Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - The SF Multi-verse of Adrian Tchaikovsky

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

Daniel and Jorge discuss the science of "The Doors of Eden", a multi-zooniverse novel by Adrian Tchaikovsky Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, Jorge, do you think that intelligence is inevitable? In our podcast? I'm not sure a lot of our jokes are that smart. Well, I think puns are a sign of intelligence, in my opinion. But I was wondering about in life in general, like, if you ran the Earth as an experiment many times, how often do you think you'd get intelligent life? Sometimes I'm not sure we have intelligent life here on Earth, Daniel. So do you think, like, in another version of Earth, dinosaurs became smart, maybe, like, built the Internet? Or what if, like, plants became intelligent?

Then this could be a podcast done by bananas. where bananas rule the world. Maybe it's done by bananas and listened to by intelligent dinosaurs. It's probably a lot smarter than this podcast. Or maybe, at least it's funnier. Hi, I'm Jorge, my cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. I'm Daniel, and in this element of the multiverse, I'm a particle physicist. Do you think there's an alternate universe where we swap, Daniel, like, I'm the physicist

and you're the cartoonist? I think you're well on your way to becoming a physicist in this universe. Thanks. I wish I could say the same about you, Daniel, in cartooning. I should spend more time doodling while we podcast so I can work on my art skills. That's how I'm good at cartooning. What do you think I do while you're talking about physics? Oh, you should totally publish the doodles.

No, but I do like to imagine other lives I may have lived where I pursued writing or art or music or something. And I wonder how those would have turned out. But why wait for another universe? Why don't you just right now and pursue music? Okay, hold on. I'm going to hang up. But anyways, welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of IHeart Radio.

In which we take you on that mental journey. We explore this universe. We talk about other universes. We wonder, why is this universe like this? Are there other universes out there? How does this universe even work? Is it possible to understand it? We wrap all that up in about 40 minutes,

stuff some puns in it, and feed it to you for intellectual lunch. Because, you know, I think the universe that we live in is rich and amazing and huge. And there's still so much to discover. But there is the amazing and incredible possibility that maybe this is not the only universe. And maybe there are other universes out there waiting for us to discover. universes without bananas, universes without snacks, or maybe even universes with better snacks. Because a natural question when you look at our universes,

you wonder, like, is this the only way it could be? Could the universe have been different? Are there other examples of universes out there where things are different? What does that mean for how special or how irrelevant we are? Yeah, and I think it's, you know, the job of physicists to think about these other universes, but I think the people who get to have more fun with this idea are writer. and science fiction writers, because they are free to let their imaginations run wild and think about all these other universes and what they could be and what could be in them.

That's right. Science fiction writers are not always constrained by the laws of physics, the way us experimentalists are, but they still do contribute to this exploration of how the universe is and how the universe might be. And like we say in this podcast a lot, it's a vital element of exploring our universe, thinking about how other universes might behave and what the rules are. Yeah, so we'll be continuing today our conversation with science fiction authors about their work, about how they see these concepts in physics, and how they let their imaginations run wild in these universes.

That's right, and more specifically, how they build their universe. Because when you tell a story, you have to put it in a universe, and that universe has to follow rules for your story to make sense, for your characters to have constraints, for those conflicts to mean anything. And in science fiction, you can invent any kind of universe you like, I suppose, as long as it's self-consistent. So we've been having fun talking to well-known science fiction authors about how they are gods of their own universe and what rules they decided to put in it

and what rules they decided to delete. So today on the podcast, we'll be talking about science fiction universe of Adrian Chikosky's Doors of Eden. That's right. And Adrian Chikovsky now a very well-known and very successful science fiction author, but he has quite an interesting background because he started out actually writing fantasy novels. Oh, really? You can do both? Apparently, you can cross over. And he wrote some very

well-received fantasy novels. You know, he spent a lot of time doing D&D as a kid. And I think those novels came out of that. And then he switched over. And a few years ago, he wrote a book called Children of Time, which is one of my favorite science fiction novels. I was blown away when I read it. And so I totally recommend his entire series of science fiction works. But today we're talking about his most recent book, which is just coming out now in August 2020. It's called Doors of Eden. I guess, Daniel, what do you see is the difference between a fantasy novel and a science fiction novel? Like, where do you draw the line?

The number of dragons, I think. What if you have a sci-fi novel with dragons in it? Nobody's ever done that. No, you totally could have a science fiction novel with dragons. And in fact, the one we're talking about today, the science fiction novel, has a lot of weird critters. I think, though, the difference between science fiction and fantasy, again, according to me, and lots of people out there in the podcast verse can disagree, is that a science fiction universe is more like science, that you set up the rules, and then your universe follows those rules.

