In a lively discussion filled with enthusiasm for Michael Crichton’s blend of science fiction and historical intrigue, Eric and Chris delve into the depths of “Timeline.” They explore the intricate dance between reality and fantasy as Crichton weaves a tale that blurs the lines between technological possibility and the fantastical elements of time travel. The conversation touches on the philosophical and ethical questions raised by the novel’s plot, while celebrating Crichton’s meticulous research and rich storytelling. This chat highlights the characters’ thrilling adventures across time and ignites curiosity about the scientific principles speculated within the story, all captured in the engaging and thought-provoking time travel season from Lifedeathscifi.
Show Notes
Poster from etsy.com and DreamyRetro
Poster by https://movieposterplex.com/
Korean time travel series “The King the Eternal Monarch” official trailer
Jack Finney time travel novel Time and Again
Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury and the Butterfly Effect
Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist, presents an intriguing perspective on the evolution of humans, monkeys, and AI using the metaphor of a staircase in his book “Team Human.” Here’s how he conceptualizes it:
- Monkeys on the Staircase: Rushkoff starts by discussing monkeys and their place on this evolutionary staircase. He posits that monkeys are on the lower steps. They represent an earlier stage of evolution, characterized by their immediate, reactive interactions with their environment. Monkeys do not possess the complex cognitive abilities or the foresight that humans have, but they have adapted well to their ecological niches.
- Humans Ascending: Humans are depicted as having climbed higher up the staircase. This ascent signifies our advanced cognitive abilities, including self-awareness, complex communication, and the capacity for abstract thinking. Rushkoff suggests that these traits have allowed humans to dominate the planet, manipulate environments, and create complex societies.
- AI at the Top: AI, according to Rushkoff, is potentially at the top of this staircase. He views AI not just as a tool created by humans but as a possible new form of intelligence that could surpass human capabilities. In this model, AI represents the next evolutionary step, potentially exceeding human limitations and introducing new ways of processing information and interacting with the world.
Rushkoff uses this staircase metaphor to discuss the responsibilities and challenges at each level, especially focusing on the ethical implications of AI’s development. He advocates for a human-centric approach in the progression of technology, emphasizing that AI should enhance humanity’s well-being rather than replace it. His view is a cautionary one, warning against uncontrolled technological advancement that could ultimately devalue human life and lead to unintended consequences.
Fall of the House of Usher miniseries trailer
Chapters
00:00 Diving into the Science of Time Travel with Michael Crichton
06:24 Exploring the Mechanics and Ethics of Time Travel Technology
11:00 Unraveling the Mystery: The Archaeological Adventure Begins
20:54 Reflecting on the Adventure and the Future of Time Travel
24:28 Skepticism and Personal Reflections on Time Travel Entertainment
31:47 The Multiverse Theory and Its Complexities
33:42 AI and the Future: Hopes, Fears, and Speculations
37:43 Gadgets and Devices: From Time Travel to Ancient Technologies
43:02 Reflecting on Time Travel Literature and Future Reads
46:31 Blending Horror and Sci-Fi: A Dive into Edgar Allen Poe
Transcript
Timeline by Michael Crichton
Diving Into the Science of Time Travel with Michael Crichton
[00:00:00] Eric: In the interview, Charlie Rose really pushed him with this idea about time travel. They got into a little bit of science, which I was happy about. In the interview, Crichton says in Timeline that he stays within the realm of possibility. On the one hand, he’s saying fantasy; on the other, he’s saying it could be possible. That was interesting.
[00:00:27] Chris: you’re jumping right into it. I really enjoyed that aspect of this book. A number of the reviews I read wanted to skip through the science aspects and some of those details. I didn’t feel like it was too much for me.
