Science Friday - SciFri Extra: A Night Of Volcanoes And Earthquakes With N.K. Jemisin

Episode Date: February 27, 2019

The Science Friday Book Club discussion of N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season may have stopped erupting for the season, but we have one more piece of volcanic goodness for you. SciFri producer and chief bookworm Christie Taylor got the chance to speak with Jemisin at our book club meet-up, “Voyage To The Volcanoes,” at Caveat in New York City. Listen for Jemisin’s adventures in volcano research, how real-world events inspired her to build an entire society around disaster preparedness, and how knowing your neighbors can be lifesaving. At the event, we also spoke to volcanologist Dr. Janine Krippner, who helped debunk volcano myths. And SciFri staffers Lauren J. Young and Johanna Mayer explained how history’s volcanic winters have influenced art (and religion) over the centuries. So, sit back and listen while you ponder what’s percolating deep in our planet—from quakes to shifting plates. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Hey there, Ira here. Last week, the Sci-Fry Book Club closed the book on N.K. Jemison's fiery dystopia, the fifth season. And this past President's Day, we invited volcanologists, geologists, and N.K. Jemison herself to a lava hot party in New York City. We learned the scientifically accurate way to play the floor is lava. We made disaster kits and busted volcano myths with volcanologist Janine Krippner. Cy Arts producer Christy Taylor interviewed NK. Jemison about writing the fifth season, getting up close and personal with volcanoes for her research, and what's in her disaster preparedness kit? By the way, this is an after-hours event, so the language is occasionally a bit spicy. Enjoy. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Voyage the Volcanoes. Amazing. So we've heard some really... fantastic stories about the science of volcanoes and geologic events.

I'm going to welcome our book nerd Christy Taylor back to the stage. Everyone, please, one more round of applause. Hello, welcome back. Hi, it's good to be here. Yeah, you have sort of the pleasure of doing sort of the last thing we're going to do all together. Yeah. Well, I mean, we came. We learned about volcanoes.

We learned about society and volcanoes. But what if you lived in a world that was always waiting for, for the big one. Our very last special guest built an entire world of disaster preppers on this planet that as she writes in the fifth season, it moves a lot, this land. Like an old man lying restlessly at bed, it heaves and sighs, puckers and farts, yawns and swallows. Naturally, this land's people have named it the stillness.

It is a land of quiet and bitter irony. We're going to talk more about that bitter irony and that land with Nora Jemison, author of the fifth season, and its sequels The Aeopolis. Gate and the Stone Sky. I'm going to keep talking about you. She is the first author in history to win three consecutive best novel, Hugo Awards. Also, Nebula, Locus, Goodreads choice

awards. She's a reviewer for the New York Times book review. She is an instructor for the Clarion and Clarion West Writing Workshops in her spare time. She's a gamer and a gardener. And she is single-handedly responsible for saving the world from King Ozymandias, her dangerously intelligent Ginger Cat, and his phenomenally destructive sidekick, Maggie. Please welcome Nora Jemison one last time.

Thank you. Thank you. Hi. Hi. So I'm going to start with the hard question first. There's a super volcano under Brooklyn. You have to evacuate. What's in your runny sack?

I actually did put together a runny sack after I wrote the Broken Earth trilogy. So my runy sack has... let's see I've got some salmon jerky in it I did actually buy some prepper food because as part of the research for the Brooklyn Earth trilogy

I actually did spend some time reading prepper magazines and there's like a whole industry that sells like special it's basically like prepper hard tack but it's like flavored so it actually tastes okay and so you can buy special you know meal

replacement bars and things like that. A lot of this stuff is just straight up rip-offs, but some of it is actually decent, so I bought some. Let's see, I've got bottled water, I've got a canteen that's built into my pack. I've got water filtration stuff. Like, I've actually bought some prepper things. Now I feel that. A hand crank, yeah, I've got a hand crank radio and a USB charger. So are your cats coming with you? Yes, of course. If I can manage to get them into the...

