first in our series, and so today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question it's science fiction scientific The core question we're asking is, you know, how important is it that science in a science fiction story be logical and self consistent or is it sort of okay because it's science fiction to be sort of hand wavy.
Yeah, And it's not a question that has a universal answer. You will find people out there, like particle physicists who want the science to be real or to be logical, or at least to be self consistent, especially when it's a crucial element in the story. And I think you'll find other people out there that just want stuff to blow up and zoom across the screen.
See page one. Will Smith in a spaceship.
Yeah, Sen Bruce willis out there. Doesn't really matter if his mission makes sense, and so you'll hear a spectrum of answers. I think, and it's totally valid to have a spectrum of opinions. Let's take a quick break, and when we get back, we'll find out how important scientific consistency is to readers of science fiction. With big wireless providers, what you see is never what you get. Somewhere between the store and your first month's bill, the price you thought you were paying magically skyrockets. With mint Mobile, You'll never have to worry about gotcha's ever again. When mint Mobile says fifteen dollars a month for a three month plan, they really mean it. I've used mint Mobile and the call quality is always so crisp and so clear. I can recommend it to you. So say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plans, jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpect overages. You can use your own phone with any mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with your existing contacts. So dit your overpriced wireless with mint Mobiles deal and get three months a premium wireless service for fifteen bucks a month. To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just fifteen bucks a month, go to mintmobile dot com slash universe. That's mintmobile dot com slash universe. Cut your wireless build a fifteen bucks a month At mintmobile dot com slash universe. Forty five dollars upfront payment required equivalent to fifteen dollars per month new customers on first three month plan only speeds slower about forty gigabytes On unlimited plan. Additional taxi, s, fees, and restrictions apply. See mint mobile for details.
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Here's what people have to say.
I think it should make sense, but sometimes I will not always notice, and other times it's not a super big deal. I think it's okay.
If it's a bit like not real, yeah, because.
It's based on a true, actual story, or if it's trying to be like legitimate, then yeah. But if it's like a science fiction I guess it's a little bit okay for it to not be. It's okay if it's handwavy.
It should be consistent within the story, but not necessarily with reality.
It probably should be a little consistent so it remains kind of realistic or factual.
Is it okay if they just sort of say quantum mechanics sometimes and and wave away some problem problems, Yeah, that's okay.
I would like it to be plausible and actually like realistic. I know that a lot of times that doesn't really work for the story, but I think as long as it's reasonably almost there, then it's fine with me.
Actually, it does matter me.
Because I want to imagine future where it could happen, so I don't want to get my hopes up, so to speak.
All right, cool, it must be logical or plausible, all right, people seem pretty relaxed about the designs being real or not.
That was a little bit infuriating. I was hoping more.
People with me. You did an interview a physicists, I purposely didn't. People are like, I don't care about the physics of lightsabers. I just think lightsabers are cool.
Well, that's true, you know, lightsabers are cool, whether or not you could ever actually make them. But yeah, some people are like, yeah, whatever, I don't really care for his handwavy. You know. It's like they expect to be fed spoonfuls of random science sounding words, you know, and there's a place for that. Like I enjoy Star Trek, even though the science on that show is ridonculous.
You know.
Yeah, they're like reverse the transponder on the polarization ion beam a mattic or something.
You're like, you can't make it, so that's impossible.
Yeah, but they're being so ridiculous that it sounds like they're sort of trying to be ridiculous. They don't take themselves seriously, and so I guess part of it is just sort of what are you aiming for?
Yeah, well I think this is kind of what you were saying earlier, which is that's kind of the point of science fiction, which is to just to kind of tickle our imagination and to make us wonder about what's out there, because you know, sometimes the science fiction stuff inspires scientists and engineers to make it real, to make it so, as Percard would say, and then it becomes like a real thing.