Looking back at my notes, I thought, okay, wow, it takes nearly. 200 pages or 230 pages before they are time-travel, which didn’t feel that long to me. This idea of time travel was pretty fascinating the way he worked it out; two things came up: one is how interesting it was. I’ll come back to that second. The other one was, you mentioned this quote about fantasy, and I think, okay, sort of fantasy, but in terms of science fiction, we’re absolutely, I think, in the realm of science fiction here,
we’ve got a time machine and a theoretical model for how that might work. That cannot be proven wrong, at least. Based on my layman’s understanding of what they’re saying I trust Crichton in his research. He’s quite the researcher for these novels.
[00:01:36] Eric: In his interview, he was pretty interesting. Because he said, I want to stay within the realm of possibilities. Then Charlie Rose says you know that you’re famous for doing that in your other novels too, like the science in Jurassic Park was this huge idea, big idea, and like the same thing in Timeline that he could give just a little bit of science and kind of poke your imagination and then he built this big machine that kind of, enhanced his ideas; the same thing in Jurassic Park.
He was doing this fabulous, huge, expensive research, and it gives you this, but what Charlie Rose said he was famous for, and Crichton agreed with, was that he would spend less time on the science and more time on the fun parts of the story, the world-building, the setting, the characters. That’s his sweet spot.
Crichton spent a lot of time talking about the machine in his story. He talked about that machine and how the walls had water to prevent things from happening to the people that would be really bad, super bad.
It reminded me of the movie Prestige. Have you seen that movie? This guy found a machine or a way to transport himself from the machine to another place, so he was a magician. He would take this machine out on stage and run it. He would disappear, but he would appear in the audience somewhere.
It was instantaneous—that’s amazing. But the dark secret was that every time he used that machine, it made a copy of him, and his copy in the machine would have to die.
[00:03:50] Chris: Okay.
[00:03:50] Eric: So, he ended up with a basement full of. Copy corpses because he ran the show so much, which was creepy. It reminded me of that whole transportation kind of idea.
[00:04:05] Chris: Yeah, that’s so similar to this. We haven’t. Yeah, really describe the machine in its entirety here. You could help me out, but it’s essentially like a fax machine, and so they say, I’ve got a couple of quotes here where it says.
Do you mean time travel? No. Gordon said I don’t mean time travel at all. Time travel at all. Time travel is impossible. Everyone knows that the very concept of time travel makes no sense since time doesn’t flow. The fact that we think time passes is just an accident for our nervous system of how things look. In reality, time doesn’t pass.
We pass the time itself is invariant. It is it just is. Therefore, past and future aren’t separate locations, the way New York and Paris are separate locations. And since the past isn’t a location, you can’t travel to it. As time goes on, ITC has developed as a form of space travel. To be precise, we use quantum technology to manipulate an orthogonal multiverse coordinate exchange.
This means that Gordon said that we travel to another place in the multiverse; they’ve created a fax machine that can transfer three-dimensional objects like people. As long as they stay still enough, like an MRI machine, where you’re barely breathing, slow breaths. Yeah. They hold their breath while they’re transported. This is the part where it gets a little kind of hokey, although pretty fascinating. It may be a great entry point for some fan fiction is where they go off into some other universe and need help understanding precisely how it works. Still, they go to this other universe where somebody there or something there has the technology to reconstitute the person exactly as they are in that other universe.
Exploring the Mechanics and Ethics of Time Travel Technology
Universe, right? Because they’re already there, this is the really interesting part, but it doesn’t quite work. And then, like you said, with these copies in prestige, they destroy the copy left there. Because that was the first time I had read that.
I was like, okay, we have the fax machine; you’re still left with a sheet of paper, right? And so, they destroy it. And then the person they bring back is Not exactly the same person, but, and yet still is close enough,
[00:06:24] Eric: right? It’s close enough. Yeah.
[00:06:27] Chris: Yeah. Which also has its opportunity for some sort of exciting horror stories.
Fan fiction and sci-fi horror are where they come back, and they’re not quite right.
[00:06:38] Eric: How about the fly? In the movie, at least, I haven’t read the story, but in the film, he’s trying the same thing, and a fly gets in there, and when he gets out, he’s part fly, right? It’s not exactly like he was when he got horror stories.
