Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - The SF Universe of Mary Robinette Kowal's "The Calculating Stars"

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

Daniel and Jorge discuss the book "The Calculating Stars" and interview the author. Mary Robinette Kowal's science fiction debut, 2019 Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Award for best novel, The Calculating Stars, explores the premise behind her award-winning "Lady Astronaut of Mars."You can find the book here. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System

On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.

Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast 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. Grazias, 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 of Dresses Come Again on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Jorge, I have an idea for a new science institute. Oh, nice. I guess you're going to call it the White Sun Institute? No, no, no. I'm going to call it the End of the World Research Institute. What? You want to study new ways to kill everyone? No, there's plenty of people doing that already. I want to study the ways science can help in a disaster. Oh, that's pretty cool. But wait, what if science is what causes the disaster? Oh, we'll have a department for that also.

Oh, yeah? Who's going to lead that department? Professor Bruce Willis, of course. He's a professor of saving the world. We have him on standby. Where's Bruce Willis when you need him? He's at the end of the world research institute in his office. He just tested positive for the coronavirus, like all celebrities seem to do.

Oh, no, no. Cut, cut. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel Weitzen. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm not actively working towards the end of the world. Not actively, but you're hoping inadvertently? Or what's your motivation here? I'm not hoping for the end of the world. I'm not trying to facilitate the end of the world. I'm not trying to speed the end times. I just want to get it out there. about the end of the world. I'm just saying if it comes,

it wasn't because I made it happen. I see. I'm not saying I won't be at fault, but... Should have put more funding into science. That's right. Maybe particle physics would have saved the world. Well, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,

a production of I-Hard Radio. In which we take you away from the concerns and worries of the every day and travel out into the universe and think about all the crazy, amazing, beautiful, terrifying, extreme and gorgeous things out there. Yeah, because you know we are living in pretty interesting times,

and we figure what better way to get us all through this than to think about the larger universe, the vast cosmos out there that make us seem like insignificant little things. That's right, and usually on this podcast, we pick a topic in science. It's at sort of the forefront in the brains of scientists. Things people are wondering about a problem they're trying to crack a question that scientists are currently asking,

and we share it with you because in our, opinion, the universe belongs to all of us, and wondering about the universe is a common human experience. That's right. We are all in this together, and we are also all made of the same stuff, right? That's right. Me, you, lava, and hamsters were basically all the same thing. And space bananas. Don't forget the bananas. I'm not including space bananas in that category. No, that's in a separate different category. It's like dark matter. We don't know. I've never had one, so I can't decide. Maybe I'll love space bananas. Maybe space bananas will bring me into the fold of the church of the bananas.

Maybe they turn into dark matter, just like real bananas. Real bananas do turn into a form of dark matter. That's true. But no, we like to talk about the universe, all the things in it, and also all of the ideas that are out there about science and how science can impact society and how it can help society and how might it even affect if something happens to humanity. That's right.

And we like to think optimistically on this podcast. We like to think that science is one of humanity's greatest invention. It's pulled us out of lots of scrapes. It's provided quality of life. It's brought you this podcast. And so we hope that in some crazy end-of-the-world scenario, scientists will pull together and bring us all through. That's right.

And it's even cooler when this great invention of humanity meets another great invention of humanity, which is the arts and writing and creative endeavors. That's right. And that's why on this podcast, we've been doing a series of episodes about the physics of science fiction universes. I've been reading science fiction and talking to authors. about how they constructed their universe, how much physics they put into it, how it reflects on our universe, and how it reflects on the human experience. Yeah, so you can look back through our archive

and find a couple of great book reviews and author interviews that we've done with several pretty well-known and award-winning recent science fiction novels. So today on the program, we are doing another of these series where we talk about a book that recently won the Hugo and the Nebula Awards, right, which are like the, I guess, the Oscars and the Emmys of science fiction writing writing yeah it's more like the golden globes and the oscars it's pretty impressive to even be nominated for one of these to win one of these to win both of them in the same year is really a monumental i see and which one is hosted by rickie jervais if you can believe it the hosts are even nerdier for these awards oh what do they do they dress up is there

like a ceremony with tuxes and stuff um i think they cosplay i'm not sure oh nice No, I've never been one of these, and I don't think they're broadcast on TV. Somebody writes a book about that. But a lot of these books are wonderful, but we're not choosing these books because they won awards. We just, for the books we've chosen that are wonderful, we'd like to mention that, hey, these authors have some deserved acclaim. And for today's episode, I thought it would be fun to talk about a dystopian science fiction novel, one in which science comes to the rescue and saves humanity. Yeah, because, Daniel, you are a big fan of science fiction, and we are living in interesting times. and how did you piece these two things together?

And is it really fiction at this point? It's fascinating. I started reading this book and I made plans to read this book, which is all about how science might rescue humanity in the face of a huge catastrophe well before this pandemic started. And now it's sort of increasingly relevant. And you'll hear about I had a pretty fascinating conversation

with the author about how the current pandemic impacts her thinking about science and technology and it's interfacing with government and people and how people feel about this stuff. Oh, wow. It's an important topic. Let's dive into it. So today on the program, we'll be asking the question,

Can Science Save Humanity from a Crisis, the Science Fiction Universe of Mary Robinette Cole and her book, The Calculating Stars? So this is a pretty recent book, right? It came out in 2018, 2019? Yeah, it came out around then, And it's in a series of books about The Lady Astronauts. And it's all about women becoming astronauts and being on the forefront of exploration.

And it's fascinating. It's a novel she wrote. It's a prequel to a short story she wrote called The Lady Astronaut many years ago, which is also wonderful. And she liked this universe. She created so much. And now she's written a series of books as a prequel to that short story. So there's the calculating stars. Then there's the faded sky.