It certainly does, and it also sort of warns us of the dangers of technology. These days, we have a lot of dystopian science fiction where the robots have taken over, or everybody's online and getting deleted and stuff, and so it's helpful to sort of think through the consequences of technology. And to me, that's what science fiction is about. It's like, what stories could you tell in a universe where the rules are different, either the science is different, like the laws of physics have changed, or you have new kinds of tech which change what it's like to be human, and then explore that, like what stories are there, What is it like to grow up in that world? What can you do or can't do that it's weird compared to the world you come from.
Right, It's all like a big thought experiment, Right, could you guess what if this would happen, and it kind of tells you about how things are right now.
Yeah, And that to me is why it's important to be consistent, because that's the whole experiment. Like, if you're trying to figure out what is it like to live in a world where you can teleport around the world to visit your brother in Australia in two seconds, Well, then you've got to have some rules that constrain that world so that you can explore what it's like. Because if you're actually living in that world, there are rules, right, and if you want to know what it's actually like to live in that world, well you got to follow that world's rules. So if you're just making up rules all the time and they violate each other don't make any sense, then you're not really exploring that world in my opinion.
And if I had a secret brother in Australia, that would be the shocking part of that novel for me.
That would be the huge reveal.
Yeah, yeah, all right, so these are all super interesting questions. Aaron Daniel thought that it'd be great to kind of get into that with a real science fiction author and a famous science fiction author, and so today on the program, we are going to play an interview with Anne Leckey, who is the author of a famous science fiction novel call Ancillary Justice.
That's right. I think she pronounces that ancillary injustice ancillary.
Sorry.
And this is not just any book. This is a book which won a series of awards. It's sort of famous in science fiction circles because it won all the major awards. It won the Hugo Award, it won the Nebula Award, won a bunch of other awards. And that's that's pretty unusual. And I think also it was her debut novel.
Wow, this is first novel she ever wrote.
This is the first novel she ever published. First time up at bat like hit a home run, the biggest home run anybody's ever hit. That's pretty awesome. It made quite a splash. Wow.
And so it sounds like a super interesting book. Daniel. So before we play the interview, tell me a little bit about what the book is done, what the kind of the science inside of the science fiction novel is about.
Yeah. So this book you would categorize as space opera because it takes place over vast scales and distances and it's far in the future, and humanity has conquered a big fraction of the galaxy. So humans have spaceships and lots of solar systems and were spread out all over the galaxy.
Wow, like the Milky Way.
Yeah, like the Milky Way. Though it's never actually named, it could have been a galaxy.
Far far far away, a long time ago.
It could have been. But you know the point is that we occupy several different solar systems. And the key new idea in this book, the key new element of technology that changes what it's like to be a person is that in her universe, they've developed technology to connect brains to each other, so like I can have a consciousness which is not just in my body, but I can also take over other bodies, so I can like spread my mind across like five different people.
So you're here now, but suddenly, if you wanted to be the Daniel in Alpha Centauri, you could just flip a switch and suddenly you feel like you're there.
No, I think you are simultaneously in all of them. So it's like you have five pairs of eyes and you're controlling five bodies.
Me as a conscious entity, I'm experiencing what five people are experiencing at the same time.
That's right. Yeah, you have five brains at your disposal and ten hands and you know, fifty toes and all that.
Stuff, and they're all human. Are we robots? What am I?
Well, in the book, a lot of the characters are human and the ancillaries are the ones that are slave to you. So if you have five ancillaries, that means it's you plus five other bodies. So you can take your human body and your human mind and and experience, you know, control six different bodies at once. But you can also connect humans to AI. So for example, there are these spaceships that have really intelligent AI in them, and they can also have humans that they control, So the mind of an AI can also exist across a ship and these bodies.
So there's me, like the me the brain that the body that my brain was born in. But then I also have like puppets that I can control.
Yes, yes, they're just like puppets.
They're like biological puppets or robot puppets.
They're biological puppets. So now there's a lot of discussion sort of of the morality of this in the book, because basically, you go to war, you take prisoners and then you just basically delete those personalities from the bodies and use them for yourself. It's like you're wiping a floppy disk or something.