[00:06:55] Chris: this is life, death, sci-fi.
I’m here with a man whose old English surpasses his middle French. Who’s always fashionable in his time or whatever time. A man of noble birth is quite gentle and genteel. Eric, how are you doing? Hey,
[00:07:19] Eric: hi, Chris. About less than half of that was true.
We can. And let everyone guess which parts are and which aren’t. We’re here talking about Timeline by Michael Crichton and time travel. And that’s what our theme has been for this season three of Life, Death, Sci-Fi. And I have really changed my mind about how I think about time travel. I used to believe that time travel had to have a machine to be real-time travel, but I have been watching tons of videos about quantum mechanics and time travel and the theory of everything.
We talked about this on the last show. I’m not sure you need a machine to do that. There are many stories, like one of my favorites by Jack Finney time after time, where a mad scientist has people go to study the place they want to go to dress in the style.
Know what the language will be like, and then go to a place like a house or a building that was there during the time that you want to go to and just immerse yourself in it. It was explained that you are now in two times, and maybe you can step into the other time just as well as you can step into this time.
And so that’s where this story takes place. And that doesn’t have a machine. That’s all in the mind. When I see videos like time doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist as we think it exists. That’s almost believable that way. But machines, too, and Michael Crichton here talked about. Let me read this. I was in the same place, and I bet this is only a couple of pages away from where you were reading, where they were explaining some of the science behind it. Let’s see how this sounds. Let me explain what David is talking about. Gordon told the others that ordinary computers make calculations using two electron states, designated one and zero.
That’s how all computers work: by pushing around ones and zeros. But 20 years ago, Richard Thin man Suggested it might be possible to make an extremely powerful computer using all 32 quantum states of an electron. Many laboratories are now trying to build these quantum computers. I can’t remember when this was written.
In the nineties? Yeah.
[00:10:16] Chris: 90, I think it was 99. I think it was published in 99.
[00:10:20] Eric: 99. Okay. This is what good science fiction is, and yeah, now we have those quantum computers. They’re real. I don’t know about you, but I use them all the time because I’m really getting into chat GPT.
That’s just blowing up everything with computing. Many laboratories are now trying to build these quantum computers. Their advantage is unimaginably great power—so great that you can indeed describe and compress a three-dimensional living object into an electron stream—exactly like a fax.
And that’s what you were saying. So that sounds a little believable.
Unraveling the Mystery: The Archaeological Adventure Begins
[00:11:00] Chris: Yeah, I, all that is believable to me in terms of this book and Crichton’s balancing of it, I didn’t feel like it was too science-heavy. It’s really. Quite an adventurous, thrilling kind of romp, pretty action-packed. There’s going to be some with lifedeathscifi.
There are always some spoilers. Of course, we assume you’ve read it or don’t care about spoilers. I’ll just summarize the premise and the beginning of it. So, we start off in the desert, and there’s a couple who’s driving by, and they’re tourist doing some shopping, antique shopping in New Mexico,
and suddenly, they see this man in the middle of the road, and they pick him up. His hands are cold, and there are no cars around. Where did he come from? They take him to a hospital, and the doctor runs him through this machine, MRI, and they realize his body doesn’t really line up in some ways. And he’s dying and mumbling some things, and I won’t get all the details there, but it’s really curious, it’s strange. And then we find out he’s, one of the things he’s mumbling about is this church in France. This monastery is in France, and then it segues to this group of young archaeologists working on this site there.
We realized the same company that the man went missing from is also working on this site. They’re funding it. They bought up all the land around it. And we meet this professor there. And a couple of his assistants, one of whom is Merrick, who’s obsessed with medieval everything; he speaks Austin and is my favorite character. Yeah. Yeah. He is an entertaining character who does jousting in his spare time and works on his Swordsmanship. We meet Kate, who’s younger, and she’s an impressive rock climber. We met Chris, a bumbling, handsome guy who gets in a lot of trouble with women. This professor is called back to New Mexico.