Whereas in fantasy, you have magic, and so basically, you know, the rules can be anything at any point. There's just sort of a different style there, because you're either living in a world where you have to follow the rules, or you're living in a world where you're sort of discovering crazy stuff at every moment. Well, I feel like, you know, sometimes fantasy has rules, you know? Like, I know that sometimes they try to have rules about how dragons can breathe and what they need to eat and things like that. So maybe it's a little bit of a fuzzy line. Well, I would say that the best fantasy novels are the ones where the magic does have rules where there's something about it. There's a reason it works this way and there are limits to what you can do. You can't cast

this kind of spell in that situation. You need this kind of ability combined with that one to do something. But in my book, that makes them science fiction and not fantasy. So once you start following the rules, it becomes science fiction. All right. Well, we're talking about his latest book, which is called Doors of Eden. And it has to do with the multiverse, this idea that there are different universes besides ours. And it's the idea that the universes are all different, or they're all kind of different versions of ours. Yeah, they're all sort of different versions of ours. And he really focuses on the role of evolution and how evolution goes down a different path in each multiverse. And that's what gives it sort of a fantasy or sort of critter-based

element. And the next thing about which critter might have become intelligent and become dominant in each of these multiverses. Like if the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out by an asteroid, could they be maybe the dominant species in our planet right now and have developed intelligence and a physics podcast. They probably wouldn't be talking about bananas, though. I can't see a T-Rex eating a banana because how does it get it up to its mouth? It's like it's holding it, it peels it,

and then it's just like they can't feed themselves. I don't see it working. Well, if they're intelligent enough to have a podcast, I would imagine, Daniel, they could figure out a way to peel a banana. Sometimes the simplest problems are the hardest to overcome. Yeah, so it's the idea of the multiverse, and there are many different versions of the multiverse,

And so we'll get a little bit more into this topic. But we were wondering how many people out there believe the multiverse is possible. And more importantly, if we could ever travel between these different universes. So I went out to the internet and I asked our listeners and folks like you if they thought it was possible to go from our universe to another. Not just whether the multiverse is real, not just whether other universes exist, but whether we could actually ever visit them. So think about it for a second. Do you think we can travel between universes and the multiverse? Here's what people had to say.

No. I don't think we ever will be able to do this. For us to be able to do that, we would have to know or have an idea of like a barrier. I really don't see us doing this any time soon or even in the future. I wish, though. No, because fundamentally the multiverse would be causally separated. Well, we don't really know if there is a multiverse. and we can barely travel through the actual universe.

So traveling through the multiverse sounds a bit too much. But, well, maybe single particles if there is a multiverse. I would say no, because if we could travel through the multiverse, it would have to be redefined as just being the universe. Ooh, I don't think we can because I just don't know how we would get there. do we build a bridge? We have to open up a thing. Where do you even find out

where the opening to the multiverse is? No, no, I don't think so. And even if we could with this pandemic, staying in quarantine, 14 days is not worth it. So for once, our listeners are pretty consistent. Yeah, well, I like the one who said, we can barely deal with this universe.

I can't even wrap my head around multiple universes. Yeah, it's a good point. maybe we should figure this one out before we branch out to other ones. But then again, maybe other universes have physics that's easier to unravel, just like takes 15 minutes and boom, theory of everything figured out. Maybe there's a universe where they figure out of exit for this pandemic. And then we can learn from that, I guess, right? That's a positive thing.

That's a positive thing. Yeah, I like that idea. But nobody really seems to think that it's possible to go from our universe to another universe. They sort of all scoff at the idea that you could ever ask. actually traveled from this universe to another one. All right, well, let's get into Adrian's book here, Dors of Eden. And so it's about the multiverse.

And you're saying that are these, what kind of multiverse is? Is this like a universe that's just like ours, but maybe we had different initial conditions? Or is it like the quantum universe where it gets split off every time a particle makes a left or right decision? It's a very specific kind of multiverse. It's one in which Earth exists. And the basic laws of physics are the same.

and it doesn't have to do with quantum mechanics, it has to do more with thinking about how evolution might have gone differently. Like if you start with Earth, with primordial bath of little bugs and life develops, then if you run that experiment a lot of different times, what kind of life might develop, what might win the evolutionary sweepstakes, and what might eventually become intelligent? Because it makes sense to think about how that could be really influenced by random events. You know, a cosmic ray comes in and mutates this creature. crater or not that critter, or a DNA transcription error gives you this mutation and not that mutation or an asteroid comes or it doesn't.

These little details can really affect downstream, have a massive influence on what ends of surviving and what ends up being intelligent. So in the book then, it's like a universe just like ours, but instead of like a mammal here and with limbs and skin, we're actually like dinosaurs with scales and big teeth. Yes, and this is where the novel really shines. Chikovsky has a background in zoology and he's very creative. And so there are some very inventive other universes there with crazy critters, you know, walrus-like creatures that build computers that are mostly out of ice

or bugs that become like the size of planets and float through the universe or all sorts of other crazy stuff. I don't want to spoil it, but it was really inventive, like ideas I'd never consider, never thought it before, but seem kind of plausible. In each case, he's really thought through how this thing could evolve. and what the environmental requirements were to sort of select for that thing to happen, it's very richly imagined.

It's almost like he's visited these things and just like scribble down notes and come back to tell us about. But they're all based on Earth? Or are these like dragons coming from space? These are all based on Earth. So in each case, he's imagining life here on Earth, evolving in lots of different ways

and ending up with lots of different kind of intelligent creators. And so then what's the plot? What's the story about? The story starts here on our Earth with people who are like us, and there are cracks that open up between the multiverse. So instead of having completely parallel separate universes, there starts to be overlapsed, places where critters can go from one to the other. And the story begins following some cryptozoologists,

people who look for weird creatures like Bigfoot or Locknest Monster, and they find some weird creatures like actually alive, strange things you wouldn't expect in our universe. And they follow them back and find these door. between universes where you can jump from one to the other. And the basic plot of the book is to figure out why are these universes overlapping, what or who is controlling it, and for what purpose? And is it a good idea or a bad idea?