And she has a new book coming out next year in this. trilogy. Wow. And she has a pretty interesting history for a science fiction author. She used to be a puppeteer for Jim Henson. Yeah. Yeah. And now she's like officially on the Sesame Street Hall of Fame. So she is really an artist, you know, comes from a creative background. She's not one of these science fiction authors that was once a scientist and then transitioned into writing. She's always been on the creative, sort of the non-mathy, you know, artistic inspired side of things. But I asked her about that you'll hear her answer. She feels like being a puppeteer and being a science fiction author sort of draw from the same inspiration. Really? I guess you're using your imagination and coming up

with the voices and characters. Is that kind of what she meant? Yeah, all science is really just make-believe. That's right. You guys just sit in meetings, moving your hands, going blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And this is a really fascinating book. It's different from a lot of the other stuff that I read, which tends to be like far future science fiction, space opera, crazy technology, alternative universe physics. This one is placed in our universe and it's sort of alternative history science fiction. It's like going back in time to do science fiction. So it's pretty fascinating. She takes a very different approach to writing and to incorporating the science into the story than almost anything else I've read. Yeah, you told me that it's very realistic about the science, sort of like

the Martian, you know, where they really sort of don't invent or do anything magical. They just try to work with what we have right now. Yeah, one thing about being a scientist is that you you never really know what's going on. You have limited information, and from that, you're trying to figure out what's going on, what should I do, how do I gather the next piece of information. And you rarely see that in science fiction. In science fiction, it's usually something happens, and then all of a sudden, the scientists have some, like, awesome heads-up display with graphics and visuals that

shows you exactly what's going on. And she really got the process part of this, the experience of not knowing, and how do you figure it out, and those little trickles of discovery, you know, coming, in to change your opinion about what might be happening, she really nailed it. And that's so impressive, especially for somebody who hasn't actually done it. I mean, she doesn't have a science background. Interesting. And you're telling me that it has sort of an interesting theme or undercurrent about how governments and societies and scientists can work together or how they react to a natural disaster or like a global crisis. Yeah, absolutely. I think people will find

it very relevant for today. It touches on themes of like, when the scientists say that there's a huge disaster coming, how do they get the government to listen? Like if you look out your window and you don't see the world on fire, but the scientists are telling you, it's going to be on fire in a week, we better act now. How do you get the government to believe you? Oh, boy. So there's a lot of really interesting stuff in there that people might have thought, oh, this is really relevant or it's analogy to like climate change, but now it's much

more an analogy to what we're facing today. Well, but the scenario is a little bit different, right? So it's not a pandemic, it's not a virus or anything like that. It's sort of a little bit more sciencey and spacey. So step us through this book, Daniel, first of all, before we get to the interview. Now, what's the basic idea of the book? And when is it set? So it's set on Earth in our universe and around the 1950s.

So, you know, modern technology doesn't exist. We don't have tiny computers and all that stuff. But it was our world when we were in the 50s. It's not like an alternate 1950s where they had hoverboards. It's like the same 1950s. It's the same 1950s. but then it diverges. You know, it's an alternative history starting from our 1950s.

We still beat the Nazis, right? We still beat the Nazis, yes. But sometime in the 1950s, an enormous meteorite hits the Earth and basically wipes out D.C. in a flash. What? Of all places on Earth, D.C. gets hit. I'm not sure if you mean that it's like, hey, nice choice, meteorite, or like, oh, no. I guess I mean nice choice, science fiction author.

What's the one place it can hit that would cause the maximum amount of chaos? And the story takes place from the point of view of a young woman who's gifted mathematically, and she's a pilot. And one of the things I like about the book is that when you start out, you don't know what's happened. It's just she's out with her friends and she sees this huge thing in the sky. She doesn't know, are we being attacked by the Russians or has a meteorite hit? And she's piecing it together bit by bit, exactly the way that she would. and, you know, she doesn't know if her parents have survived

and this experience of not knowing what's going on and piecing it together is really, really well done. Because this was pre-Twitter, right? How did anybody learn anything? How did you get any information? You have to, like, go to the new stand.

And, you know, of course, there's immediate impact, which is D.C. is gone. Our government is decimated. All that stuff you have to react to. But, like, how much time did people have to react to this? No time at all. There was no warning.

We had no idea. was happening. It was just all of a sudden, boom. All right. Well, we'll talk about the plausibility of this scenario. But then that's not all. It gets worse. Yeah, it seems immediately to just be a big disaster. Like, okay, D.C. is gone.

We have a lot of rebuilding to do. But this scientist, she figures out pretty quickly that there's longer term consequences to this. That what it's going to happen is that it's going to create a big greenhouse effect. It's going to heat up the entire earth, and it's going to make the earth uninhabitable

in a few years. Kind of like what happened to the dinosaurs? Like, you know, it wasn't the impact that killed the dinosaurs, but like the dust cloud? Kind of, yeah,

the longer term effects there. And we'll talk about the details of the science, but when you have a big impact like that, you can either throw up a bunch of dust and ash and create like an impact winter, right,

because you're blocking out the sun and the earth goes into an ice age. Or you can create a greenhouse effect, which can be a runaway effect, so you can basically turn the earth into an oven. And either way, it's not good. Oh, boy. Either way, meteors are not good. I wouldn't recommend ordering a meteor for delivery. Even if it's a no-contact delivery? Even then. And as a reaction, Earth has to scramble and they have to develop space technology

and basically start to colonize Mars because they realize Earth is no longer going to be a place we can live. In the 50s, man. In the 50s. We didn't get to the moon until 1969, right? That's right. Wow. So, so this. was like way accelerated. Yeah, and that was in response to what felt like a disaster at the time, right? Which is like the Russians are beating us in the space race. And so a lot of this is about how humanity makes its priorities, you know. It makes the point that if we had to do this, could we?