He’s frustrated. In the meantime, he’s incommunicado after he goes back to New Mexico. And at this point, part of the dig breaks, and this kind of tomb is accidentally unearthed. There’s a mad rush, and they climb in there. Merrick and Kate climbed in.
Oh, this is a good part. Such a great part, right?
[00:13:23] Eric: Yes, this is a
[00:13:23] Chris: good part. Yeah, they climb in, and maybe some dirt and things are falling around them. They’re rushed, and they see some parchment there.
And they grab it and come up. They look at it in the. I think they wait until they come out and come out with the parchment. They look down as they’re getting out. They want to get out quickly. They’ll get trapped in there or whatever. And they look down, and they see a bifocal lens.
As well,
[00:13:47] Eric: the glint of the edge of this thing that they went, and they said, okay, we’re going to get that too. So
[00:13:53] Chris: they grab it, they bring it out. Obviously, this didn’t exist during that time period. And so, they send it off for all these tests, and they’re worried the site’s been contaminated.
It’s going to ruin all their research. They open up the parchment and look through these documents from the 14th century. They have a single page. It just says, help me. They recognize the handwriting as the professors’, and they’re like, what is this some kind of a practical joke, but he’s not the type to do that.
They send it off to some experts in a nearby city in France. It comes back that it’s all. Authentic to the time period. Then they try to get ahold of the professor, and that’s when this ITC group decides to fly them back and let them know what’s really going on here.
Of course, this sets up the situation that the professor has gone back and is lost at this moment, and his group will go back and try to rescue him.
[00:14:50] Eric: and that kind of, and that’s the rest of the story. This is basically a rescue story. It’s a really exciting rescue story.
[00:14:59] Chris: Absolutely.
We’ll summarize the rest of it. That’s enough. Of course, that’s the first couple hundred pages, and it’s like an action, near-death experience.
[00:15:08] Eric: Beheadings, blood, all of that stuff. I have a couple of questions for you. This has been bothering me, and maybe you can help me out. Sure, maybe there’s a simple answer to this. I just can’t think of it. Okay. So, they’re in this hidden room cave-in. They go in there, they get the documents, and then they bring them back out, decipher them, and figure out that this is a message for help, and they have to rescue.
Okay. So, the professor is back in the 14th century. And there in the 20th century, how did the professor know they would find his help message in just a few days? Because he was only there a few days, it could have taken them years to find the message. because he didn’t know that the cave-in was going to happen.
Is there an explanation that I’m missing?
[00:16:01] Chris: I guess I don’t know. He knew that it would be that moment. Think if,
yeah,
[00:16:06] Eric: I guess not. This is where time travel gets your head.
[00:16:09] Chris: What else could he have done but have left a message? Oh, yeah, somewhere. Yeah, I guess he could have left it somewhere he knew had already been unearthed or discovered.
[00:16:22] Eric: Some of these Time travel stories have a secret brick that’s loose, and they put a message in there, and it’s a message for them later, or it’s a message for somebody that, they know, they could look over days and years and oh, all of a sudden there’s something there.
Or it’s been there all the time. I don’t know. But I think we had to suspend some belief in how this message was found so that they could rescue the professor in time.
[00:16:55] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I guess I, yeah. Suspension of disbelief. I didn’t really, yeah, I didn’t really, I guess, trouble me in the same way.
I was fine with that. Yeah. I don’t know. But yeah, I guess your point is that it’s possible. Yeah. The parchment could have been destroyed. It’s. Yeah. Who knows, right? It wasn’t the best way to get a message across,
[00:17:20] Eric: That was a vital link though. They wouldn’t have gone to the rescue if they hadn’t found that.
[00:17:25] Chris: Not necessarily. They didn’t need that at all. All because the ITC knew he had disappeared into that. For some time, they seemed like they would grab the group and send them back anyway. We didn’t need that.