And then it just goes crazy as we jump from universe to universe and meet all sorts of crazy creatures. Interesting. So they're not naturally occurring cracks. It's like somebody's opening the doorways between universes. That's one of the big mysteries driving the book. And so I won't spoil it for our listeners. But it's a fascinating question.

All right, well, let's get into the science of the book, and then we'll get to your interview with Adrian Chikosky, author of Doors of Eden. But first, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m. Everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal.

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All right, we're talking about the science fiction work of Adrian Chikoski and specifically the book, Dors of Eden, in which the multiverse exists and it's fun and there's all kinds of amazing different creatures in it and the cracks between the universes are starting to show. It's fun sort of the same way like Jurassic Park was fun in those movies. Like, it's fun, but it's dangerous. You know, some of these critters are not exactly friendly. Oh, I see.

All right, so it takes place in our universe and there's these doorways to other multiverses that are opening and there are creatures from those multiverses coming into and out of our world. Yeah, that's right. And our humans sometimes go into those multiverses and come back after many years, subtly changed. And so there's a lot of going back and forth. But the basic sort of scientific premise is what if you could explore multiple paths at once? You know, it's like when you have to make a decision in life, you're like, should I order a mac and cheese or should I? I order pizza or whatever. And you imagine, like, maybe this has a big role in my life.

Maybe there's another version of me where I ordered the pizza and something happened. And now I'm a totally different person. And this sort of gets to explore all these different paths, the way the Earth might have gone if evolution had worked different. All right. Well, I have a lot of questions about the science, I guess. And so let's dig into that. And so first of all, maybe we should recap a little bit about this idea of a multiverse,

because there are a lot of different flavors of multiverses in physics theories. Yes, there are. And multiverse is a hot topic these days, not just in science fiction novels, but in theories of physics. It's something we talk about a lot. Yeah. So explain to us, what is the current definition of a multiverse? So there's lots of different ways to think about the multiverse. And essentially, it depends on what question you're trying to answer. The whole idea for the multiverse comes from a lack of explanation of things we see in our universe. Like, we look at things in our universe and we measure them and we wonder like, why is it this way and not some other way? way. You know, like we measure the rate of expansion of the universe driven by the cosmological constant. And it's a number. And it's kind of a weird number. It's like kind of a small number.

And we wonder like, well, why isn't that number just one or seven or 12? Like, why this number and not some other number? Right. Like, it could be something else, but why isn't it that or why isn't this? And one possible answer is, oh, there's a reason. It has to be this way. We just don't yet understand the physics of it. And that's, you know, my favorite explanation. because that's the cleanest, it's the simplest. It tells us why our universe has to be this way. But we don't have that explanation yet. We haven't figured it out yet.

And another way to make sense of it, instead of finding a physics argument for why it has to be this way, is to say, well, it's just arbitrary. And maybe it was set sort of randomly when the universe began. Yeah, like maybe it was just like a random throw of the die. Yeah. Right? Or like a random flip of the coin.

And then you're wondering, why is it heads and not tails? Yeah. And that feels sort of like a cop out. Like it's saying, well, there is no explanation, so maybe there can't be an explanation. Or maybe it's just random, and that's the explanation. That sounds reasonable to me, but physicists have a very uncomfortable time dealing with that answer. Yeah, because it feels sort of like giving up, because you could use that argument for anything, you know. Why is the earth going around the sun? I don't know, maybe it's random.

You know, why are photons act this way? I don't know, maybe they just do because they do. It feels like a non-answer. It feels like you're saying, don't ask any more questions. because there are no more answers. But we're physicists. We like to ask questions. We like to figure things out.

But I guess my problem with this is it doesn't feel like the best way to answer that question either. Like, you know, why does the Earth go around the sun? You can dig into it and you find out about gravity and orbits and things like that. But if you get to a number that you can't explain, why couldn't it just be the way it is? Because it is. Why do you have to invent a whole other set of universes to explain it? Well, it could just be the way it is.

the reason why a whole other set of universes sort of scratches that itch, especially works when the number is weird. Like, if you measure a number and it's sort of like makes sense to you, like the number is one, you know, these dimensionless numbers, then you're like, okay, well, the number is one. But if the number is really weird or small, then it seems unlikely. And then to explain it, you'd like to imagine, like, well, maybe there are lots of other versions and we're just sort of an unlikely

random choice. There are many of these things, and we just happen to be, one that's weird. And so it doesn't really answer the question. You still have the arbitrariness. You still have the randomness. But then you have a whole population. So instead of being the only one out on this weird tail, we're out of the weird tail of a large

group. And most of the universe is normal. And we're the weird ones. So it sort of gives you some kind of an explanation. But it's not totally satisfactory. It's more like, why are we special? And the answer is we're not special. Yeah.

I feel like that's kind of what you're trying to let's like. Yeah, it's like it's weird that we're special, but maybe we're not special. Maybe there's a whole bunch of other universes. Well, actually, I think it's more like the other way around it. It's saying, why are we special? Isn't it strange that we have only one example and this example is special? And so it's saying, oh, yeah, well, we are actually special. And there are other universes out there where this special thing doesn't happen.