How would we do this if we just, you know, gun to our head against the wall, had to do this or die? Could we put this together? Could we pull it out? Was this before like the Cold War really kicked in? or because, you know, we just won the war. I'm putting myself in the time. So we just won the Second World War.

But this is before kind of the Cold War started kind of being a big thing. Yeah, and one angle in her book is the humanity sort of pulls together and these national boundaries start to be less important because it's a human problem. And we're all going to solve it. And scientists from around the world are all working together. And it's sort of inspiring in that way. And I really hope that in the event of, a huge disaster that scientists do pull together and work on this and frankly i've seen in the

news that people are working together in labs right now around the world sharing information about this virus and trying to make a vaccine and so it's it's a little weird to read about it in the book when i was first reading i thought this is a little idealistic but you know now i kind of see it happening in reality not on the same scale of course but science does respond in this human way in this personal way to pull together when you first read it you thought it was a little kind of a sickly sweet maybe, like unrealistic that people would actually pull together. But now in such a times, I wonder if you're looking for signs of the opposite, you know? Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't have criticized it. I just thought like, you know, that's on the positive edge of the potential

outcomes, you know, and I admired that sort of idealism. And I actually asked her about this in the interview, you'll hear her reaction. But that's sort of the angle of it. All right, cool. Well, let's get into the science of it, the science of a meteor hitting the earth. And then let's get into the interview with science fiction author, Mary Robinette Cole. 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. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. It's harder to predict and even harder to stop.

Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with a young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's

insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now hold up, isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not. To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. A foot washed up a shoe with some

bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen.

I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolved. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're talking about Mary Robinette Cole's science fiction novel, The Calculating Stars, which is about a meteor hitting the Earth in the 1950s, and it just so happens to hit the, the whiteout. Does it hit the White House directly, kind of like in Independence Day? Like there's a shot at the White House and then the meteor hits right on it?

Or is it in the suburbs? No, it actually hits in the water, in the bay, near the coast, which is much more devastating. And she thought really carefully about the science. I was really impressed, especially for somebody without a science background. She really thought about what would happen if it hit on land or if it hit in the deep water or if it hit in the shallow water. And you get different outcomes. and actually the most devastating is a shallow water impact. I think that's why she put the meteor there.

Why? Because it creates an explosion and a tsunami at the same time? Yes, and it throws a lot of water into the atmosphere. Oh, and I'm guessing that's part of the plot. That is part of the plot, my friend. All right, well, let's talk about a meteor hitting, and we've talked about meteors hitting and how there's a group at NASA whose only job it is to look out for meteors hitting the Earth. But this was back in the 1950s, right?

Because back then we didn't have the, we weren't looking out for meteors, were we? We were not. And this is a really fascinating topic, especially to place historically. Because you're right, in the 50s, we weren't looking at all. And we totally could have been blindsided by a meteor. Like, we might have noticed it, you know, as it approached a few days in advance, because we had telescopes and people were looking, but you basically have to get lucky and spot it.

Nobody was on purpose looking for this thing. People were too busy doing the hulu hoops and going around in roller skates and going to the diner. And then suddenly it had to be lucked for you to look up and see a meteor coming at you. Yeah. And we didn't have the sort of telescopes we have now and the budget for science and all that stuff. You know, America had just emerged from World War II and it's about to enter this era of investing in science and universities and academics. So we just didn't have the technology. And even later, decades later, we still hadn't really done it.

It wasn't until Shoemaker Levy in the 90s, which is a comet that hit Jupiter with fantastic fireballs, the size of the Earth, that people woke up and thought, hold on a second, there could be something out there that's going to hit us. We better look more carefully. Really? That was the first time in the 80s that people started taking this seriously? It was in the 90s. And so really, only in the last 20 or 30 years has NASA made a serious, dedicated effort to map the solar system for anything that might hit us. Wow, interesting. Huh.

I didn't know it was that recent. Yeah, and that is actually a moment that I got drawn into science. I was working on a science project that summer where we had a super fast high-resolution camera, and we saw this comet come into the solar system and break into pieces and then slam into Jupiter one by one. And so we hooked up this awesome camera to a telescope, and I watched those things hit Jupiter in real time. It took these high-resolution, high-speed videos of the impacts. It was pretty exhilarating, yeah. Really? Wow.

And so you thought, I'm going into particle physics. At the time, I actually wanted to be an astronomer. But it turns out that you don't get climactic collisions like this very often, which is, you know, a good thing and a bad thing depending on your angle. You're like, I need 10 to the 23 collisions per second. This is not enough. One every hundred years, I need more. So there's a few angles on this.

One is it's totally true that in the 50s we could have been blindsided by a big meteorite, totally plausible. Today, however, we have mapped out most of the stuff in the solar system. So we know where most of the big rocks are. In fact, we're pretty sure we know where all of the big rocks are, all the planet killers or the extinction event rocks. We're pretty sure we've seen those. We know where they are.

We've seen them for long enough to map out their trajectory and predict where they're going to be in the next couple of hundred years. So we have a little bit of elite time. But in the book, how big was this meteor? Or was it like a, how big relative to Manhattan? That seems to be the standard scale. She avoids telling us in the book. And I tried to ask her about this in the interview.

And she said that she very purposely didn't put the numbers in. Why is it such a mystery? Well, I think she didn't feel confident about her calculations. Remember, she's not a science person. And she didn't want to put details in there. She wasn't 100% sure of. So she left herself some fuzz room. Interesting.

But then as an extra wrinkle, she made her character super curious about the size of the meteor that it hit, but never actually told us the answer. They don't know. What? They don't know. I'm curious. You're curious. The character was curious. The author didn't tell anybody.