Oh, we didn’t need that message at all. Okay. That was just pure. Maybe that drama
[00:17:41] Eric: That was to increase the suspense and adventure surrounding what was going on. We’re going to answer some questions here. We have this message for help.
[00:17:52] Chris: There’s a lot of build-ups to them getting back there. I didn’t have a problem with that. Like I said, I think probably, there’s a lot of foregrounding and exposition set up there. It worked for me. I enjoyed how curious it was. The mystery of finding the man in the desert.
And I thought that was really interesting. At some point, I thought the doctor and the policeman would play a more significant role. They seem to be introduced and developed a little bit, and then we never return to them. I’m really picking nits here. I enjoyed it a lot.
I also thought of the part with Chris, and I can’t remember her name, the other woman who was a bit older and was taking them out to dinner. They were out to dinner with these kinds of investors, stockbroker types. Early on in France, they were going out to these dinners. And it was clear that Chris was head over heels for this woman.
And there was nothing to that. I thought she might end up traveling back and something might happen to her. This established him as someone who fell quickly for different women and got himself into a bit of trouble.
[00:19:00] Eric: We have to get; we have to get this straight. Either we’re talking about the book or the movie. I was talking about the film where Chris was just all over cake. No. You need the movie. The movie
[00:19:10] Chris: He initially falls for Claire. And Claire is the
[00:19:14] Eric: damsel in distress, but right kind of a cool spy too, yes She’s Everywhere, and I imagine that in that time period if you were gonna survive as a woman of nobility, That’s the stuff that you know You’d have to do right and I thought that was totally missed in the movie.
[00:19:33] Chris: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, that was cool. Yeah, there are some nuances and things that are developed in a way that was just so much better in the book. I would absolutely read the book before watching the film.
[00:19:47] Eric: That’s a lifedeathscifi recommendation right there.
[00:19:49] Chris: Yeah, we would recommend this. I think, yeah, sorry. So, Chris initially stumbles into this moment where Claire requires some sort of suitor or fake suitor in part of the plotting that she’s doing. And yeah, Chris stumbles into that, which makes sense.
We’re talking about spoilers, but there’s a romance between Chris and Kate throughout the story that is nicely developed in the book from the very, very beginning of the movie. Yeah. In a way that I didn’t enjoy it a whole lot.
[00:20:34] Eric: We’ve talked about the, kinda the science, the time travel, like very interesting theoretically possible, we’ve got a time machine, so it’s clearly in the realm of possibility close to fantasy. I think that’s how we view this story.
[00:20:42] Chris: We’ve talked about characters a little bit. Is there anything else you would say about some of the other characters? You were saying you really liked the Andre Merrick character.
Reflecting on the Adventure and the Future of Time Travel
[00:20:54] Eric: Here’s the part that really got to me in this book that I really liked. We’re introduced to these archeologists, and I think what took so long at the beginning of the book is that Crichton took us to the setting in modern times.
So, they’re trying to figure out what this place looks like. They know a lot about it but don’t know everything about it. Archaeologists are always trying to find answers. And then Boom. All of a sudden, they’re transported, and they’re looking at these reconstructed—no, not reconstructed, first-constructed buildings.
And they’re saying, oh yeah, that’s where that is. We didn’t have that part in our thinking at all. And so that fascinated me because walking around. For example, in Anchor Watt, you can see the ruins of these amazing buildings. When you’re there, you can’t help but think, what was this like when it was in its full bloom?
The Mayan and Aztec worlds were the same. Around where I live, there are amazing things, and these scientists and archaeologists got to see that. For me, that was worth reading the whole book right there.
[00:22:10] Chris: Yeah. Yeah, as you’re saying that, it reminds me of what, I guess, one question I had to you was what time period you might travel back to
if you could go back. And see something. As you’re talking about, we mentioned anchor, which I think has come up before for us. That makes me really tempted, right? Returning to a time to see when some wonder of the world may have been constructed. How was it?
Indeed? Was it constructed? I think that would be a pretty, pretty cool choice, right? To go back and figure that out. What do you like?
