Noted astrophysicist and science fiction author Alastair Reynolds is renowned for how he combines real science and classic space opera motifs to create "hard science fiction."
Host | Matthew S Williams
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Episode Notes
Noted astrophysicist and science fiction author Alastair Reynolds is renowned for how he combines real science and classic space opera motifs to create "hard science fiction." In addition to introducing cutting-edge and timeless concepts to millions of readers, he has also had a profound influence on this humble science communicator (aka. me!)
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Resources
Alastair Reynolds (website): https://www.alastairreynolds.com/about/
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For more podcast Stories from Space with Matthew S Williams, visit: https://itspmagazine.com/stories-from-space-podcast
Voices of the Future: Alastair Reynolds | Stories From Space Podcast With Matthew S Williams
[00:00:00] The authors acknowledge that this podcast was recorded on the
traditional unceded lands of the Lekwungen peoples. Hello, and welcome back
to another episode of Stories from Space. Today, in keeping with the theme of
Voices of the Future, I wanted to discuss another science fiction and space
opera writer who has been very influential to me personally, and who is
considered to be, One of the greats by science fiction fans all over the world,
because much like Arthur C.
Clarke and Isaac Asimov, he is a person who has merged the experience of
being a professional scientist with becoming a science fiction writer. And he is
defined as a hard science fiction writer for that very reason, in that his books do
not contain any fantastical or mythical technologies that cannot be explained by
established physics.
And I'm speaking of Alastair Reynolds. And he has [00:01:00] published many
volumes in his time, but his most recognized work, his most popular work, is
undoubtedly the Revelation Space Universe, otherwise known as the Inhibitor
Cycle, that form a trilogy with some additional short stories and full length
novels where the plots are interrelated, but not a direct continuance of the main
trilogy.
And, My own introduction to him was rather timely. It was back in 2006, I had
just moved across Canada to B. C. from Ottawa, Ontario, and I was looking for
some new material, some stuff with which to educate myself on current science
fiction authors, because I was still very much an aspiring science fiction writer
back then, and I came across Elster Reynolds and his first book, which I got into
with Keen interest was Century Reign, which is a very interesting book that
[00:02:00] merges space opera with alternate history, and I thought it was really
quite fantastic and really quite mind blowing.
And shortly thereafter, I went to check out other books by him, and I found
Revelation Space and realized, yes, this is part of a series. And for me, when
checking out new authors, it's generally what I consider to be kind of the
required reading. It's like, it doesn't really matter where you start with their
books, but sooner or later you should check out the big Compendiums, the
serieses that they created, because that's where the majority of their blood,
sweat, tears, and inspiration went.And I was really quite impressed, and in fact it was very educational to me,
because this was one of the first science fiction books I'd read that had been
published since the turn of the century. I was a big fan of the classics back in the
day, but really had not kept up with current trends. So I really wasn't aware of
the whole post cyberpunk movement that [00:03:00] was going on at the time
and, and the nano punk and other such, uh, sub genres.
And Alistair Williams sort of served as my introduction to that. So his books,
they explore a lot of different concepts and ideas, but some rather prominent
ones are Relativistic space travel, so space travel that does not involve faster
than light technology or FTL. Nanotechnology, so basically tiny, tiny machines
that can manipulate matter at the atomic level.
And post mortality and human transcendence, all that stuff. And of course,
questions related to the Fermi Paradox. So, yes, his book, his Revelation Space
Series, I should say, It previewed a lot of what I would go on to learn about and
write about as part of my actual career, not just science fiction writing.
As followers of this podcast are no doubt aware, the Fermi Paradox, the
question of [00:04:00] where are all the aliens, how come we're not Hearing
from them or seeing them. That is something very, very near and dear to my
heart. So, and Reynolds actually had something to do with that there. He
inspired my thinking on that subject and some others.