The problem is that Magpie knows what the cat carrier looks like. And the instant that comes out, then we have to have a battle. So if the disaster does not come too quickly, the cats are definitely coming with me. All right. So I just want to quickly note that the art behind you is by... She's a California illustrator, Dalling Jane O'Neicella. And we sent her basically the first... paragraph of the book or description of the stillness and the big cataclysm that destroys it all.

Wow. This is supposed to be the rippening. Yeah. And I want to talk about those big fire and brimstone moments that you write into this book because they're very dramatic. And they're also not entirely based in reality, right? So you have someone basically split the planet in half. Yeah.

Yeah. And then you have someone, another origin, these, I mean, I keep saying volcano magic, basically start a volcano with an overwhelming amount of, energy. Yeah. So why? I mean, you know, there's always the sort of science nerd part of me that's like, what if there was a giant volcano, not under Brooklyn, but, you know, what if there

was a giant volcano that split the continents into, you know, or whatever? You know, how big of a volcano would it take to change the world? Well, I mean, we actually know that from our own history. You know, there have been a number of incidents that have changed our planets' ecology permanently, like the deck and traps in the Indian subcontinent and things like that. And I'm sure you've heard some of the science guests come on here that have talked about these things. So if you've studied the history of our planet, you understand that not only have these things changed our world, they may be the reason why we exist.

So, you know, these are amazing things to sort of explore and be fascinated by. So I was like, well, what happens if we do one of those right now? And it's like fast. And that was basically it. One of the things that reading this book really made me think about also the eruptions in Kilauea. And again, there's this sort of fretting about the magnetic pole wandering. Right. We also talk to a paleomagnetics guy who is like, no, it's, it's interesting, but not concerning, I think, his words were.

But I don't really think very often about the world beneath my feet as a source of stress here in New York City. And I don't know how much you do either on a normal day. I mean, what got you here in New York City? Yeah. What got you to this? I am fascinated by volcanoes. I always have been. I grew up in flat, seismically, relatively inactive country.

There's nothing that's really inactive, but relatively inactive. And I grew up in Brooklyn in Mobile, Alabama, where volcanoes were like the last thing you needed to worry about. And so I was fascinated by learning about hot spots and by people in California. Californians fascinate me. Because I'm like, why would be? would you, like, I don't, I am a typical New Yorker in some ways. And there's a part of me that's like, but it's going to break off. And it's going to be its own country, maybe, if it survives.

I know. But, you know, like, I have California friends. I don't know how many of you were around for the little earthquake that we had maybe, it was almost 10 years ago at this point. But it was a tiny earthquake. I think it was like 4.5 or something. was way far away from here. And so, you know, basically I was at work that day,

and my boss came running in, and she stood in the doorway, and she was like, it's an earthquake, we've got to get out of here. And I was like, oh, it's just the subway. But, you know, she had enough experience to know that it actually was not the subway, and she got us all out of the building. We were all standing around, and, you know, even she was like, oh, no line at five guys now. So, yeah, none of us were freaking.

at by this earthquake, but, you know, it was still kind of enough to get us out of the building. And we talked to people from California and they were just like, really? Y'all were scared of that? You noticed it? You know, so living with the constant ephemorality of you could blow up at any given moment, to me, seems odd, but, you know, It's fascinating. Well, and I want to talk about living with that ephemorality a little bit later. Sure. So you decided to write a story about the planet being the monster.

Where did you start with your research? Did you just go to the library? Did you... Okay, so the first thing I needed to do was understand volcanoes. So I had a friend who was dating a seismologist. Perfect. Yeah. And I took him out for coffee, sort of picked his brain.

I joined a list serve for, was it volcanologists or geophysicists? Oh, goodness. But I joined a list serve, and I did the usual science fiction writer thing of saying, hi, I'm a writer, I'm interested in coming up with, you know, with blah, blah, blah type world. Can you answer some super basic questions about, you know, seismology and so forth? Can you recommend basically like volcanoes for dummies, books that I can check out? things like that because I had no background in the sciences in this field. And so that was really helpful. And in addition to that, I had a few years before, I had gone to a NASA funded workshop

called Launchpad. So that workshop was actually about astronomy and had nothing to do with seismology. But among other things, we talked about tidal forces. And so things that impacted seismic activity on various planets. And just stuff like that was always interesting to me. So that was basically it. I heard you went on a helicopter ride over Kilauea. Actually, that was over Pua. Oh, okay.