Oh, I see, so it's like another human body, but it's sort of like deactivated.
Yeah, it's like you've written your consciousness onto their hardware. Yeah. So it's like, for example, if you deleted my personality and took me over, then they would just be Daniel and Jorge would just be Jorge in Daniel and Jorge's bodies.
And Jorge Explain the Universe a new podcast from iHeartRadio. Huh okay. So it imagines a future where this technology is possible that I can somehow wipe out the consciousness of a human and then reimpose I guess the consciousness of another person in it, or an artificial intelligence.
Yeah, or an artificial intelligence. So you take prisoners in a war, and then you can make those prisoners be like soldiers of your AI powered chips, or you can take them for yourself and make them your own slaves, so you can exist in several places.
So these people are sort of like zombies or like if I, if you were to meet another Jorge would would you feel like you're talking to Jorge or you feel like you're talking to a robot.
You would feel like you're talking to Jorge, because Jorge would be in several places. Yeah, and so you can do several things at once, and you could take like two of you to go shopping while one of you is staying home cooking, and everybody's sort of mentally connected to each other because you have one consciousness stretched across several bodies.
So, and how is this technology made possible? Is it like we have, Is it like implants or you know, biological or is it magic?
It's not magic. She's tried to think it through technologically, and she's imagined that if you put implants into the brain, they can receive the signals necessary to control the body and send the signals necessary to sort of transmit the experience of that body.
It's like having a brain walkie talkie kind.
Of, yeah, sort of, or like an internet of brains. Right, instead of having a single brain in a body, you sort of become a larger virtual brain.
I guess right away. My question is like, how do you deal with the delays? Because like to talk to our SAT spaceship in Jupiter. It takes like, you know, thirty minutes, doesn't it.
Yes, And that is a key element of the novel that the leader of this empire, this lord of this empire, has become so spread out across hundreds or thousands of bodies that she can no longer sort of keep a single consciousness going. She fractures into two and ends up with like her mind being split. And so one of the really awesome things about this book is that she's really thought through what this would be like and the consequences of it, and as in what I think the best science fiction does is she's found some sort of surprising or counterintuitive consequences of this technology.
If it was possible, Interesting things that nobody had thought about happened in this novel.
Yeah, exactly. And she really explores in depth and imagines what it be like and also imagines how people would talk to each other and treat each other, and how you would talk to ancillaries and how you would talk to AI. And so the interactions in this world feel real. I mean, they feel like somebody went out and lived this world and it's coming back to tell you stories about their experience. It feels like a real world. It's very well done.
Storytelling interesting, But how does she deal with the time? Like, like, if you were talking to Joge in Jupiter that I'm controlling, wouldn't it just take thirty minutes between each response? You'd be like, hey, Jorge, wait thirty minutes for me to get it, and then send the rest bums back to that whore and say, hey, Daniel, how's it going.
Yeah, it would, And so essentially what you end up doing is like splitting off into subversions. So you like send a bunch of yourselves off on a mission and you don't hear back from them for a while, and then they come back and you try to reintegrate what they've learned back into your central consciousness.
Oh but I sent them with my consciousness. It's like a copy thing. I copy my consciousness.
Well, it sort of fractures, and there are moments of the novel where, for example, the communication breaks down because somebody develops technology that blocks the jams this kind of communication, and all of a sudden, all of the bodies feel just like individuals, and they all they're not zombies. They all feel like they are the one. They're just all of a sudden, each one is isolated in its own body.
It's like drop Box. You get to sync it, you can sever the connection, you can rewrite all you want. It feels like you have to drop box. That's the drop box exactly. Then when you recink, then everything has to settle.
It's exactly like personality drop Box. Yeah. But something that's interesting is that she also allows people to go from solar system to solar system using these gates, which are basically like wormholes for faster than light travel. Because it's pretty hard to have an interstellar empire if it takes a thousand years to get from one side to the other. So she has this shortcut. You can get from solar system to solar system in a reasonable amount of time. But within a solar system. She really wanted to play with the sort of time lag element. It's the core part of her story. And so there's no faster than like communication or travel within a solar system. But then you have these gates to go from one solar system to the other.