Certainly to a point. He wasn't the only one, but he was definitely a major
influence. And one of the reasons why I strongly recommend him as an author
to people who are Looking for something new, and I've certainly not read him
before, is because of the way that he does merge classic science fiction motifs
and space opera motifs with more contemporary ideas, and of course a
fundamental knowledge of astrophysics.
So, yeah, he can, he can weave a good yarn. Now, to give you a little
background on Reynolds himself, he was originally from Wales, and he studied
physics and astronomy at St. Andrews University, and went on to have a
scientific career, [00:05:00] and he had been writing and publishing science
fiction stories for a while throughout the 90s, and his first full length novel,
Revelation Space, Was published, as I recall, in 2000, and thereafter, the
success of that and its follow ups, he decided to become a full time professional
author and basically quit his day job.
And the series that he created, it's, it is especially interesting because it spans a
huge space of time. And this is a, in large part, a result of relativistic spacetravel, right? They have ships in the future that can travel at Roughly 99 percent
the speed of light. So for those aboard the ship, a journey between star systems
will feel in terms of subjective time, like a few years, but of course, for the
outside universe, decades or even centuries will pass.
So the main story spans about 300 years in the far [00:06:00] future, the 25th to
28th centuries. But the expanded universe, all the related short stories, novellas,
and semi related novels, they encompass a much, much broader period. Roughly
23rd century to, I believe, 40, 000 years into the Common Era. So, a very long
time.
And as I said, a key part of his books is the idea that in the future, even the far
future, humanity will not find a way to achieve FTL travel, so the timelines are
certainly interesting, but the technology which allows for interstellar travel Also
quite interesting. It's known as the Conjoiner Drive, and that's named after one
of the factions in the story.
And these allow for what are known as Lighthuggers, ships that can achieve 99
percent the speed of light. It allows them to crisscross space conducting
[00:07:00] trade, and of course the ships are very large, and Very powerful,
because anything that they're going to be dealing with in terms of trade needs to
be high volume.
Because, of course, it takes a while to get from one star system to the next. So
there is none of this sort of Star Trek style illusion of criss crossing space and
entire sectors within a few days or a few weeks. Traveling to the nearest of star
systems still requires years, so humanity in the main story is really only spread
out within a few dozen star systems, and they're rather disparate and not
particularly well connected, and the exploration and settlement As I recall him
describing it, it happened in waves, sort of like a percolation theory.
Life will venture outwards from its home system, so the theory goes, but it'll
also suffer from regression and loss of settlements, so [00:08:00] therefore it has
to happen in multiple waves in order for there to be a settlement wavefront that
actually, actually catches and holds other star systems. And, unfortunately, I'm
getting into a bit of spoiler territory, but, spoiler of the smallest.
But, in order to really do this universe that Alastair Reynolds came up with
justice, I do have to intrude upon some of the most central and overriding plot
elements. So, in terms of the Fermi Paradox, in terms of Alastair Reynolds own
take on where are all the aliens, how come we haven't heard of them, I don't
know.An interesting twist here is that humanity does encounter a lot of ruins, a lot of
extinct species when they venture out into the universe, into nearby solar
systems, and they find that, in fact, there's no shortage of what appear to be
vertebrate Intelligent species that have emerged over time, [00:09:00] but the
fact that all these civilizations that they uncover, they're all extinct, and they all
appear to have gone extinct in one rather sudden cataclysmic event.
This leads to a lot of trepidation and concern about what else is out there, and
this captures the essence of the great filter hypothesis and the berserker
hypothesis, or the deadly probe scenarios, it's called, which essentially states
that The reason for the great silence, why humanity has not seen or heard from
any advanced intelligence in the course of our recorded history, is because they
are being periodically wiped out.
And the Great Filter Hypothesis, it states that this could be any number of
things. This could be evolutionary circumstances, it could be cosmological
phenomenon. But that there is, in fact, a filter somewhere along the
evolutionary timeline, which, of course, [00:10:00] begins with, to the best of
our knowledge, single celled prokaryote organisms, and then goes through
various steps leading to greater and greater complexity, and if we use humanity
and Earth as a template there, the ultimate solution.