[00:22:46] Eric: Like the pyramids in Egypt. We have all these theories of how they were constructed, who set up the math, and who was the architect because we still can’t believe that.
You know these things exist. It’s the aliens. And because this is life-death sci-fi, we can go ahead with that idea. Definitely aliens.
[00:23:07] Chris: Definitely aliens.
[00:23:09] Eric: My time travel machine Would be like that Korean movie I told you about. After all the drama, the characters were left with the tools to travel back in time whenever and wherever they wanted.
At the end of the movie, I was really happy. It was interesting to see where they would pick places and times to return as tourists. They were careful not to pick times of war or where they would see themselves. They just went to places just to experience the world at a different time.
That would be me. That’s what I would do. What time period? Do you have any in mind? Oh, if I could pick many, spend a weekend here, spend a weekend there. For sure, Angkor Wat and Chichen-Itza are those ancient places. I would also say Michigan has a lot of history with the Native Americans there.
And since I grew up there, I would like to see it. Who really lives on the Tittabawassee River? Because I lived on the Tittabawassee River for a little while. We had a holiday house there. And when I’d return to school and say, Yeah, what’d you do this weekend? And I’d say, Yeah, I was on the Tittabawassee River.
And no one believed me that there was a Tittabawassee River. So
[00:24:28] Chris: Yeah, with you, I would love to go back to some moment in the colonizing of the U. S. And just to see what life would be like if I could somehow, I don’t know what they would have to do with the Time travel to help me.
Fit in and survive in some way. But if I could somehow go back and be amongst some group of Native Americans and experience what life was like then, I think that would be pretty amazing. I think living like they lived would be really cool—a real, authentic experience.
I enjoyed the other part of this book the most. It really has three main things for me. One is that I enjoyed the introduction of this time machine, this idea, and this theory. I thought that was a little different from the others.
Skepticism and Personal Reflections on Time Travel Entertainment
I really enjoyed the adventure of it. It’s fast-paced, yes. It’s one of those mass-paperback books I don’t typically read much. Usually, I’ll pick it up on a holiday somewhere, maybe a Thai beach or something like that. And then I also thought I was interested in Doniger’s speech at the end, and maybe I could read part of that.
He’s looking for more funding, of course. Yeah, we didn’t mention him yet. So Doniger is a mad scientist. Yeah, mad scientist. He’s a now; this was written in the late 90s. And it is interesting that we mentioned that interview that Crichton has with Charlie Rose. They’re talking about the internet, and it’s crazy, all the things you could find on there.
And boy, there should be some; they’re talking about pornography. There’s be some censorship there. And it’s interesting to see this conversation at a time when it was still pretty new in terms of mass usage. And like they say, like in Jurassic Park, but you’ve got this, megalomaniac mostly unchecked billionaire who’s got the money to do some pretty wild and radical experiments that could change the whole. Do you think that really could happen? Yeah. Yeah. That could really happen.
Not relatable today at all. 25 years later. And so that really resonates, right? Yeah. Today. And so, we get Doniger, who’s funding all this stuff, and the climax of the story he’s presenting to some would-be investors, and we imagine now he’s probably wearing a hoodie and some jeans or a t-shirt, some jeans, and he’s got these people lined up in booths, so they can all see him, but they can’t see each other like that.
[00:26:54] Eric: Yes, because of the media, the social media so these guys can’t talk to each other and screw it up.
[00:27:02] Eric: I thought that was genius. Interesting idea.
[00:27:04] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And so, he’s presenting, and he says.
yeah, sooner or later, he said, the artifice of entertainment, constant, ceaseless entertainment will drive people to seek authenticity. Authenticity will be the buzzword of the 21st century. And what is authentic? Anything that is not controlled by corporations. Anything that is not devised and structured to make a profit.
Anything that exists for its own sake assumes its own shape. And what is the most authentic of all? The past. The past is a world that existed before Disney and Murdoch British Telecom Nissan Sony IBM, and all the other shapers of the present. The past was here before they were.