But yes. Actually, I think Pua is part of Kilauea. It's part of Kilauea. Okay, so one of the things that I also did was I went to Hawaii and visited to the Big Island, which is basically a big series of volcanoes that have grown together to form an island. And I visited four different volcanoes in four days, except that they were all

Kilauea, really. So, Hawaii having kind of come up from this hotspot, you can sort of see even in the path of the pattern of how the islands formed. You can see that part of the crust moving over the hotspot. It's kind of fascinating. But anyway, so among other things, I took a helicopter ride over Pua, which is the most actively erupting piece of the big island right now. It is not?

what? It was like I was going to stay at the volcano's bed and breakfast. It ate the bed and breakfast while I was there. So I stayed at a different B&B, thank God.

So it is not the most active in it. Oh. Really? Oh, okay. Is that like hearing a friend died? Yeah. I mean, it'll be back, but that friend is coming back. That friend is like the guest you could never

quite say no to. So the helicopter pilot was kind of an asshole. Oh, we can't say that, can we? I'm sorry. Edit that one out. There you go. Oh, but I have to say it now. Okay, so yeah, the helicopter was kind of an asshole.

and thank you for that. And so he decided that he was going to take us directly over the vent. And I later found out that's incredibly dangerous to do. He really should not have done that. But he took us to hover right over the throat of Pua. And it was a helicopter, one of those helicopters that didn't have doors on it. And I discovered, that was the first time I'd ever been in a helicopter, I discovered that I get air sick in helicopters.

I mean, I've never been air sick anywhere else in my life. I'm not afraid of heights. I thought it would be fine. But no, I'm queasy as hell. I'm like, look, I'm going to throw up. Maybe, you know, do you have a sick bag, something? And he's like, well, just, you know, why don't we just hover here? You said you wanted to smell what a volcano smelled like.

And so he's just hovering there and we're smelling probably something toxic. And, you know, of course I heard. So it is possible that there is some of me in Pua. So we have to know what a volcano smells like now. You travel so far to get that information for us. I did not mean to suffer that much for my art. Well, I had actually kind of figured some of that out from, I hiked across the Kilauea Aiki also.

But it smells like Rotniks. which is the sulfur content. And then there were some other really sort of burning smells, which, again, it was probably toxic. This man was trying to kill us. But, you know, it kind of made the nose sort of burn. It made my nose feel like I wanted to scrunch it up. And, you know, after that, then I was smelling me probably.

So, yeah. So you traveled far and wide. You learned about volcanoes. This is also... I traveled to Hawaii. It was far and wide. It's a long. That's true. Okay.

This is also a world, though, that is sociologically really interesting, right? Because these are people, again, living with that sort of ephemeral feeling of being in California all the time. The lorce in California. Yeah. I'm not saying anything about California. Don't start. Okay. I was going to ask, though, so the people of the stillness, they have a caste system designed to sort of ensure society functions. They have stone lore, this mythos, that's entirely about being right.

ready for disaster. They all have a runny sack. Is this based on anyone real besides, I mean, you said preppers, but is there a real world society that is doing sort of the same stuff right now? Not that I know of. You know, it was taken from many different societies that I looked at, for example, societies that live in more seismically active places like Japan. I talked to a lot of indigenous Hawaiians when I was there.

I studied myths and mythology, which actually included a lot of survival knowledge, you know, in places where that was a thing. So, you know, and then preppers. I did actually, I watched the TV show Preppers, yes. But I also briefly joined a couple of Preper communities before I realized I thought for a while that getting a sense of that survival ideology would help.