The final step that we are aware of would be the achievement of spaceflight and
interstellar, or at the very least interplanetary, settlement and expansion. So yes,
if intelligent life is Non existent beyond Earth, or just rare enough to the point
that we're not hearing from it, it must be because there's a filter somewhere
along the line, depending upon where we put it, would have implications for
humanity's own existence.
And so, for the deadly probe scenario, or berserker hypothesis, If you were to
picture the stages of life, evolution from single cell bacteria on up to [00:11:00]
interstellar species, then the filter is right between where humanity would be
right now, sort of a step eight, industrial civilization, digital technology, we
occupy our entire planet, but we haven't yet begun spreading off world, and step
nine, where we are spreading off world, because that is where According to the
hypothesis, the deadly probes seek out intelligent life as it's stepping off of its
home planet and expanding into the universe and eliminates them.
And as we covered in the previous episode, that whole hypothesis and scenario
is named the Berserker Hypothesis because it takes its name from a popular
science fiction franchise Known as the Berserker series, and it was written by
Fred Saberhagen between 1963 and 2005, and in Saberhagen's books and othersthat feature the same basic idea, these probes are [00:12:00] essentially the
creations of a species that uh, Was trying to seek out competition and potential
threats in advance and nip them in the bud so that their own evolution and
expansion across the stars would be unimpeded and unchallenged.
Others have explored the idea that an advanced species, which is already settled
across our galaxy, that they would employ these types of probes in order to seek
out burgeoning civilizations, the ones that are on the verge of becoming
spacefaring. And again, eliminate them or repress them in order to prevent them
from becoming a potential threat somewhere down the road.
And so for Alistair Reynolds, his own take on this was rather inspired. It
combined two things which I think are absolutely wonderful and just awe
inspiring and mind blowing. The idea of ancient intelligence, and also the
berserker [00:13:00] hypothesis, the deadly probe scenario, And And put them
together in the form of the inhibitors.
And this is where, I apologize, I'm getting into small s spoiler territory. And as
their name aptly suggests, the inhibitors are all about inhibiting the growth of
intelligent life in advanced species. The reason for which, which is also
something that's been explored extensively in science fiction, really has nothing
to do with power or the elimination of potential threats to the advanced species
that created them.
Heh. But rather, the fear that intelligent life is inherently self destructive and
will inevitably have a very negative impact on itself, on other species,
intelligent species, and the universe as a whole. And the reason that they arrived
at this conclusion, it's pretty simple. Inexorably bound up with their origin story,
but suffice it to say, it goes back to the very [00:14:00] first species to emerge in
the galaxy and how first contact between them did not go so well and how it
invariably led to the elimination of virtually all intelligent life in the galaxy at
one time.
So, an interesting but also classic take on the Zerker hypothesis. Oftentimes,
you'll have the Berserker probes themselves. It's that the species that created
them, they're no longer around. They either died off in natural causes, or their
machines turned on them. And so therefore, there's no one around to try and
direct the probes and tell them to stand down, or that they're Their mission is
complete.
They need not wipe anybody out anymore. Which, of course, makes this whole
scenario much more intriguing and frightening, depending upon how seriouslyyou're taking it. For science fiction purposes, it's golden, but as a proposed
resolution to the Fermi Paradox, it's quite scary. And Reynolds [00:15:00] did a
very good job of portraying this antagonist.
They're also known as the Wolves in the story, according to the faction known
as the Conjoiners, the ones who built the Conjoiner Drives, because they see
them as hunters lurking in the dark forest, ready to pounce, which sort of
presages the dark forest hypothesis a little bit. And I do wonder if there wasn't a
bit of inspiration there for Xixin Liu and the Three Body Problem series,
because in fact, As Reynolds would go on to indicate throughout the series,
there are species, advanced species, old species, that are still alive.