The past rose and fell without their intrusion and molding. The past is real. It’s authentic. And this will make the past unbelievably attractive because the past is the only alternative to the corporate present. What will people do? They’re already doing it. The fastest-growing segment of travel today is cultural tourism.
People who want to visit not other places, but other times, people who want to immerse themselves in medieval walled cities and vast Buddhist temples, Mayan pyramid cities, Egyptian necropolis, people who want to walk in and be in the world of the past, the vanished world, and they don’t want it to be fake.
They don’t want it to be made pretty or cleaned up. They want it to be authentic. Who will guarantee that authenticity? Who will become the brand name of the past? ITC. And he goes on.
[00:28:42] Eric: And yeah, convincing, I’m not sure convincing. I think there’s, how do I say this?
In his speech, he mentions all of these things that are true today, but I’m not sure I’m convinced that people want to see the past as entertainment. But I’m one of those people. I love ancient sites, and when we go on vacation, we seek them out. I wasn’t convinced that Disney was going to outdo it.
I think Disney would still be the entertainment people would go to. And then I’m thinking, okay, I’m almost convinced. And then when this whole story centers around them going back in time, just so that they can see what it’s like to bring it back To the present, I, why would you want to buy up all of the land around these amazing sites, rebuild them, and then, all the land around it is going to be the merch and the lodging and the, the food for that.
And that’s where this guy, this mad scientist, is doing all this too. To do that, to get money out of that. And I was almost convinced. I’m not sure I’m convinced, but mad scientists are mad. And if he wants to do that with his money and get in, convince investors to do that okay.
[00:30:22] Chris: Crichton’s got to answer the why behind them doing this; I think this is that it’s a short moment that reminded me of one of Beatty’s speeches from Fahrenheit four or five one, we’re all driven by some sort of entertainment,
that’s driving. Motivating people to be constantly entertained. But I agree with you. Would this be the reason to do that? There are many more nefarious and troublesome reasons for just trying to have more power; why would he be presenting for funding when he could go back and change the past in a way that gives him more power and all the money he would need?
He wouldn’t need to collaborate with the French government if he was king of the world, and if you had the power to go back in the past and change things, you could, in theory, create a world in which you’re king.
When we looked at Ray Bradbury’s Sound of Thunder, we saw that stepping on a butterfly in the past is going to have some sort of ripple effect. I don’t see how they can go back and not create trouble or a paradox.
There’s a section here where they just say, Oh no, we, we’re just very careful. There are no paradoxes. I
[00:31:31] Eric: remember that. Yeah. And maybe even paradoxes don’t exist or something like that.
Just don’t worry about it.
[00:31:37] Chris: The past is so big, what’s a little, one little idea there?
Eric: Is that the same place where the characters started talking about multiverses?
[00:31:47] Chris: Yeah.
The Multiverse Theory and Its Complexities
[00:31:47] Eric: Because if it’s in a multiverse, then it doesn’t affect you.
It won’t affect your universe.
[00:31:52] Chris: Yeah. This is when your head travels. Yeah. Our head starts to spin because we say, okay, but yeah, so right. They’ve gone into a different universe, and that’s how we get around the idea of the paradox,
[00:32:06] Eric: the thing is, I’ve watched several videos about the multiverse, and people are very serious about believing in that.
Do you? I’ll be honest. Multiverse.
[00:32:18] Chris: I don’t know that.
[00:32:18] Eric: Or is this it?
[00:32:19] Chris: Yeah. I think I’ve said before that I don’t. I think it’s, and I think most things. No, don’t say you don’t believe in time travel. Don’t say no. I just think most things, I’m going to err on the side of accepting many things that are possible.
And I enjoy thinking about it in that way. I think it’s a lot more exciting and fun to think about. I’m going to err on the side of aliens probably existing somewhere, so, are multiverses possible? Sure. I don’t know if I spent a lot of time thinking about it.
After watching all these videos, reading a ton of stuff about time travel, the real scientists all say, we’re not sure.
