William Bains on Dark Ecology in 'Shroud'

Marty speaks with biochemist and astrobiologist William Bains on the topic of Dark Ecology, as a final chapter to our 4 previous episodes on this topic with Chris Beckett (Ep 56), Julius Csotonyi (Ep 57-58) and Adrian Tchaikovsky (Ep 59).  Dr. Bains is the author of “The Cosmic Zoo: Complex Life on Many Worlds”, and has earned degrees from the universities of Oxford, Warwick and Stanford, and has held positions at the University of Bath, MIT, Imperial College London, and in addition to founding a number of biotech start-up companies is now a senior research fellow in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University in the UK.  William is exactly the kind of person we love to speak with on this show as his expertise really expands and deepens some of ideas we’ve been talking about in contemporary science fiction.  Some of his recent papers carry titles like  "Prospects for detecting signs of life on exoplanets in the JWST era" and  "Astrobiological implications of the stability and reactivity of peptide nucleic acid (PNA) in concentrated sulfuric acid".  So that’s the kind of thing we discuss in the following conversation.  In addition to expanding on the details of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s worldbuilding in Shroud, we talk about the WOW signal in astronomy, the incoming 3I/ATLAS extrasolar object, and new experiments in high throughput chemistry and biochemistry.Send us a messageEmail: [email protected]: https://www.facebook.com/groups/743522660965257/

Marty speaks to Nicholas Keating Casborro about the hard-scrabble, dystopian world portrayed in his book 'Vitalerium: Descent into the Void'.  This is a far future space opera where faster than light travel is made possible by the exotic substance that serves as the title of the book, where humans have spread across multiple planets, where the politics are cynical, street life is vicious, human life disposable, and corruption endemic.  This episode is lighter on the science and heavier on the fiction; we discuss some of the technology essential to this world, but our focus is on the world-building, politics, religion and characters Nick has created in the Vitalerium universe.https://atmospherepress.com/books/vitalerium-descent-into-the-void-by-nicholas-keating-casbarro/Send us a messageEmail: [email protected]: https://www.facebook.com/groups/743522660965257/

Chris Kulp is a professional physicist and science fiction author, who has won the Mike Resnick award for his first published story ‘What Would You Pay for a Second Chance’.  We talk about his second novel ‘Lost Origins’, a space opera where Earth is regarded as a myth by a galactic civilization peopled by humans and androids. Our conversation goes from a sci-fi story about artificial intelligence to one that explains how current AI models work, what they can and can't do, what they might do in the future.  We also chat about Chris’ research in nonlinear dynamics and the use of AI in shaping the behaviour of complex networks.https://chriskulp.com/Send us a messageEmail: [email protected]: https://www.facebook.com/groups/743522660965257/

Adrian Tchaikovsky is a bestselling British author whose work has taken the science fiction world by storm since his seminal sci-fi novel Children of Time, which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2016.  Its sequel Children of Ruin won the equally prestigious British Science Fiction Association or BSFA award in 2019, and after the publication of the third book in the series Children of Memory, those books won the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2023.  He’s also won 4 other BSFA awards for his novels and short fiction, and this year 2 of his books Alien Clay and Service Model are up for both the Hugo Award and the Locus Award!In this conversation we discuss his latest book Shroud, which happens to dovetail nicely along the theme of Dark Ecology that we’ve been discussing since our interviews with Chris Becket and Julius Csotonyi about Dark Eden.  We talk about the exotic planetary environment and the aliens he’s invented in Shroud, whose neural architecture and sensorium share the same electromagnetic modality, making for the kind of collective intelligence and consciousness that Adrian often creates and wrestles with in his work. We also discuss theory of mind in hedgehogs, the social relations of mantis shrimp, bird intelligence and a few other things that have come to be signature topics in Adrian’s science fiction.Send us a messageEmail: [email protected]: https://www.facebook.com/groups/743522660965257/

This is the second part of Marty's conversation with Julius Csotonyi about dark ecology in relation to the dark rogue world of Chris Beckett’s book 'Dark Eden'.  We discuss the extraordinary existence of anoxygenic autotrophic bacteria that are capable of photosynthesis in the dark of the ocean floor!  Julius describes the ecology of thermal vents and geothermal energy as it stems from a hot planetary core, and we speculate about the kinds of planets that could host a dark ecology. We learn about protective and accessory photosynthetic pigments and ancient archaea microbes and not only the Tree of Life, but the more convoluted Bush of Life! We talk about superorganisms and colonial organisms and social insects, plasmodial slime molds, mutualism, and how empathy and cooperation are the real superpowers of life. Finally we discuss how to imagine new possibilities for extraterrestrial life and how to hunt for exobiology using educated speculation and scientific creativity.https://www.csotonyi.com/https://sierraclub.bc.ca/learn-to-draw-b-c-wildlife-series-with-julius-csotonyi-gift/Send us a messageEmail: [email protected]: https://www.facebook.com/groups/743522660965257/