But they've managed to survive up until this point by basically hiding. And the
inclusion of some of these advanced and very, very old species in the story also
makes for a very interesting time. And so much of the story centers around that,
about getting answers from [00:16:00] one or another species, and also getting
help from them.
And another thing I found very, very interesting about the Revelation space
universe, is the factions that humanity It sort of falls into in the future. It's not
based on nation states, or even necessarily planets or star systems, per se. It's
not so much based on geography as it is attitudes towards technological
development and other such major social questions.
So, Conjoiner faction, who embrace neurological augmentation. They are able
to speed up their thought processes, they're able to enhance their physiology and
their neurology, and they are linked together with all other members of the
Conjoiner faction. So they're not quite a hive mind, they're just a very, very
interconnected social unit, [00:17:00] and of course their enhanced minds mean
that they are responsible for several key innovations like the Conjoiner drives,
and it's also the reason why a lot of people fear them.
And then you have the Demarcists, which, as I would learn eventually, stands
for Democratic Anarchy. And this faction, too, has embraced all manner of
augmentation technology, usually centered around the use of nanotechnology,
and they have evolved, through the resulting post scarcity, to become a society
that has no classes or social status or rank, per se, They still sometimes fall into
that a little bit, but by and large, they've achieved a state of distributed systems,
not just economic, but political.
And I found that very, very fascinating, because to me, between the Conjoiners
this was really my introduction to the whole concept [00:18:00] of thetechnological singularity, the accelerando, the idea of post scarcity economics,
and how all of this and the advanced technology that would likely Be part of it,
not the least of which is neural augmentation and nanotechnology, how this
could lead to a society of direct political participation, direct democracy, aka
democratic anarchy, or distributed polities.
Political units where power is not centralized, but rather distributed throughout.
So, for me, reading Alistair Ronald's own portrayal of this and depiction of this,
that started me down the path that led me to learn about Ray Kurzweil,
Bernavigi, Peter Diamandis, and the whole idea of the technological singularity
and the, the singularitarian movement.
Something that goes well beyond the realm of science fiction, and is [00:19:00]
quite possibly an inevitable outcome of human technological evolution, growth,
and how the whole process is. Subject to acceleration. Also, the way that he
dealt with the subject of nanotechnology and the revolutionary impact it will
have on human beings and human societies, it was comparable only to Neal
Stephenson's The Diamond Age.
In letting me know exactly what was up with this, this type of technological
research and how some of the best and brightest minds in the history of science
have predicted just how revolutionary that impact will be. So we're talking
about Ray Feynman. John von Neumann and Eric Drexler. So, using my own
experience here as an example, you can see how, through science fiction, real
science, hard science, and some very interesting concepts can be introduced to a
person, and they can learn all about the history of [00:20:00] science, and At
least in terms of certain particular fields, and you can also see how other great
thinkers and scientists have predicted how and when these technologies will be
introduced and what kind of impacts they will have, how they will irrevocably
affect the, the shape of things to come, or the size and shape of future human
societies and our little corner of the universe.
And as I mentioned earlier, The first novel of Alastair Reynolds that I'd read
was Century Rain, which sort of strayed a little bit from hard science fiction in
that it included wormholes as one of the major sort of plot devices. It was
nevertheless still very much in keeping with the best traditions of hard science
fiction.
It explored the idea of nanotechnology extensively, of alternate [00:21:00]
history, and it had a bit of a take on the planetarium hypothesis, the idea that
advanced civilizations could create, quote unquote, planetariums, basically a
planet encased in a universe or a simulation thereof, in which they would beobserved and basically kept within a certain level of development so that they
wouldn't break free of it.
And that was a standalone novel, much like Pushing Ice, which is another one
of his that I read, which takes place in the not so distant future, but deals with
the notion that one of Saturn's moons, Iapetus, is actually a large scale
spacecraft that is monitoring Earth, and at a certain point in the future, when
humanity begins to venture out into the outer solar system, as part of ice
harvesting operations, Aka pushing ice back towards Earth, [00:22:00] it wakes
up and begins to fly off, and here too we have another Fermi related hypothesis,
known as the Zoo Hypothesis, basically the idea that extraterrestrial intelligence
May be keeping humanity or other species in a confined area where they can be
observed and not be aware of other species in the universe, possibly for their
own good or possibly just for the entertainment and amusement of their
overseers.