And spoiler alert, you'll never know the answer. You'll never know. Because there is no answer. All right. So then it hits the earth and it obliterates DC. So I guess all of our politicians and representatives are gone. Yeah. But I want to say one more thing about the chances of this happen.

which is you should feel comfortable that NASA and the people around the world have tracked most of the asteroids, which could potentially hit the planet, and they're not going to hit us in the next couple of hundred years. So relax, that's fine. But... Relax. You have more serious things to worry about, like toilet paper. But there is a big question, Mark, because one of the most dangerous things that could hit the Earth is not actually an asteroid. It's a comet, like the one that hit Jupiter. and comets move much faster

and they're harder to predict because they can have like hundreds or thousands of years long orbits around the sun meaning there could be one out there really far away we haven't seen and it could be headed on a collision course towards Earth and we wouldn't get a lot of lead time before it actually hit us. Wow. I think we talked about

this in a previous episode but do you think maybe there's a young grad student in Jupiter with a telescope going oh man I hope that meteor hits to Earth? I've been waiting for this for decades. They'll be so exhilarating. All right, so the meter hits and it obliterates Washington, D.C.

All of our politicians, I guess. They were all in town at the same time. Yeah, all except for one. So, like, the one cabinet member ends up being president. Oh, designated survivor. Yes, exactly. Interesting. And then it creates a huge, I guess, hole

where D.C. used to be or near where D.C. used to be. But you're saying that the real plot twist is what happens after the meteor hits. Yeah, because it lands in the water, it shoots up a huge amount of water into the atmosphere, which becomes vapor and stays up there as gas and vapor and basically creates a new blanket around the earth. And so then what you get is a big greenhouse effect.

Like clouds? Like basically clouds? Basically a lot of very high altitude clouds. Oh, high altitude clouds. Mm-hmm. Like they turn into ice crystals, I guess. Yeah. And so they stay up in the atmosphere and this water vapor actually acts like a big blanket around the earth. And so it's transparent to a lot of the sun's energy going in but not going out and so the earth sort of gradually heats up. Because of the infrared rays can't get

out? Is that the idea? They can get in but not out? There's some, you know, transmission when you enter the atmosphere and you shift to a lower free, you're absorbed and shift to a different frequency. But the point is that it creates a greenhouse effect and then the earth is heating up and they figure this out in the book pretty quickly like things are going to cool off quickly

and then they're going to start heating up and then the oceans will boil. which would make more of these clouds? Yeah. And as it gets hotter, exactly, you get more water vapor released and you get more of these clouds. And, you know, as a fascinating aside, there's a really interesting theory

that this is exactly what happened to Venus. That Venus used to be a lot like Earth. With water. With water, oceans on the surface at, you know, basically the same temperature as Earth. It must have even looked like Earth from space. But it might have been. hit by a huge meteor, which created this runaway greenhouse effect, now it's hot and totally

uninhabitable. And how much time did they have in the book before the oceans boil? Not a whole lot of time. You know, it's not the kind of thing that's going to happen tomorrow or next week or next year. It's going to sort of gradually increase. So in five years, it'll be too hot to live comfortably, 10 years, and be very difficult to grow anything.

And then as the years go on, the oceans will heat up and heat up. And so I think, you know, they have order 10 years, decades. kinds of things, but not a lot of time to build a huge space infrastructure. Interesting. And so then what they have to do then is figure out how to get off of Earth and colonize like the moon and Mars? What's their plan? That's precisely the plan is start building space infrastructure, build rockets, you know, get astronauts up there, start practicing on the moon. But eventually the goal is to build colonies on Mars. Wow. And what would they eat?

Yeah. That's my concern. Yeah. It's really tricky. And, you know, If you go to Mars, we talked about this on the podcast once, you have two basic options. One is like build a lot of bubbles that you can live inside or try to terraform the whole planet. But terraforming is very, very hard. Wow. And so what did they do? Well, in this first book, they don't get there yet. So it's a, you know, sort of drawn out series.

Oh, it's just a teaser. So the first book is just about how they set up the problem and how what they start doing about. Yeah, and the development of the space industry. and astronaut training. And there's a fascinating side story there about how in these times of crisis, there's opportunities for large social change. And so the main character who's a woman

pushes herself forward to become an astronaut. So she sort of breaks this barrier and is the first lady astronaut. Interesting. And so most of the rest of the book is about how they develop this technology and how they slowly build towards taking people into space. And then the rest of the trilogy,

which I haven't yet had a chance to read, explores in more detail actually colonizing the moon and Mars. Wow. Oh, man. It's kind of sad. That's what it takes. That's what it would have taken in the 50s for women to become astronauts. Yeah.

Meteor hitting the water at just the right spot. Yeah. And it's really well written from that point of view also. There's a lot of these issues that are sort of resonate with similar themes and like hidden figures. You know, people having the skills wanting to contribute to an important problem, but being left on the sidelines because of their gender or because of their race or because of their background. And so from that point of view, it's also sort of inspiring. in this novel that they overcome that and that humanity in the end lets our best step forward regardless of their background and how they look and contribute to this problem that we're all

facing. Interesting. So the Hollywood pitch would be Hidden Figures meets Armageddon or deep impact depending on which flavor of asteroid movie like. Yeah. I think they work nicely together. I think before Hidden Figures came out, people didn't really even understand that the concept of a computer in the 50s was a person, somebody who was doing computations that were necessary to solve these hard problems before we had miniaturization of technology. We had these computers you could use on board. So I think that actually helps people understand sort of the context and the tone, the cultural situation that this book takes place. Wow, it sounds pretty cool, pretty fascinating, pretty apropos to our times today. And so, Daniel, you got a chance to talk to Mary Robinette

Cole about her book and what she was thinking when she wrote it and about some of the science. in it, right? And about puppets. And about puppets. All right. And so here is Daniel's interview with Mary Robinette Cole, the author of the science fiction novel, The Calculating Stars. First, thanks very much for joining us today on the podcast. Would you mind introducing yourself for our listeners? My name is Mary Robinette Cole. I write science fiction and fantasy. I'm also an audiobook narrator and a professional puppeteer. Well, it's not that often that you made a science fiction author who's also a puppeteer. How did those two careers intersect? They're both all about theater of the possible.