Preppers are doing a whole other thing. Preppers are not actually interested in sort of the continuity of existing civilization. They're kind of looking forward to the chance to reboot the world in their own image. And honestly, I couldn't be really open about being a black woman there. There's a whole lot of stuff going on in some of those preper. communities that is interesting. But what I actually found more useful was simply talking to people from California. I'm talking to people who lived in places where, you know, at an even time, your house might

get eaten. And, you know, a lot of those people didn't have runny sex or anything similar. They didn't have that whole attitude of, we must be prepared to survive. Their attitude was more like, you know, if we blow up, at least we had to. a good life beforehand. And that was more useful to me. That was actually kind of fascinating to me. The only reason that the stillness has developed

this is because it is so consistently destructive in their case. But most volcanic eruptions, as we've seen or not. In Hawaii, the lava comes slow enough that you can not only walk away from it. You can drive off, get cameras, get your friends, come back and have a little party next to it. It's not a good idea.

No marshmallows. over volcanoes. No, don't do that. Don't do that. I did, however, toast some spam sushi over one of the vents in the Kilauea Aiki.

So, what? Oh, okay. It tasted like spam sushi. Are there? Okay. All right, all right. It tasted like Stone and Earth. No, it tasted like spam. It tastes like spam.

So one of the things that we talked about also a lot when we talked about this book on the radio was how people treat each other in disasters and whether who how for example Lori Peake our disaster sociologist who was on with us talked about how disasters often lead to people recreating hierarchies or often even being pretty kind to each other but but there's this whereas in pulp culture and I think even in like the walking dead you see a lot of like we should fear the we should fear everybody yeah disasters are bad for human nature, et cetera. Where do you land on this?

I mean, reality is proven more durable than the slightly creepy individualism, rugged individualism fantasies of science fiction. Science fiction is full of, you know, the world will go to shit, and then the strong will survive, and all the nerds will rise, and I don't know. The women will suddenly all wear bikinis. And so, and this was actually the attitude that kind of ran me out of exploring the prepper communities because that's, they're living in a kind of fantasy space that's not, it's better than anything I could write. But they're living in a fantasy space that has very little to do with reality.

And, you know, I know that Mika McKinnon is in here somewhere. I had her as a guest for my launch party for the Stone Sky, where she kind of explained that one of the most useful things that you can do in order to prepare for a disaster is form a community, is be social, is be friendly with your neighbors so that your neighbors have seen your house and they know where your bedroom is. And so when your house collapses, they know where to start digging.

And, you know, so that's not the kind of thing that we think of as what will help you survive a disaster. We all think we've got to have guns. and we've got to beef up or whatever or get our bikinis in order, whatever. But... I gotta get one. I don't...

It has to be a metal bikini, apparently. I have some questions. Yeah. There's going to be some chafing. I'm not sure how that's... I don't know. I don't know how that's going to work out. But anyway, so the reality of the matter

is that in situations of disaster, human beings are... innately altruistic. They are not innately rugged individualistic. They are not violent. They are, well, there are always going to be like one or two people like that, but a sense of community tends to overwhelm that, and that is how people survive. And that's a thing that I wanted to try and get at is, you know, the thing, the caste system that develops in the stillness is horrific. I am not in any way endorsing the way that they've chosen to divide their society, because among other things, they kick out people, they deem unimportant.

Some people have to be readers. That sounds terrible. I mean, it's ableist. It's a whole bunch of otherists. But at the end of the day, this is the way, the shortcut way that they have decided to form solid communities because they understand that the only way to survive is as a community. I want to point to the art one more time because we are, well, yes. So this is dog.

Molly and Jane, Oniasella again. And we asked her to draw Castrema, which is this community that we meet at the very end of the fifth season. And it's supposed to be, it's built inside a giant geode, which I don't know is actually physically possible. No, it is not.

Great. With magic, all things are possible. Magic. No, no. It was based on like the NASCA case, caves. There are a number of giant geodes that are big enough that you can go inside. They're burning hot. They are not fun places to be. If you trip and fall, your asses grass. They're not good places to be. You certainly don't want to live in them. And this was even bigger than those. So, no, that was a

little bit of creative license. My last question for you, and we have time for a few from our audience, which I think Diana has a microphone somewhere. But my last question for you is that this is a very human-scale story on a very geologic scale timeline in some ways. You know, you're referencing both the very distant past and this idea that any future for life on Earth is, or on the stillness, is, you know, thousands of years in the future at this point, if anything survives.