And so that explains like why it's happening in this one. You know, it's not a totally satisfactory answer. And I think part of the reason it survives is because it's so mind blowing. It's like, whoa, you're going to take the whole universe and multiply it by 1,000 or multiply by an infinite number of varieties. It's sort of philosophically mind-blowing, and that's why I think it's so popular. All right. Well, there are many different kinds of multiverses, and we had a whole podcast about the different

kinds of multiverses. So if you're curious, please go back through our list of episodes and find it. But I guess I'm curious about the one that Adrian Chikosky uses in his novel, The Doors of Eden. kind of multiverse is it? Is it like a parallel? Is it in another spot in space? Is it like a quantum kind of separation? What kind of multiverse is it? I think it's most similar to the quantum multiverse actually because it has the same laws of physics. So it's not like the multiverse where the universe is different laws of physics in different places and other universes are just like other parts of space where the laws of physics are different. The electrons have different masses

or something, it's not that kind of configuration. Like, in his book, your electrons can go to another multiverse and still be electrons and there's still light and there's still particles and everything is familiar. So the laws of physics are the same. It's just sort of like another role of the dye. So in that sense, it's most similar to the quantum multiverse. Right. The quantum multiverse is the one where every time a quantum particle does something random,

you know, the electron goes left or goes right. It doesn't actually just randomly choose one. It does both. and the universe splits into two, one where it goes left and one where it goes right. And so in this universe, that's kind of what is happening, is that they're quantum multiverses. And in these different universes, you know, a primordial cell split this way and not that way. Yeah, it's sort of like biology, quantum multiverse, where you're imagining that the random processes which are fundamentally quantum mechanical are having a macroscopic effect on the biology and on the evolution, which leads to all sorts of different stuff. And, you know, that, I think, is totally plausible because a lot of the mutation that comes in evolution is based on quantum mechanical principles, you know, the chemistry of these things interacting or cosmic rays flipping a bit in DNA.

So that's totally plausible. Yeah, I guess these things all depend on really tiny events and really tiny random events. Yeah, and in this sense, the multiverse is sort of trying to scratch the same itch as what we were talking about earlier instead of thinking like, well, why is this fundamental? parameter of the universe, point one instead of one or two, it's thinking, why are we in this universe and not the other one, right? Why are we in the universe where the electron went left instead of the one where it went right? How does the universe randomly choose one of those things? Is there some like quantum die at the core of the universe computer? And so the quantum multiverse tries to answer that question by saying, we're not special. It's not like the universe picked left. It picked both.

We just happen to be in the left one. And the people on the right one are thinking, why did it go right and not left. Yeah. And in my mind, that doesn't really answer the question. This whole quantum multiverse thing doesn't really solve the problem of randomness because we still are in the left one. You know, maybe the other ones exist. That's cool. But how come we ended up in the left one? There's still a specialness to one of those universes because it's the one that we are living in. Oh, I see. You think it's still special because you're special, I'm the only me I know. So yes, this universe is different from all the other universes, right?

Well, until the dinosaurs come and then we'll meet the dinosaur, Daniel. Who actually likes bananas? Yeah, there you go. He's a big advocate for upside down fruit. All right, so in this universe, I guess then his multiverse and the ones that they interact with in this novel, I guess they're probably

recent quantum multi universes, right? Because like if you think about, it's kind of like a tree, like the branches in a tree, like it's where he's probably talking about other universes. is in a very close branch of the multiverse. Because I imagine if you go back to the beginning of time and start splitting the universe then, those would be super duper different than our universe.

Yeah, you might not get Earth. There might not even be an Earth. That's right. Yeah, you wouldn't get a Milky Way or an Earth or even we might be in the middle of a giant cosmic void instead of being in the center of a superstructure. So you're right, he has an Earth in each of these and the splitting happens sort of after life begins on Earth.

But again, I don't want to spoil too much. One of the fascinating elements of the book is sort of tracing this back and figuring out where the first branch happens. Oh, interesting. All right. And so there are other animals that develop intelligence, and that's all part of the plot to figure out how that happened. Yeah. All right. Well, let's get into your interview with science fiction author Adrian Chikosky, author of Dors of Eden.

So it's my great pleasure today to welcome to the program, Adrian Chikovsky, the author of Doors of Eden, as well as many other novels. He's the winner of awards in both fantasy and science fiction writing, and we're very glad to have him today on the program. Hello, though. Thanks for having me. Sure. So thank you very much for joining us. Before we get started talking about your book, we'd like to get to know you a little bit better as a writer. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background, how you got into writing science fiction?

I know that you have some sort of interesting background in zoology and law, and that before you wrote science fiction, you wrote a series of well-regarded fantasy. novels. Yeah, I mean, I've got the sort of background you get when you're rolling randomly on some fairly banal tables. So, yes, I've got a, my academic background is zoology and psychology. It's not the case that the zoology in the background led to the writing. It's more the case that they're both symptoms of an overriding fascination with the natural world that I've had since a very young age. I have, I did work in law for years. I've been a full-time writer for about a year and a half now, but before that I'd been,

I was a sort of fairly junior type of lawyer for about 10 years, which came about because when I was looking for a job, there was an opening for a legal secretary, and because of the writing, I had a very good typing speed. And that was basically that I didn't really decide to become a lawyer at any point, but there was on the job training available, and it just kind of happened. Beyond that, actually, I think the biggest influence for me, becoming a writer has probably been role-playing games.

which was my kind of enduring obsession when I was suddenly a teenager and kind of still is, to be honest, but it turned out to be a very, very good sort of training ground for designing worlds and designing characters and putting yourself behind the eyes of very different sort of people and creatures. And that certainly comes out clearly and very well in your fantasy novels. What about the transition to science fiction? Did you feel like you had to leave some of that behind and build different kinds of worlds? Was that a different muscle for you? Did you feel like the same sort of expression?