Anything is possible when you step into puppetry or science fiction. So they're both also, I think, places that tend to naturally explore what if an imagination. Well, that's wonderful. I'd like our listeners to get a chance to get to know you a little bit, to hear how you think about science fiction and the universe. So let me ask you a couple sort of standard science fiction questions just to get acquainted. And the first is a classic question. and I'm sure you've heard about science fiction philosophy, which is about teleporters.

Are you in the camp that believes that when you step into a Star Trek-style teleporter, that it actually moves you from one location to another, or in the camp to think that it disassembles you, in effect, killing you and recreating a clone of you somewhere else? Existentially, I think that it moves you from one point to another. Mechanically, I think it disassembles you and reassembles a clone at the other. I see. And so would you be willing, given that understanding, to step into a Star Trek-style teleporter, knowing you'd be disassembled? Absolutely. I mean, it's, it is a faster version of what we do

with on a regular basis with our actual bodies. The cells that are in my body right now are not the cells that were in it seven years ago, for the most part. You know, we're constantly replenishing ourselves and changing things. It's a ship of Theseus question, right? At what point do we, does It's stop being me, and the answer is, doesn't, except to some philosophers who like to argue about things. So it's the same thing. It's just a sped-up process. That said, you know, possibility for copying errors, again, a thing that can happen with a natural body, not on a sped-up timeline. All right.

So then while we're talking about science fiction technology, what bit of technology that you see in science fiction when you like to see become reality. I mean, a teleporter. Yeah. One of the things I will say that is becoming incredibly apparent to me with the, you know, shelter in place, sparkling isolation, distance socializing of life in a pandemic is how much time I actually do spend in transit. That's a lot of time I'm getting back.

and people that I would like to be able to visit and see and resource allocation suddenly becomes much easier if you don't have to, if you aren't dealing with perishability to the same degree. So teleportation and time travel, those are the two that I would very much like to have. All right, it sounds like it would solve some logistical problems for you. Oh, yeah. Yeah, a lot. Wonderful. Personally, I'd like to write a book in the future

and then travel back in time to deliver to me here today, like instant book writing. Yeah, yeah. So then let's talk about your book, The Calculating Stars. First of all, congratulations on the success and on all of the awards, very well deserved. Thank you very much. That was an exciting time. I really enjoyed reading it, and something that really resonated with me in the book were the sort of scientific moments of joy.

Like, there's a scene in the book where they first see these pictures from the moon, and you can feel the scientists, like, at the edge of their seat, like, I want to see it in the photograph. What does that look like? And, you know, as a scientist, you know, I've had a few of those moments in my career when you're opening the data from the experiment, when you're asking the universe a question and it has to respond like you've cornered it and forced it to reveal something. So, congrats on writing that so effectively, but I have to ask, how did you do that? I mean, your background is not as a scientist, unless I've misunderstood, No, it's very definitely not.

How did you capture that so well? Did you spend a bunch of time with NASA folks? The sense of wonder is a universal thing. And it's the object of the wonder shifts. But having that sense of wonder, having that sense of discovery and joy from that, that's something that I think that everybody can experience and probably has experienced at some point in their life. So for me, it's easy to do this with seeing the moon,

because I am not a scientist, but I'm a huge space nerd. I remember my mom talked me into a college-level astronomy class when I was in middle school, mostly so that I could go and do the astronomy labs and use the telescopes because, you know, it was fantastic. It's been a lifelong interest. The thing that I like about writing science fiction is that it gives me a socially acceptable way. to indulge my natural curiosity, so I'm able to ask people. And then the other thing that I would say is that, you know, in addition to bringing my own curiosity and joy and interest in this, I read a lot of autobiographies and memoirs and nonfiction where there are interviews or discussions with people who are scientists and seeing the specific things that triggered their point. of joy, the things that they are excited about. Like, I just got to talk to someone who's a geologist specializing in Mars.

And I asked her, you know, would you go to Mars? And she's like, the opportunity to be able to actually touch the things that I've spent my entire career studying. And you could hear her just over the phone. Her entire expression just lit up at that possibility. And as a writer, I get to create those moments, basically, by extrapolating from my own experience and mapping it onto the points that someone else notices and loves. Well, I think you really nailed it. I was impressed. Thanks. And there's something else to me that was very

unusual to find in science fiction, but I liked. In my experience, science, real science is about wondering and it's about curiosity, of course, but the process of it is not always so exciting. The every day, it's not like I'm discovering a new particle before lunch and revealing a seat. of the universe, you know, with my coffee. It's a slow, painstaking process there. And the thing that I really respect about the depiction in your book is that you describe that process. Like they're trying to figure out what happened and they don't know anything. They're clueless and it takes a while to figure it out. And oh my gosh, this asteroid might be an extinction event. You know, the realizations come slowly. They're not always at once. You captured that cluelessness,

the frustration, the difficulty. So tell me, why did you do that? decide to make this science process so integral to the story? You know, it really drives the plot in a way I haven't seen in other science fiction. I think that for me, the reason, well, there's two reasons. One is that I find it inherently interesting. We do see a lot of stories of the lone savior, but when you, anyone who is interested in space at all knows that, you know, the astronauts are out there getting all of the credit and the glory. But they are supported by this enormous, enormous body