And then there was House of Suns, which is a far future story, and that deals
with human beings that have been alive now for tens of thousands of years,
they're in the far, far future, and basically centers around something of a murder
mystery, which Explores the notion of artificial intelligence and interstellar
travel and even intergalactic travel.
And the reason [00:23:00] why it's set in the far, far future is, of course, because
he's once again dealing with a relativistic universe in which FTL is simply not
possible. And therefore, those who are committed to exploring the universe and
our galaxy and what lies beyond, they must commit to a Not beyond the scope
of human understanding, but to the outside universe, eons will have gone by, by
the time these same humans have finished doing their thing.
And last, for me anyway, but definitely not least, is the Poseidon's children
universe. And I've only read the first book in that series, called Blue
Remembered Earth. And it is a trilogy, and I intend to read the rest of it, but it
too is very, very interesting. It is once again set in a not so distant future world
in which, and this is very interesting and also got a lot of factual basis to it, in
which Africa has become the most developed [00:24:00] and most powerhouse
continent on the planet.
And it takes place over a rather long timeline and concerns a specific family that
has helped pioneer interplanetary space travel and settlement and how they're
now looking to the next great leap, which is interstellar. And like so many of his
other works, it explores a lot of advanced technologies and has some very, very
intriguing scenarios in which they are employed and how they become a regularfeature of some people's lives and how Others will attempt to avoid such
technologies, especially neural implants.
And that is something that is featured in the Poseidon's Children Universe, as
well as the Revelation Space Universe, and is explored with some very good,
very interesting, in depth commentary. And so, I highly recommend that people
who are fascinated with science [00:25:00] fiction, the history of science, and
even the history of science fiction itself, and how it's dealt with scientific
concepts, and how they've evolved over time, that they check out Alastair
Reynolds novels, in particular, the Revelation Space series.
And see how he's woven all of these particular strands and fields of study
together to create a space operatic series that is nevertheless hard science
fiction, and hope that it will also inspire these people to learn more about these
concepts and where they came from. And ultimately, how they are likely to
emerge in the not too distant future and what kind of impact that will have.
More than anything, what's needed now, in today's world, where so many fields
of study are rapidly advancing, artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology,
biotechnology, [00:26:00] and the prospect of a post mortality Post scarcity
future, or possibly an extinction level event. It requires that people be educated
on the subjects, that they understand that discussions on the ethics and
implications of all this impending change, that it be addressed well in advance,
that there be mitigations and safeguards put in place so that we can direct this
kind of development towards positive girls, and Hopefully not something
inherently destructive, because if there's one thing that Alistair Reynolds
certainly explored in his books, it's that intelligent life is prone to destruction of
itself, its environment, and, in all likelihood, other intelligent life forms, because
it will perceive them as a threat.
Also, of Reynolds, I should say that, in addition to inspiring me to learn more
about these [00:27:00] fundamental concepts and where they come from and
where they will likely be taking us, he also inspired me to write about them in
not only fiction, but also in the form of science communication. And given his
standing within the science fiction community, given his rather large fanbase,
I'd say he's had that effect on a lot of people, so, good for him.
He definitely stands among the greats of science fiction writers who were also
scientists and whose work was both timely and predicted a lot of the discussions
that we are having today, which are becoming only more relevant with time. So
thank you for joining me in this latest installment of Voices of the Future.In future installments, I hope to explore the works of Neal Stevenson, William
Gibson, Isaac Asimov, Werner Vinge, Kim Stanley Robinson, and [00:28:00]
others. Once again, thank you for listening. I'm Matt Williams, and this has
been Stories from Space.