Oh, I see, in which you can send information to.
You can send information to. Yeah, And so you'll hear about when I asked her in the interview, I asked her if she ever thought about using that faster than like communication technology between the ancillaries.
Like a pocket wormhole.
Yeah, like a pocket wormhole for instantaneous updates across all of your people. Right, wouldn't you like wormhole power jop box? Wouldn't that be awesome?
I'm not sure that would help me be more productive, but sounds.
Like a good IDEA quantum dropbox.
That's right, takes boson quantum.
Block in other dimensions.
All right, I have a few more questions for you about this technology and about this plot, and then we'll get into the interview with ant Lakey. But first, let's take a quick break.
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All right, Daniel, we're talking about the universe, Not the universe we live in, but the universe of Ancillary Justice, which is the debut novel by author Ann Lecky, which won All Kinds of Science Fiction awards, and there is a super well known in the science fiction world, and you're teld me that it relies on the technology of like controlling other brains and faster than light travel through wormholes.
That's right, speed of light communication between brains, and then faster than light travel between solar systems, which I'll be honest is a bit of a friction for me. Like, you know, she wanted to have both things in her world and they slightly contradict each other, but she separated them sort of in space, Like you can go fast in light between solar systems, but inside a solar system you're limited to speed of light communication.
Well, and I guess my question is are these technologies impossible or impossible? They're not right, Like, you could maybe imagine developing wormholes in the future, and you can maybe imagine developing like brain implants that can do all these things to your brain.
Yeah, I think the big picture is that this could be our future. I mean, we could be all drop bunk linked personality zombies in the future. I don't see a physics reason why it couldn't. Like that, you said wormholes totally a possibility. We dug into that in a podcast episode never been actually observe, but theoretically could happen. I think the trickier bit is this implant. Like, imagine you developed an implant which could sense everything that's happening in your brain. I don't know how plausible it is that I could understand what's going on in somebody else's brain. Like, even if you say, like I can develop an implant which senses all that stuff, how am I going to process it? Like, it's not clear to me that your brain works in a ways similar to mine so that it even makes.
Sense to me, right, Like how do you translate it?
Yeah, how do you translate it? That is a hard problem? And then how do you control it?
Well, it's a hard problem, but it's not implausible, Like maybe we'll figure it out.
It could be. It could be that we figure it out. In her book, it doesn't take very long, Like you turn on a new ancillary and you get control of it pretty fast. But you know that babies or whatever, when they turn on their bodies and need to learn to control it, it takes them a while to get used to it and familiar with it and comfortable with it. So I think, at a very minimum, even if you could capture all that information and translate it and experience it. It would take you while to get used to controlling those bodies. But no, not impossible.
And these implants, are they like chips or do they like take over your brain too?
They're like chips. Yeah, they're inserted into your brain somehow. They do some surgery to make these ancillaries to take a human body, and they plant all this stuff in them to turn them into an ancillary. I also wonder what it's like to have one hundred bodies and a hundred brains and you know, two hundred pairs of eyeballs. Where do you feel like you are? Like right now, I feel like I'm in my head. But if I had two bodies that are looking at each other, then do I feel like I'm sort of floating between them or I'm in both or That's the coolest thing about this book is that it tries to give you a sense for what that would be.
Like, like if you, as a conscious mind, had multiple experiences.
Yeah, and so in the books, she really tries to give you a sense or what this is like. And it's a challenge because she's writing from the point of view of something that has multiple experiences simultaneously, but she's telling it to you, the reader that can only experience one thing at a time in a format of a story where she has to write, you know, one word at a time. She can't like layer ten sentences on top of each other.
She didn't use columns, like two columns in the chapter. That could be interesting, all right. So, Daniel, so you you got to interview Annay and you were very excited about this because you're you're a fan of the book.