of people who are all experts in their field doing top-level work as a group. And they're at the end of this long, long, long, problem-solving thing. But again, I come, like, I'm from a theater background, and it's very similar in a lot of ways that when you go to see a show, when you go to movie. There's the movie star, there's the lead on stage who gets all of the glory, but they're supported by all of these other people and hours and hours of work, of human labor leading up to that, the rehearsals and all of these things. We tend to not celebrate and valorize all of that effort, which is, that's where all of the conflict is. By the time you get to the final product, everything's been solved. And an actual spacewalk,

when you're watching it, you know, should be boring because there should be nothing that goes wrong. Like, that's what you're, you're aiming for. My understanding from the people who've done it is that it's not actually boring so much as very, very focused. But it is digging into the, how do we do these things and the iterations that I find interesting. I've also always been interested in process. Like, I would, if you offer me the opportunity, to go to watch a rehearsal of a show or watch the finished show. I'm going to pick the rehearsal every time. Well, I think you've got the behind the scene stuff pretty accurate. I mean, I see a lot of science fiction movies where the scientists get like one piece of data and then dot,

dot, dot, dot. They have some amazing idea complete with fancy graphics five seconds later. And it's just all figured out. And to me, that's like where most of the science is. It's in that dot, dot, dot, thought part and it's slow and it's painful, but that's what makes its science is the gradual realization. Now, having said the hat, having complimented me on that and said that I will also say that the other thing that I do in this is I very specifically treat mathematics like a magic system. I establish what it is that my main character can do with math. I show you a couple of hints of her doing the math, there is not a single point in that book where there is a complete equation and there is not a single point where she goes from start to finish

on solving a math thing because math is not my happy place. And basically I figured out that once I explain to people that Elma can do math in her head and she's very good at it, that they would just believe me that she could do that that level of mathematics in her head. And then I didn't have to do it. I just had to know that it was possible to be done mathematically. And it turns out that you can represent almost anything mathematically. Well, it seems like you did some of the math behind the statements in the book to make sure they were plausible, so I totally bought it. I did not. I know it seems like it. I did not do any of the math in the book. I cribbed it from Werner von Braun's Mars, a technical tale, which is he describes as a novel, and it is certainly fiction, but he

also has these tables of appendices in the back. You wrote it in the 1947 to try to convince people, use fiction to convince people to go to Mars. So I cribbed his, there, I think there's more appendixies than there is actual novels. So I cribbed from that. And then I also had a science consultant, Stephen Grenade, who did most of the rest of the math. And then I had a bunch of other people, but most of the actual math in there comes from those two sources. And I'm just like, we played Madlips, basically. I would say, and then Elma did, bracket, math, bracket. Well, I think that we need to examine the bracket, fancy math phrase, bracket. Oh, that's wonderful. Then I would hand him, play Matt. It's so much easier. Oh, I wish I could do Zions that way. Let's take a quick

break. We'll be right back. 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. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaos. chaotic, chaotic scene.

In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and Order Criminal Justice System is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious.

Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her. boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age.

And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Hola, it's Honey German, and my podcast, Grasasas Come Again, is back. This season we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment with raw and honest conversations 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've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start. We talk all about what's viral and trending With a little bit of chisement A lot of laughs And those amazing Vibras you've come to expect

And of course, we'll explore deeper topics Dealing with identity, struggles And all the issues affecting our Latin community You feel like you get a little whitewash Because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash Because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me But the whole pretending and code

You know, it takes a toll on you Listen to the new season of Grasasas Come Again As part of My Cultura podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So in my reading of the book, the story essentially revolves around how humanity responds to a mega crisis, how that creates opportunities to upend the social order. Is that a fair description? So then let me ask you, what gave you the idea to use this concept?

like a meteorite hitting the earth. Did you start from that particular science concept and then think about what would happen? Or did you have this story you wanted to tell and we're looking for the sort of mad-lib science moment that would allow you to tell that story? It's a mix. This particular novel was a little odd

from my usual process in that I had written two stories in this universe. One of them is the Lady Astronaut of Mars, which is set about, 40 years along the timeline from where calculating stars is, 40 years down the line. So calculating stars is a prequel to this. And the backstory for that, and in this other short story that I have called We Interrupt This Broadcast, is that a meteor had hit DC, and that caused everyone to get off the planet very fast. So I had this initial thing, but I also had this future of international cooperation, which meant that when I went,

back to build out the novel that I knew that I was building towards a hopeful future. The reason that I wanted it to be a meteor strike in the Lady Astronaut of Mars versus a nuclear bomb or anything like that, any of the other catastrophic things, was that I wanted something that was absolutely, that could not be blamed on a single person. You know, it couldn't be blamed on another country, that it was, you know, it was an act of God. Because I think that we reacted differently to those than we do to something that, you know, we're a foreign government. If it had been someone doing something catastrophic, there would have been, you know, reprisals and all of those other potential things that would have distracted people. But we do react to natural disasters or even, like, Notre Dame, when that caught on fire, there was, you know, global mourning for something that didn't affect the majority of people who, were witnessing it. The wildfires in Australia, the way we react to that is very different than the way we react to other things that are equal number of lives lost, sorry, more

lives lost in Syria, but we react differently to conflict than we do to disaster. So I wanted something... In the sense that the science community is sort of pulling together and treating it like a humanity-wide problem? Yeah, yeah. I mean, just looking at the way people are, different communities are reacting to the pandemic that we're in right now. So one of the things that I do with the kind of fiction that I write, I often look at historical examples and patterns from that.