Julius Csotonyi is a thermal vent biologist with expertise on organisms that thrive on geothermal energy in the dark depths of the ocean where there is almost no light from the sun.  He is also someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about  ‘speculative biology’, imagining various exotic possibilities for the existence of life in extreme conditions that are very different from those we are used to on the surface of our planet.  Our conversation is a follow-up to our previous episode with Chris Beckett, author of the 'Dark Eden' trilogy, so this is where we put some meat on the bones of the dark ecology which forms the setting of the 'Dark Eden' books.  Julius is an absolutely delightful wealth of information, whose love of science radiates throughout our conversation. In this, the first half of our conversation, we talk about the evolution of bioluminescence and light sensing in organisms who live in the dark world on the ocean floor, the different biological strategies that make use of bioluminescence, anoxygenic phototrophs that use infrared radiation rather than visible light to drive photosynthesis in the dark (!) and how that might lead to new and different ideas about the origin of life on earth – and hence the possible origin of life on other worlds. Send us a messageEmail: [email protected]: https://www.facebook.com/groups/743522660965257/

Holly and Marty speak with Chris Beckett about his Dark Eden trilogy, comprised of Dark Eden – which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2012, and was followed by Mother of Eden in 2015 and Daughter of Eden in 2016. Dark Eden has been described as “a superior piece of the theologically nuanced science fiction”, and is also a story about the development of human culture, religion and civilization.  It stands out for its unique setting on a dark planet whose ecology is powered by geothermal forces rather than by a sun, and where a pair of marooned humans have given rise to a growing family of refugees who scrabble for survival in a dark forest filled with bioluminescent plants and animals.  It’s a book you’ll never forget, and its characters will stay with you all your life.  We also spend some time talking about his more recent book 'America City', a book written in 2017 about an unhinged American president who decides to invade Canada - disturbingly prophetic of recent events threatening the Canadian sovereignty. Send us a messageEmail: [email protected]: https://www.facebook.com/groups/743522660965257/

Holly and Marty get together with their friend Susan MacKinnon to discuss the science fiction of Ursula K. LeGuin, literary icon of speculative fiction.  We talk about her Hugo and Nebula winning books "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "The Dispossessed", which are among the most celebrated classics in science fiction. The first was a pioneering book about the impact of gender on civilization, describing an ambisexual society.  The second is about anarchism as an ambiguous utopia in the context of capitalism, and describes some very deep and beautiful ideas about time and the foundations of physics.  We also talk about LeGuin's short story "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas", a lasting parable about those whose suffering supports our society and how we confront or submit to that reality.  We also chat about higher education, feminism, dresses with huge pockets and a some of the other books we're reading.Send us a messageEmail: [email protected]: https://www.facebook.com/groups/743522660965257/

This is part 2 of Marty's conversation with Douglas Phillips about his 'Quantum' Series of hard science fiction novels.  In our last episode we talked about 'Quantum Space', and this time we discuss the next two books in the series, 'Quantum Void' and 'Quantum Time'. As before, today’s exchange focusses on the unifying theme of extra dimensions, in both space and time, and Douglas’ exploration of speculative ideas that push the envelope of modern physics.  We discuss visiting aliens using extradimensional spatial distortion, imagining paranormal phenomena as a 3D consequence of 4D activity, and using 4D space a dumping ground for our pollution.  We then go on to use a generalization of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to suggest a second, perpendicular dimension of time and how this leads to a coherent theory of time travel!  Along the way we discuss anti-matter and whether it falls up or down, and how to probe for hints of new temporal physics in the physics of anti-hydrogen.Send us a messageEmail: [email protected]: https://www.facebook.com/groups/743522660965257/

This is one of those episodes that exemplifies what we try to do here on this show, going deep on some very big science ideas, and then going off the deep end to expand those ideas into the realm of fiction and making them even bigger! Marty has the great pleasure of speaking with Douglas Phillips, who has turned his wide range of scientific experience into the kinds of stories he’s always wanted to read​.  Douglas has made a name for himself with his Quantum series of 5 books: Quantum Space, Quantum Void, Quantum Time, Quantum Entangled and Quantum Chaos – along with the prequel Quantum Incident.  This is a conversation in two parts - in this episode we talk about Quantum Space, and in the next episode we'll talk about Quantum Void and mostly about Quantum Time.  The unifying theme here is extra dimensions, in both space and time (!) and our conversation is an intellectual romp through speculative ideas that push the envelope of modern physics.  To lay the groundwork we talk about the standard model of particle physics, superstring theory and neutrino oscillations, then we make the leap into the 4th dimension, and from there into the far reaches of outer space.Douglas Phillips:https://douglasphillipsbooks.com/Quantum Space on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZY9T5Y5Send us a messageEmail: [email protected]: https://www.facebook.com/groups/743522660965257/