Oh yeah, I'm a huge fan. I love this book when it came out, I reread it just before I talked to her. I was again impressed with the depth of the universe that she imagined, and just the sort of craft of the writing of pulling off such an ambitious thing. And then the book is just fun to read. It's like it's an adventure. You want to know what happens. There's mysteries, there's you know, drama, this politics as personalities. It's an impressive book. It deserves these awards. So hats off to her. I was very happy to get to talk to her.
Oh and so what kinds of questions did you did you ask her?
Well, you know, I'm an aspiring science fiction author, so of course I asked her like, how did you get this idea and what did you like about it? And I was really also interested in how important it was to her that the technology was plausible, Like how much did she drill down and think about how this could work and what would be needed and how that affected her story or was it okay to her that it was just sort of like a little bit hand wavy in the details I see.
I wonder which answer would disappoint you or get you more excited.
Well, if I had two bodies, I could be simultaneously excited and disappointed.
You could have a pessimist ancillary and an optimist ancillary. All right, Well, here is Daniel's interview with sciencewitch and author and Lecky.
It's my pleasure to welcome to the show and Lecky, and once you introduce yourselves to our listeners.
I'm an Lecky. I'm the author, most famously, I guess, the author of the novel Ancillary Justice and it sequels Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy.
Well, I'm a huge fan of your book and of the universe that you've created. Congratulations on this wonderful creation and all of your success. But before we dive into the physics of the universe that you built, we want to ask you a couple of questions to sort of get to know you as a scientist or as a science thinker. And these are questions we're going to ask every author. The first question is sort of a philosophical question that bounces around the science fiction community, and it has to do with Star Trek transporters. Do you think when you go into a transporter on Star Trek do you think it actually moves you from one place to another? Or do you think it tears you apart, effectively killing you and recreates a clone somewhere else.
I actually feel like you're killing somebody and creating a new person. But I mean, it's all ship of theseus.
That's one offul I totally agree. And then the second question I have for you is about science fiction technology in general. You must read a lot of science fiction, and so I'm wondering what element that you see in science fiction are you most excited about actually becoming real? Would you like to actually see scientists build one day.
Medical tech like the kind of oh, we can just heal lounds by spraying a thing over it. That would be really fabulous. And actually, food replicators, food replicators would be amazing, and I'm kind of suspicious of the way they're often handled. Like in Star Trek, it's this really amazingly miraculous technology, but it's always Oh, but the food's not really as good as when you make it yourself. Well, if it's molecular, I mean, it's absolutely indistinguishable, then why should it not be as good? Right? I find that kind of an interesting. Oh but mom has to make it slaving for hours over the stove or it won't taste as good, Like, yeah, Mom's tears aren't really that delicious.
All right, So let's talk about the science fiction universe that you created in this wonderful novel Ancillary Justice. I was wondering first if you could describe to our listeners sort of what is the key element of the technology that you've created that changes what it's like to be in that universe.
There's technology for slaving brains to a central or to each other, or to a central authority, isn't the right word, so that those brains experience themselves as not having individual identity, but as being part of the larger identity.
That's an amazing idea and one that plays out in a fascinating way in your novel. But I was wondering, sort of, how did you come up with that idea? Where's that idea come from? Do you start from the concept of the technology and then come up with the story or think about the story you wanted to tell, and then sort of reverse engineer the technology that could make it happen.
It started out my imagining beings that could be in more than one place at a time, Like I think a lot of stories started out with just sort of idly fantasizing about different cool things. You know, you're in line at the post office or whatever on your board and you're making up cool stuff, and of course eventually it builds up into something more complicated, and then all of a sudden, I'm like, well, wait, I've built up this character and they're here, but they also need to be this other place. And then I thought, well could I make that work? And that became really fascinating to me, and the story sort of built out from there.
And what is it that's so fascinating to you about that idea? What drew you into that idea? And made you want to create this entire universe around it.
The idea of being in more than one place is really interesting. But then when I came up with a mechanism for how that would work, that was really kind of horrifying and upsetting. That's a terrible thing to do to a person.