It's a bit of a different challenge. Certainly when I'm writing science-y science fiction, because, I mean, there's a kind of a bit of a slider that you can play with when you're approaching it. Depending on how science-accurate you wanted to be, you're adding extra constraints that you then have to work with. So, I mean, despite its subject matter, the children of time are certainly intended to be a fairly hard science book

in that, not in that it's full of vastly comprehensive, complex mathematical equations, but in that the science depicted there is at least intended to be plausible and possible. So you don't have time travelling, you don't have faster than light travel, you don't have artificial gravity, because I'm not convinced so things can actually be done within the bounds of the universe we're in. And so if I was approaching a book with those elements, I would have to shift that slider off to the left or whichever direction is the less scientific end. But within that, it's not... enormously different. It's really just that you are, rather than setting your own ground rules at the start, you're coming in to play with a series of ground rules already there, which are, of course, the real, those of the real world. So you have to research those. And it does mean that it's considerably more work than just making it up and then ensuring you're consistent with what you've made up. But there's a definite satisfaction to basically working with what the universe allows and then building something like, for example, a civilization of giant spiders.

Yes, and that was a lot of fun to read about. Well, then let me ask you a series of short questions that we ask all of our science fiction author guests to sort of acquaint you in that universe. First question is a philosophical question about Star Trek transporters. Is it your opinion that a Star Trek transporter kills you and creates a clone somewhere else

or that it actually transports your atoms to your destination? The cynic in me definitely goes with the first one. There's a glory that the China Mievel book called Krakken where that is a kind of a minor issue that is explored in an absolutely glorious scene in the book. But, yeah, I mean, it is, it's kind of hard to justify, and I appreciate it's in this series because it's a lot cheaper to show on the screen than actually having things like orbit to planet shuttles and things like that. But, yeah, the technology is frankly terrifying when you start to think through the implications

on that. So if you think it is something that kills you and clones you, would you be willing to step into a transporter? I honestly think that one of the great lessons of modern civilization is there are very few terrifyingly unwise things people won't do to cut down on the commute. That's probably true. You're probably become totally commonplace to kill yourself and be cloned at your workplace every day. Well, in the vein of science fiction tech becoming real, what technology that you see in science

fiction, would you most like see become actual reality, something we could actually use? On a purely practical level, I think teleportation, if it was reliable and freely available, would make a colossal amount of difference. Portals, even, are even better. One of Peter Hamilton's recent book, Salvation, is a world where basically portal technology to any way you can get your portal to is just absolutely commonplace. And you have examples where there's one action scene going through a house where every room in the house is in a different place. And the doorways are just portals that take you from continent to continent and even into other planets, just like stepping through a room.

Yeah, that scene reminded me a lot of sort of Hyperion where they have a house with rooms in different solar systems. So on the topic then of transport across solar systems, what's your personal answer to the Fermi paradox? That is, why haven't aliens visited Earth yet? Do you think that they aren't out there or they aren't interested in us or just not long-lived enough? I believe that there's life, that life is probably not that rare in the galaxy in the universe. I mean, not that rare still means, obviously, there are vast tracts of universe with very little life in it because that's how the universe works. But I believe that intelligent life such as might be sending signals that we could theoretically pick up is probably a lot rarer. there's the Cohen and Stuart book, Evolving the Alien,

talks about intelligence and ex-telligent. And the idea of having that great overarching, fabricated civilization that would allow you to kind of extend your reach beyond the planet you evolve on is probably quite difficult to do. And we see lots of examples of intelligence in the natural world where there's no obvious sort of evolutionary pressure for them to go about inventing cars and mobile phones because they're doing fine with the level of tool use and the level of problem solving that they've got. I think the other prong is that alien life

is alien. It's entirely possible that it's out there when we've even run into its signals and not realize that's what they are because there's a lot of background noise in the universe in order to have any kind of meaningful search at all with the setty program and so forth. You effectively have to restrict your options so that you're looking for something that's very human indeed. And obviously, Anything that evolves on an alien planet is going to be de facto less like us than the most alien thing on this planet. Although the counter-argument, I think, is that there's a potential of convergence because

we all live in the same universe and maths and physics is probably universal. And therefore, we might be able to communicate conceivably with something very alien at some level purely because we have a common language in the basic principles of the universe. And there's a fascinating tension there because... if we met aliens, we might only be able to converse with aliens that are similar to us, which means they might not have that much more insight into math and physics, whereas we'd love to talk to the aliens that think so differently about the universe that their insights into how it works are shattering and mind-blowing,

but that may effectively be impossible. Yeah, as far as I can work out from somebody entirely outside the discipline, it's interesting looking at the way that animal behavior studies have gone fairly recently, because for a long time, it was a bit of a desert, certainly from when I was studying back in the 90s, because the dominant paradigm was the idea that animals couldn't really think or feel. And maybe humans could think and feel, but that was still up in the air with some researchers.