How do you, like science communicators, science people have trouble with this communicating of eons to people, and it's a very important concept right now. Do you have any tips for us? I am probably not a good example because I messed up in the fifth season. Really? Yeah, in the fifth season, I mentioned that the rifting will cause the occlusion of the atmosphere for only a few thousand years. Only. Yeah, I mean, you know, real geological time scales. I think the deck and traps lasted like 10,000 years or some really, sorry, 10 million years. So we're not talking a couple of thousand years here. I thought that sounded like a long time. And then I did more research. And then I kind of

corrected that in the second book, but it was like, you know, quick tap dancing. But that said, communicating those kinds of timescales is almost impossible to human beings. human beings do not think in millions or even billions or any other stuff that is more likely to actually affect us. So it's difficult for people to understand that we're talking exponentially bigger than any, the biggest number you can conceive. So I don't know. I don't have any tips on that. I got it wrong. Don't listen to me. Well, thank you so much. Diana, I'm going to, I can't see anything. So if someone has to, has a question, raise your hand. And Diana has the mic, and she will arbitrarily pick someone.

I'm really good at that. Does anyone have a question? You can do a little raise of a hand, and I will ask for your name. Hello. Hi, what's your name? I'm Jenny. Jenny, what is your question? Of all of the seasons that are in the appendices,

because I am also a person that's obsessed with appendices, which one would you least want to live through? Ooh. Ooh. Probably the season of teeth. Yeah, because that was like roving cannibals. That was basically like me allowing Mad Max to actually be a thing. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm slow. I'm not fast. You know, when the zombie apocalypse comes, I'm dead. So, yeah. All right, I'm going to walk on over here. If you could tell us your name. My name is Rob. Nice.

I thought you mentioned cannibalism because I was going to mention that some of the most tender scenes in the book are with the stone eaters and the eating of the eating of the stone eaters and that interaction that occurs where it's a kindness that they're eating, you know, they're still in. And so like, where did that come from? And how do you like, I love that part. Can you also may unpack the stone eaters? people a little bit too. Okay. Anybody that has not read past the fifth season you might want to start humming

right now. Plug your ears and I will someone will signal you. Thank you. Okay, so basically I was just I knew from jump that the method of Stone Eater reproduction was

effectively that. And I just kind of thought why would their reproduction be horrific? Why would they make a terrible thing of something that is, you know, effectively their version of sex? I mean, they don't do that. They don't do sex. I'm sorry, they do the gnaishing.

And, you know, I mean, they're doing you a favor. You don't want to walk around with a giant stone arm. It's going to hurt. You might as well get that chopped off. And, you know, you can't just leave it there. So I just thought, I'm sorry? It's good meat. You can't leave it there.

I had not good. It's not meat anymore. No. I'm sorry. So that was basically it. I just thought, you know, if it is an effectively reproductive cycle, why must it be horrific? I think we have time for one more question.

I've got one back here. Hi, Mitch. You seem to trust your audience to be generally like paying attention to the important things a lot. How do you make that decision as an author between letting the audience pick up on something and being a bit more explicit about laying something out?

I don't. I expect the audience to pay attention. You know, I mean, I'm from... The science fiction community is a bunch of nitpickers. So, I'm sorry. That sounded non-loving. That is the most loving.

We are a bunch of nitpickers. And the science fiction fantasy community, is full of people who will take a single line of a single episode of a single TV show that aired 60 years ago and beat you to death with it. So of course I expect them to read every single line that I've written. Now that said, if it's important, I'll hit that line or that topic that the line is covering two or three times. So if you see a repetition of a topic, then that's important. But I expect people to have read everything. Yeah. I mean, you know, anything else is talking down to their intelligence. Thank you all for your questions. Another round of applause for

Nora Jemison. That's SciFrize, SciArts producer, Christy Taylor, interviewing the fifth season author, N.K. Gemison. Thanks also to everyone who came to our voyages to the Volcanoes party, including Mika McKinnon, Dr. Janine Krippner, Jess Phoenix. The team at AMNH, including shelf life producer Aaron Chapman and Dr. Zhrunding from the experimental petrology lab, NK. Jemison, all the folks at Caviata in New York City and, of course, our fantastic side-fry staff.