So then, of course I wonder how deeply did you think about how to actually implement this, Like did you think about the technology in great detail to figure out whether this was plausible.
Once I decided how it was going to work, at least the sort of hand wavy version of how it was going to work, because it's all handwavy, I started looking into human neurology. And it's really horrifying when you realize how much of our identities and sense of ourselves are contingent on a couple of very delicate connections in our brains.
And so how important is it to you that this could actually work in our universe? How important is it to you that the science of it is like all really logical and consistent, or is it all right for some of it to be sort of handwavy and approximate?
In some ways? It's important to me in some ways it's not so. As I said, I spent a fair amount of time looking at the neurological implications for how this sort of thing would work, but in terms of how do ancillary implants actually do the work, like what connections do they cut? How do they communicate with each other? I have no freaking idea. That's just reverse the polarity on the whatever that's star Trek technobabble. But I did want the neurology and the psychology to be fairly realistic because I feel like one of the cool things about science fiction is you can do that. You can just stand up and say and now, talking cows, and your audience will buy and large they'll take it. You don't always have to explain how that happens. But also, if I want my audience to continue to believe in those talking cows, I feel like I need to make other things around them very realistic. So the grass ought to be you believe it's grass, and the cows ought to talk in a way that makes sense for the cows. And if I explain anything, it really should make sense. But I'm never going to explain why the cows are talking. Maybe I will, I don't know. There's a lot of power in just being able to say, handwavy thing, but there's also a lot of power in it being able to describe exactly how it's happening.
And then, of course I have to ask, do you think this could actually happen in our universe? Do you think in a thousand or five thousand years this might be a reality brain slave to essential intelligence?
I kind of hope not. But at the same time, I actually don't think. Given if you could make the things small enough, the equipment, if you could miniaturize it enough and have the kind of sophistication with neurosurgery that we don't yet have, maybe you could do it. I don't know how you'd power it. That's another most science fiction doesn't stop to think how you power things?
Right?
They just say, oh, my raygun works all the time, like yeah, and how big is the battery? And why are you not always changing it? Right? I say nothing about how any of that is powered. In science fiction. One of the ways you've don't get people to ask those questions is you don't mention it.
And in your book, the point of view, the main narrator is an artificial intelligence. So that makes me wonder do you think artificial intelligence in today's world could actually have a point of view, could have a first person experience? Do you think that if we developed an AI now that was sufficiently complex enough that it seemed human, that it would actually be having a first person experience like you and I?
I feel like that's really hard to say because from a certain point of view, and understand I don't subscribe to this point of view, but it's logically makes sense. I don't know that anybody around me is actually having a first person experience except for me, because I'm experiencing mine, and the only way that I can know that anybody else is having that experience is that they tell me. And so I go through life when I meet another person assuming that they're having a first person experience, Uh, partly because it just makes life easier, and I would rather make that my default assumption than the other. So I think if an AI were to pass the interiority Turing test and sound really like it was having an actual first person experience, then it would seem to me prudent to accept that.
All right, Well, thank you very much and for humoring my questions about your science fiction universe and for coming on our show.
All right, pretty cool. Sounds totally fascinating her process and what she thought about the world and the universe and the science. What was your takeaway from talking with her, Daniel.
I think that she did a good job imagining sort of the important bits of how her universe worked and making those consistent without getting into the weeds of like, you know, how would you actually build this thing? You know, basically the engineering like is there a battery in this thing? Or do you need to recharge every four hours?
And like nobody wants to thinking, Daniel, where does it fit inside of your brain?
That's why there's no genre called engineering fiction.
Oh May, maybe there should.