But animals certainly didn't. You weren't allowed to anthropomorphize, which basically kind of killed off any attempt at looking at animal behavior in any kind of meaningful way. And this is purely my personal viewpoint. And I will probably annoy a vast number of babies. scientists who will justifiably tell me a strip. But certainly now there appears to be a bit more of an open idea to all that's actually try and understand why they're doing things from the

point of your living creature rather than a sophisticated robot, basically. And the reason I'm saying this is if we were to want to try and understand an alien, even an alien that was desperately trying to make itself understood, you kind of need practice. You need to be looking at other minds. We've got some effectively some training wheels, other minds here on. on Earth, and we could conceivably, yeah, we could, and we are, I think, now trying to work on understanding. I see. So the lesson is pay attention to your cat because it could help you understand the aliens. Or your octopus. Well, then let's talk about your novel, because this brings us to very similar themes. I really enjoyed reading Doors of Eden. Congratulations.

Thank you. And the novel features sort of multiple parallel worlds, which is a familiar concept in science fiction, but you introduce a couple of very clever new elements. exploring how intelligence might develop differently in each of these parallel worlds and how that intelligence could potentially control and bridge those worlds. So first I want to ask you, what gave you the idea to use this concept in your novel? Did you start from the science concept and try to build a story around it? Or was there a story you wanted to tell that needed sort of this mechanism? Very much the first.

Basically, I wanted for quite a while to write a big sort of speculative evolution book. There was a convention I was at years ago in London where they had a very good speculative evolution track of talks and they had some of the big names in the business in Dougal Dixon and Memo Kosserman and so forth to discuss just various sort of speculative worlds they put together and how they'd thought through the biology and so forth. And I've always been fascinated by paleontology

and particularly things like, I really enjoy Stephen J. Gould's book, Wonderful Life. and his slightly off-the-wall exploration of the Burgess Shale fauna and things like that, and the possibility that he raises there, that there's no, the evolutionary course of life on this planet is in no way preordained, and it's not even necessarily that, oh, well, the best thing won at any given stage. There's a lot of chance, and it could have, at any given point, it could have gone completely differently, and we could be sitting here as the end result of a completely different evolutionary train. And that's kind of what I wanted to explore in the book. And then, of course,

you know, that's the under-arching story that the human-scale plot then gets kind of built up around. But really, the heart of it is the kind of experiments in speculative evolution and just thinking through balancing things going differently with the kind of rules and principles that we at least think would apply to evolution under any circumstances. And it seems to me something of a theme in your other novels, Children of Time and Children of Ruin, these examples of sort of varied evolution, intelligence arising in spiders

or an octopi. And so do you think that intelligence is sort of inevitable in a million parallel universes you would get intelligence on Earth in some significant fraction of them? Or do you think that any species is essentially capable of it? I mean,

I suppose the key point for me as a writer is intelligence is narratively useful. If all of that had gone on, without intelligence, then it still can be a very interesting piece of speculative evolution, but it doesn't plug very well into any kind of human-level narrative if you have worlds and worlds without anything. And I mean, whenever you see these kind of broad takes on sort of multiple strands of evolution and so forth, I mean, there's a book I read recently by Daniel Benson called Junction,

which does it with a number of different, completely alien worlds, where you get to see what they've come up with. And there isn't, intelligence is not universal. In fact, it's almost not there at all, but there's at least one example, and you always, I think, in books, find one example where you meet something that is obviously thinking in some way and building in some way and doing something that brings it to that kind of human level, even if it is very alien indeed. I mean, in all honesty, and this is very much going by the Cohen and Stewart's metric of, well, look, what has happened in the past, before people, before sort of early hominids, there's no real suggestion that intelligent had turned up. And it may have done, and it may just not have

any traces. If you had intelligence that didn't lead itself to a kind of a manufacturing base and a building of tools and structures and so forth, in the same way that some of my intelligence and doors of Eden don't lend themselves to building things like that, we wouldn't know, and several of the civilisations wouldn't necessarily leave any kind of fossil trace that you would identify as intelligence. But there's certainly no evidence the intelligence has turned up in the, what,

half a billion years of life that we've got a record for, and therefore I suspect it probably isn't inevitable at all. And there is obviously, when we're talking about the Fermi paradox earlier, there's always that rather dour idea that, well, when it turns up, it basically then just accelerates, until it destroys itself and knocks a cell and back down into a point where it isn't really a civilization anymore. And that also, I mean, I kind of didn't give that idea much of reasons when I first heard it

decades ago and now I'm looking at it thinking, yeah, okay, I see the point there. That does seem to be what we're on the line to doing, so fine. All right. Well, I want to talk about that some more with our guest, Adrian Chikovsky. But first, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed.

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Okay, we're back and we're talking to Adrian Chikovsky, science fiction author of the book, Doors of Eden. The other sort of element, structural element of your novel, is this concept of many worlds and having parallel universes. And so you made a comment earlier about being limited in science, science fiction to sort of writing to the rules of our universe. Is it critical to you when you write your science fiction that you follow the rules of our universe, that you, that the physics be plausible?