And there are patterns, one of which is that in the initial moment of the shock, the moment right after, everyone does pull together. like a natural instinct for most people, and they've actually done studies on this, but the instinct for most people is to help. And then the urge to continue helping depends on who is setting the tone at the top. And you see different patterns for how that plays out, looking at history. One of the things that I think is really lovely looking at the way Italy is handling it, and they're being hit incredibly hard. But one of the things that they're doing is, you know, they're leaning out the windows and singing together. And then at, I believe at 6 p.m., all of the church bells toll and

everyone leans out the window and claps and applauds the medical professionals who are working because they want them to know how appreciative and supportive they are. And that's lovely, Lovely, lovely. The United States, I understand that our sales of guns and ammo are up, and we are hoarding toilet paper. Let's talk for a minute about the problem that they are solving in your novel. A meteorite strikes the earth, and there's a giant impact. So how do you rate the chances that humanity is actually going to face this kind of scenario? I mean, you're asking me to tell you numbers. Well, I mean, is this something that you think is a reasonable thing for us to worry about? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we do. And at the same time, we don't because when it hits us, we won't see it coming. But there's, there are a lot of Earth has been hit before.

We will be hit again. It's just, it's a matter of time. You know, we think things hit Earth every day of different sizes. It's just a matter of time before something hits us. That's a problem. And about the impact itself, like in your book, you had the impactor strike essentially in the water. You create this enormous tsunami. and it throws up a lot of stuff into the atmosphere, which stimulates climate change.

How important was it to you to get the sort of physics right of that part? I mean, did you speak to science consultants about the details of how it's going to affect the hurricane season and impact the greenhouse effect? Yeah, so I talked to a couple of different people about that, but Purdue University also has an impact simulator where you can say, this is where my thing has hit, this is where I'm standing. and it will tell you when the shockwave will hit, when you'll, you can say, you know, the angle of impact, the content size of the meteorite. So it was important to me to get it right in principle. I am also extraordinarily careful

to never tell you how big that meteor was or the angle of entry or the speed with which it was going. Because there are so many variables in how this plays out. We know that a water impact behaves differently than a land impact. The worst case scenario is a shallow water impact, because then you get, which is what I've done, dropped it into the bay.

My original plan was to drop it on D.C., and then I talked to an astronomer who, Lucy Ann Walkowitz, she's an astronomer at Adler Planetarium, and we sat down with coffee, and she told me about the greenhouse effect that can happen, the runaway greenhouse effect that can happen. with a water strike and a shallow water strike. And then that...

She shared with you her nightmare scenario. Her nightmare scenario. Oh, I'm going to talk about that. Yeah, all of the novels where they save the earth by driving the meteor into the ocean. Some of those, sure, okay, that's going to be better. Some of those, actually, it's just a lingering. It just delays the problem.

But basically what happens is that when a meteor comes through the atmosphere, even before it hits the ground, it's tearing a hole through the atmosphere because of the speed that it's traveling. When it hits the ground, when it becomes a meteorite, it ejects all of the material it hits through that hole into the upper atmosphere. Some of it goes past that, but depending on size. So it ejects it into the upper atmosphere. Now, normally what happens when water leaves the earth is that it precipitates back out. But when it gets ejected into the upper atmosphere, it does not precipitate out.

You'll have some that will, but a lot of it, and again, it depends on the scale of the meteorite that you carefully do not find, but a lot of it hangs out and functions as a greenhouse gas, and you can get a runaway greenhouse effect, where the earth heats up, which causes water to evaporate, which becomes more of a greenhouse gas, which, you know, this cycle, there's some speculation. Yeah, well, you become Venus basically, right? There is speculation that Venus was Earthlike until it was struck by a meteorite. Yeah, I love that. image of like two Earth-like planets essentially for billions of years side by side. And then Venus destroyed fairly recently on cosmological timescales. And there are other things that can cause a runaway greenhouse effect, which is one of the, like there are scenarios. There's modeling out there. It's a, it's not an immediate common case

scenario, but there is a scenario in which we don't get, you know, we have taken no ameliorating efforts to deal with the greenhouse effect, and we do wind up with a runaway greenhouse. Like, it is possible actually to trigger that a runaway greenhouse effect, which is terrifying. But again, that's an outlier scenario, but it's a possible one. Right. Well, I'm a big fan of the science of these impacts. I love that. And I was really curious, like, how big is this thing that hit the earth in your novel? What's the angle of entry? And I noticed that your character was also very curious, which just stimulated my curiosity even more. So frankly, it's a little bit of torture that you didn't tell us.

Well, so I can tell you, if you're going to marry robin at koal.com, there's a lady astronaut FAQ, and on that, you can open up the Purdue Impact Generator. And I tell you the parameters that I used to figure out when the shockwave would hit Alma and Nathaniel. So you can take a look at that. I have never run those through a climatology. just to see whether or not it would cause the runaway greenhouse effect because, mostly because when I was writing it, I didn't have anyone available to do that. I tried to find a couple of different people who could do that math for me. Strangely, it's work, and it's difficult to find someone.

It's very specialized, very, very specialized, and it takes a computer doing a lot of calculations. So, which is why I decided not to include that information in the novel because I couldn't stand behind it. What I try to do with the novels is anything that I put in there, I try to have as accurate as possible. Anything my character interacts with directly, I try to have accurate. If they don't, then I'm willing to hand wave past it, and if it's not a plot point. So I know that a meteorite hit that was large enough to cause these effects, and I figured out a meteorite that was big enough to cause parts, some of them, but I did not. not go all the way into figuring out to linking the two different effects. It's like, I need the runaway greenhouse effect, and I need them to be able to escape,

and I need Washington, D.C. to have disappeared. So I have those two things. I don't know if they actually play together. We handwave past that. Why Elma mutters all of those equations instead of saying the entire thing out loud. It's a magic system. Well, I'm impressed by how this society responds to the catastrophe in your novel, and also the efforts to colonize Mars, and I think it's a sense.

especially fascinating that you said it sort of, you know, 50, 60, 70 years ago, which makes their efforts to get to Mars so much more difficult. But not for this novel. You must have thought about, like, how Mars colonization would happen now. How different do you think it would be to colonize Mars now as opposed to the setting of your novel? Oh, we have so many pieces of technology that they don't have. So because of when I have it set, they don't have miniaturization. of computers.