Be, Maybe there should be a go talk to your agent. So I think she did a good job. She sort of thought about the details, try to make a world that was consistent, follow those rules in her story, but not get bogged down in all this little trivia. And you know, she you can hear what she's saying, Like she thought the audience would accept that the audience didn't want to hear more details that you can say talking cows, and the audience would be like, all right, cool, what happens when you have talking Cows basically tries to avoid the topics she doesn't want to get into. She says, if you don't want people to ask questions about it, just sort of don't bring it up. But then again, I asked her questions that apparently nobody had asked her before, so some people do bring it up. That's what happens when physicists read your book.
Well, what do you think is sort of the core idea or the core lesson from her novel that she was trying to get at. You know, is it sort of about what does human consciousness means? Or you know, how does technology once we go across the universe and across the galaxy, what does that do for our maybe our collective conscious as the human species.
Yeah, I think that the core idea of the book is that technology can really change what it means to be human, and that what it means to be human can change, and you know it has. Right, our experience of living in this world is very different than the experience of the world ten thousand years ago, just because of the knowledge and the tools that we have and how big the world feels and how accessible the stars field really changed what it's like to be human, and this sort of extrapolates that out to a crazy extreme and reminds you that technology is not just a tool, but it sort of defines who we are and how we live.
Right, It redefines it changes what it means. Right.
Yeah, it's completely like even.
Just our listeners listening to this podcast. I mean, it's a totally different human experience than they that humans had, you know, three hundred years ago.
Yeah, just like Dropbox changed what it means to work together.
Right, lightsabers, dropbox, it's all fantasy.
Hey, can you put that lightsaber in the drop box so I can use it also?
It would be awesome. Yeah, you just make sure to turn it off first, don't put it don't put it activated.
Oh I've made that mistake, let me tell you.
Yeah. It is interesting to think, as we explore more of the universe, as we learn more about the universe, how is that changing our conception of what it means to be human.
Yeah, And the answer is that it would be very different. But of course there's a challenge there. If you're going to write a novel to be read by today's humans about the experience of future humans, you have to make it at least a little bit relatable. I mean, if your point is, Wow, in a billion years or whatever, it's going to be impossible to understand future society, well, then the book is just gibberish.
Like if you just wrote it in a future language nobody knows now.
Yes, so you have to bridge it. You have to make it accessible enough to today's humans that we can get a glimpse for what it might be like to them. And that's also what's fascinating about old science fiction. Like you read science fiction from the nineteen fifties, it's dated. Like it's dated. It tells you not just what they thought about what the future would look like, but what was hard for them to imagine, what was easy for them to think about. It gives you a sense really for what it was like to be back there in the nineteen fifties.
The way they extrapolated to the future missed a little bit from what where we are now.
Yeah, and if she had written this book in one hundred years or in two hundred years, she would probably have different challenges writing it to extrapolate from that society to her future society. So science fiction in this way, it sort of depends on both time points, the time point in the book and the time point of the reader. And so that's why the best science fiction is the ones that works well not just in one year, but you know, over ten years, or over twenty or fifty years. If it's really timeless, then you've captured something that's essential about humanity and not something which is like, oh, here's what Twitter looks like today, and how annoying it is, And let me write a science fiction novel about this moment. It's about being human.
Yeah, I think I'm going to write a science fiction novel where the future doesn't have Twitter. That's my fantasy. That would be mice key.
That's called utopian fiction.
Yeah, utopian that's right. All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed this trip down to the consciousness of other people and like science fiction authors as they take you to other star systems across the galaxy.
Yep. And so if you enjoy this, let us know and if you'd like for us to talk about a science fiction novel that you really enjoyed, send it to me. I'll read it and maybe we will talk about it on the podcast and interview the author.
Yeah, it'll give us an excuse to reach out to these famous people and talk to them.
Yeah, which is always fun. It's such an honor. I was so glad that Anne was so friendly and so willing to spend her time explaining her universe two.
Hours so again. The book is called Ancillary Justice by Anne Lecky.
And if you enjoy it, it's part of a trilogy. There's two more books in that same universe, all of excellent quality.
All right, well, thank you for joining us. See you next time.
Before you still have a question 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 joorge that's one word, or email us at Feedback at Danielandhorge dot com. Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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