Or do you feel free to sort of create your own physics and then follow those rules? Yeah, I think, I mean, I live in a kind of morbid dread of sort of picked up by actual scientists for getting the science wrong. And I think there's, if you're writing something and you have the science wrong and someone reading the book understands that, then that's going to kick him out of the immersion for the reading experience. Now, there's always going to be a level of stuff where, again, I don't know the questions to ask, and I'm getting it wrong with that real. Knowing I'm getting it wrong, but I kind of feel it's my duty as a writer to get it as right as I possibly can and therefore

keep the number of disappointed, scientifically minded readers to a minimum, I guess. Well, that's very kind of you. As a physicist, I certainly enjoy. reading science fiction novels where they are consistent with the rules they lay down. So if they create new laws of physics, that's wonderful, that's creative, but then it troubles me. If then they depart from those in order to get some story effect that they'd like to achieve regardless of the rules that they've set for themselves. Yeah, I mean, my current project is more of it on the space opera side. So the kind of the physics slider is set off towards where I can kind of, I'm inventing stuff to do with kind of,

sort of hyperspace travel and that kind of thing. But it's a lot like building a magic system for a fantasy world. And I mean, exactly as you say, it's all to do with you've got to be consistent and you can't suddenly have, well, in this case, I can suddenly do this, unless it's been well-foreshadowed within the kind of a system you set up. So then let me ask you about the science in this novel, the many-world or the multiverse. In your view, is the multiverse something that's real in our universe?

I do not have any kind of educated standpoint to make a call on that one in the real universe. I suspect I do not understand the physics and the maths enough to say, but to me it seems like I don't think there needs to be one. I mean, it comes down to a bit of an Occam's Wraitha thing, in that I appreciate that every quantum event kind of has sort of branching piles off from it, but kind of uncertainty aside, it seems to me that each... Yeah, there is a resolution each time, and the resolution probably takes one path rather than constantly splitting into a multiplicity of universes every kind of fraction of a second that the

universe is, universe is in existence. It's a very, I mean, from a human narrative point of view, it's a very attractive idea to have an effect of what would be a nigh infinity, if that makes any sense of universes to choose from, because you could always find a universe where some particular version of event has happened. And of course, we're looking at events on a human level. So, you know, an event where this wall went a different way or where that happened. And maybe you could travel there. And then maybe you get all these TV shows like Sliders or so forth,

where you're going through all these parallels where different things have happened. And it's a great basis for a story. But the kind of the scientist in me kind of shies away from the narrative convenience of it all. So then tell me about your thought process and coming up with the concept of this connection between intelligence and these multiple worlds, how one intelligence, one of these worlds could control or even crack through into other universes. Well, weirdly enough, this is something I'm getting from Brian Cox, who I suspect will be horrified to be associated with anything.

But this is obviously Brian Cox, the scientist, rather than Brian Cox, the actor. So he was talking about, he was specifically actually talking about ghosts or something like that, but he was talking about the way that in a, at CERN, they're kind of breaking the universe down to its most fundamental bits, so that there isn't, effectively, there's no room left for ghosts. If ghosts existed and had any kind of effect on the actual universe, it should be detectable because there would be particles or energy or some kind of ghostly fingerprint on what was left. And if you break things right down, and there's no. nothing that's ghostly, then there are no ghosts.

And that's his kind of philosophy on that. And so it struck me that if I've got this set up where there are these multiple timelines existing kind of right next door to each other. And if, as the book posits, there are kind of weaknesses and points where they can intersect, then if you had a sufficiently advanced technology, you'd pick it up. And that's kind of what's certainly one of the more important sort of timeline cultures in the book. they have a technology that's entirely based around these kind of junctures between the worlds because they were, as they evolved, they became sensitive to them.

And again, it's a bit like the way that there's, if I've got this right, the biochemistry of photosynthesis kind of exploits quantum mechanics to a certain extent to work more efficiently. If you had a world with ghosts, if you had a world with parallel world or anything like that actually was there, things would evolve to exploit it. If you had ghosts and ghosts could affect the world in any way by moving things on a table or wrapping on the walls, ghosts are therefore a source of energy. You'd have a thing that fed on ghosts if there were ghosts. And just the same way, you know, if in one of these worlds,

because you've got these powerful worlds around, there's a sentient species evolves that is sensitive to the places where these worlds interact, and that becomes a place well, that's their energy-free lunch that they kind of build their society on and that kind of thing. So if ghosts exist or parallel worlds exist in our universe, you'd expect particle physicists to discover them first at CERN. But also, I would expect evolution to have discovered them hundreds of millions of years ago. I would expect there to be some kind of single-celled organism that flourished in the presence of ghosts because there's energy. Because if ghosts can do a thing, make a noise, lower the temperature, rattle some chains, that is energy in the system.

And energy in the system is a lunch for something. You would have extremophile ghost bacteria, is what I'm saying. That's fascinating. Well, let me ask you one last question about your portrayal of scientists and physicists. I find that scientists and science fiction are often portrayed as dangerous, blindly following their search for the truth, oblivious to the consequences, et cetera. Now, in your novel, I really enjoyed that your physicist, K, exploring the multiverse, has a bit more nuance to her approach. So, as a scientist, thank you for that.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you saw her internal struggles between the desire to know and understand and also the desire to keep her world and her loved ones safe? Yeah, I mean, I kind of done, as anyone who's read their children of time, children of time will know, I've kind of done the more traditional mad scientist with Avrana Kern, although she's not. the bad guy at any point, particularly. I mean, she's a bit wrapped up in her own desires and ambitions, but she's certainly not the villain of the piece. With Kay, she's someone who has, I mean, unlike Averana Khan, I guess, she's someone who's lived in our real world. She's from here and now. This with a writing headache, I'm probably not going to repeat, but yes, the large chunk of the book is set in the modern world in roughly the present day, although obviously written before all of this business of 2020 came along.