As soon as you have that, everything changes like a lot, a lot. So the fact, and without miniaturization of computers, you don't get 3D printing, that you don't get in-situ resource development through 3D printing. We have that now.

So the things that we can do, our ability to do self-guided craft are much greater than they had in the 50s. So, like, what I think that colonization now, or I should say, human exploration and settlement or human habitation, I'm trying not to use the word colonization, actually, but human habitation of Mars, I think that what we'll do is we'll send out, you know, of the plans that I've seen, the one that seems to make the most sense is to send out ships, uncrewed ships before to set up an advanced base. and then get feet on the ground. The thing about having humans on the ground is that we can respond more quickly to be more responsive. A good example of this is the Insight lander

that has been dealing the past year with a stuck probe. And the reason that it's taking so long to resolve that is because they have to get all of the information from Mars, do tests here on Earth, transmit the information from that test, program it, transmit that to Mars, get the information back, go do other tests here on Earth before they make another decision. And if you have someone on the ground, they can go, oh, yeah, let me see. I can jiggle that without breaking anything because you've got an immediate feedback loop of judgment,

but with that delay, you don't get that immediate feedback loop, and you don't have anyone who can improvise. humans can improvise. We can, you know, we are a multi-purpose tool. It's super amazing to me that we live in this moment of history where a hundred years ago, if we'd been hit by a meteor, we'd basically have no chance of getting off the planet, right? Right. But now we're in 10 years or 50 years or 100 years, we're pretty well equipped.

Now, you set your novel right at that point where humanity has like a chance, maybe. It's not totally hopeless, but it's still really difficult. It's a fascinating moment, sort of historically and technological. Yeah, it's fun. Well, and it's interesting to me that, you know, how early we had been thinking about going to the moon and Mars. It's something that I think of, I think most people think of it in the modern era as something that kind of spontaneously arose with Sputnik. And the V2 rocket, which did horrendous destruction in World War II, originated because, Because of a rocketry club, like the technology from that is descended from a rocketry club in Germany.

And they were trying to get off the planet. You know, they just wanted to get into space for funzies. Well, thank you very much for talking to us. Do you want to tell our listeners a little bit about any upcoming project you have? Sure. So the next thing, you can pre-order it. It'll be delivered magically to your home so you never have to leave is the Relentless Moon, which is the third volume in the Lady Astronaut Universe.

You can read it as a standalone, but basically we're on the moon. And people who are pushing back, it takes, for people who have read calculating stars and faded sky, it takes place concurrently with faded sky. So it's what's happening on Earth while the rest of the team is, well, there's a team on the way to Mars. So it's about the pushback. It's about the terrorists who decide that they're going to take matters in their own hands and stop things.

And I had planned on this being a surprise thing in the novel, but I have a polio outbreak on the moon. So quarantine on the moon. There's a lot of stuff that's hitting home. Like, there's some research that I've done that's making me super uncomfortable. Wow, all right. That's a little bit unexpectedly on the nose. Yeah, yeah.

All right, thanks very much for answering our nitpicky science questions and for talk to us about the universe that you created in your novel. Thank you so much. All right. That was pretty interesting, Daniel. She seems like a very optimistic person, which is great, which is, I think, maybe what we need these days. Yeah, for somebody who's thinking about the end of the world, it's nice that she's idealistic about how people will come together in a crisis and how science might actually save humanity. Yeah, and you guys talked even about how about today about this pandemic and how science is playing a role in it.

Yeah, she had some pretty insightful and interesting thoughts about how people feel about dystopian fiction in these times. also about how this current pandemic is affecting people and how a lot of people are living in very difficult situations before this pandemic. And so it sort of makes us all think about the human experience and how people are living today. But I was also really impressed with how detailed she got about the science. You know, she not only did a great job of modeling the fun science moments and the process of doing science, she like actually ran simulations about what would happen if you hit this kind of meteor, that kind of meteor, and where should you land it? And that was pretty impressive.

She thought really carefully about the science. Why are you so impressed, Daniel? You don't think people out there can do these kinds of things? No, I'm just happy when science fiction authors take the science seriously and want to make it real. I see. And in this book, she really accomplishes that. And it's important, especially for her book, because the science, the process of the science is so important. And she mentions in the interview an impact simulator she used on Purdue University's website.

where you can say, what if this impact hit in this location, how much energy would be deposited and how long would it take to get to me? So if you're interested, you can go look up that simulator and run a bunch of end-of-the-world scenarios yourself. We all need a little distraction these days. Yes, we do. All right. Well, it sounds like she has a pretty positive view about humanity coming together,

which is great. And hopefully a meter will not strike us now at this moment in time in D.C. right now. That's right. Let's hope everybody out there stays safe and healthy. But it's fun to think about other universes where humans are facing more difficult problems and solving them. Yeah. And to get us to think about all the difficulties that other people are in having in our universe. So stay safe, but also help out your neighbor and look out for each other. That's right. And if you're enjoying this series about the science fiction universes created by these authors, let us know and send us a message about the books you'd like us to talk about. We hope you enjoyed that. See you next time. If 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 at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge, that's one word, or email us at Feedback at Danielandhorpe.com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism.

Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.

Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up, isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every case that is a cold 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, ah, 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. This is an IHeart podcast. Thank you.