And she's someone who's lived her entire life with a theorem, which has been completely impossible to prove, because effectively she doesn't have the missing piece, which is the whole parallel world's business. And it's a theory that's based on some things I've kind of peripherally picked up about the idea of particular means of encrypting information and decrypting information and things like that. And also kind of based on flatland, which is actually something I've used a couple of times in my writing, the idea that if you are able to kind of ascend to a higher dimension in the purely sort of geometrical sense of dimensions, it would give you a colossal amount of freedom and influence on a lower dimension world because of the way you wouldn't be bound by it.

And hence you could get in places and access places and look into place. that would be completely hidden to someone restricted by the conventional number of dimensions. And so that's kind of, I've extended that to having a dimension, which is the axis of parallel world. And obviously, there are mundane, again, it's like the evolution. There are mundane applications to that, such as in this case, it completely makes a nonsense of any attempt at data security, because you can always get at the data. Right. That made for a lot of fun twists in the book.

Wonderful. Well, thanks very much for answering. much for answering all of our questions. I would love to ask you also about your future project. You mentioned you're working on space opera again. Is there anything you can tell us about that, or is it all under wraps? Announcements have recently just gone out.

The main stick is it's set quite a long way in the future, where there is a humanity has a star-faring civilization. There are other species around with starfaring civilizations at roughly the same level, which is, again, a narratively convenient conceit. And the mechanics of getting from star to star involved going through a kind of a hyperspace called unspace, and probably there are things that come out of unspace, that are kind of natives there, and some of these things

are called architects, and they're about the size of the moon, and what they do is find planets that people or other sentient life live on, and turn them into avant-garde sculptures, which is fatal for everyone living on it. And they've done this to Earth, which is what you see at the very beginning of the book and they've done it to a number of human planets and then they went away because we were able to contact them and say we're here and as soon as they realized people were actually there they just went away and then the rumors have started about a couple of generations later that actually they didn't go away all that much and maybe they're in fact back i see well that sounds like a fascinating concept i can't wait to read it all right well

thanks again for coming on our program no it's very kind of you to invite me all right pretty cool interview. And what was your takeaway from talking to Adrian? Well, that was super fun for me because I've been a big fan of his work for a long time. I really liked a few things about the interview. I like his acknowledgement that alien life is probably really, really alien. You know, that it could be out there and it could just be like too hard to talk to. And that's sort of satisfying in one way because we want to meet alien life because we hope to

discover other ways of living. But then it'd be frustrating because it'd be really hard to figure out how to talk to them. So I thought that was really realistic. And I also liked that he, you know, respected the rules of our universe. He wants to write a book exploring how things could happen in our universe because he didn't feel confident inventing rules for another universe. I thought that was pretty cool. And he's done a great job of imagining, you know, other crazy things that could happen

in our universe without changing any of the laws of physics. Right. Yeah. Did he have any regrets about not including dragons? I didn't say there were no dragons. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. And the other really interesting comment he made was that he doesn't think it's necessary for intelligence to arise,

which I think is fascinating because in the book, as you hear me talk about it in the interview, he has all these parallel multiverses in which intelligence arises in all sorts of different creative ways. But he doesn't think it's necessary. He thinks we could have had earth and life. multicellular life and just all have it be kind of dumb. Yeah, it's totally possible, right? Like, if you wipe humans out right now, the Earth would keep going. The Earth would keep going, and it's not clear whether intelligent life is inevitable.

There's been a lot of fascinating studies recently about how life began sort of quickly on Earth, but then intelligent life came sort of late, and that suggests that life might be inevitable, but intelligent life might be rare. But then again, you know, we're basing that on just one example, which is why it's so much fun to think about. all the other possibilities and all the other examples that live in Adrian Chakofsky's multiverse. And actual intelligence in an intelligent species might be even rarer. Yet to be seen.

Maybe we can tap into the multiverse podcast network and listen to that dinosaur podcast. For better jokes, maybe we'll get better jokes from them. That's where all our best jokes come from. I see. You've been talking to dinosaur Daniel, haven't you? I'm plagiarizing all of his good ideas. When you do work together, how do you high five? That's a sore point, okay? His little arms don't reach very high, so I try not to make fun of it.

All right. Well, thanks for joining us. I hope that you enjoyed that and got you to think about all the different ways that our universe could have played out and how special it is that we're here. And if you have a science fiction book that you'd like us to break down and interview the author, please send us a suggestion to Questions at Danielanhorpe.com. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. 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.

case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, gotcha. This technology's already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Honey German And I'm back with season two of my podcast Grasias, come again.

We got you when it comes to the latest in music and entertainment with interviews with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah.

We'll talk about all that's viral and trending with a little bit of cheesement and a whole lot of laughs. And of course, the great bevras you've come to expect. Listen to the new season. and updates come again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the psychology podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about how to be a better you. When you think about emotion regulation, we're not going to choose an adaptive strategy which is more effortful to use unless you think

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