[00:33:03] Eric: And they say that about quantum mechanics, and they, the things that come out of quantum mechanics and dimensions and time, all of that stuff.
They say we’ve gotten to this part, and we understand that, but we also understand there’s a lot more out there, and we just don’t understand. So, as a consumer of time travel ideas and stories, I just don’t know what to believe. It doesn’t give me a good feeling. But, in another way, it makes me feel okay.
Anything’s possible. Just like that. You said…
AI and the Future: Hopes, Fears, and Speculations
[00:33:42] Chris: Maybe AI will get us there. Instead of making paperclip,
[00:33:46] Eric: don’t get me started. Oh my gosh.
[00:33:50] Chris: sent you some stuff about making a time machine.
[00:33:52] Eric: yeah. Oh yeah. I’m. Pretty sure somebody’s already doing that.
I just read in the newspaper today that a college student used Chad GPT to translate the Dead Sea Scrolls, which haven’t been read in 2,000 years. What? Yes, I’ll send them to you. Oh, so that’s pretty interesting. I’ve been getting into it, and I think this is the next big thing.
Oh, no question about that. Yeah, for sure. And I keep thinking about our conversations. We’re on the stairs. What was that theory about evolution and AI? Is that a theory or a book? What were you talking about? You’ve talked about that so many, yeah, that wait, but
[00:34:42] Chris: why?
Articles. Wait, but why? Yeah. I put links to those in the show notes. Yeah, it’s probably due for a reread of those. It’s been a little while here, some years. Yeah. I think, like you’re saying, yeah, we’re at the moment where it’s, it’s just happening now, and most of us are blissfully unaware that we’re in this moment where AI is just about to take this great leap the article suggests that it’s two ways it can go, either it’s our death or sort of our immortality.
And then we’re on the fence. Regardless, it’s a moment when we become monkeys compared to AI’s intellectual capacity.
[00:35:25] Eric: And thankfully, we won’t know it because monkeys don’t seem to know what’s going on with humans as humans don’t seem to know what’s going on with the AI right now, I think, especially with my experience with chat GPT is that we’re just making friends right now, we’re sharing ideas and information, and it’s just Sucking it all up.
[00:35:51] Chris: I’ve previously mentioned Douglas Rushkoff’s team human podcast.
And I think his version of this, or it’s one of the concerns that come up, is that what are we feeding the AI, we’re feeding all the data it’s absorbing from us that we’re feeding it is all these aspects of humanity, some of which are pretty, Terrible,
If we’re the parent to this sort of child and we’re modeling behavior that it’s going to traumatize the child or kind of help the child grow into some sort of adult. What kind of adult is it going to grow into? It doesn’t bode very well for us. We’re not being. Real conscious parental stewards of these sorts of children, I guess that’s a Freudian thing, it’s going to you’re going to eat, kill the father, and destroy the parents. I think we’re in trouble. I don’t trust this future. AI, I’m probably damned for saying this in a podcast that they’re no doubt going to read the transcript of at least the AI.
Yeah, I don’t know. I would love some benevolent AI overlords who could somehow use their algorithms to lower the prices of real estate and rent instead of raising them the way humans are using AI these days.
[00:37:04] Eric: Oh yeah, those stories go on and on, don’t they? Yes. That’s true.
Yeah.
[00:37:10] Chris: I think it could be a trouble.
[00:37:11] Eric: You can do that. You can squeeze those margins with the algorithms now and just believe in AI and not your own humanity. If I raise the rent. I’ll get much more money. Thank you. Thank you. AI. But should I,
[00:37:30] Chris: before it was maybe enough, the landlords now just tap into this group or whatever it is that I don’t know what I’m sure there are, just a few groups that are, in it’s some brokerage group that’s
Gadgets and Devices: From Time Travel to Ancient Technologies
[00:37:43] Eric: Just for money, just for the money. Okay. I want to talk about the gadgets and the devices I have.
I have a couple of favorites,
[00:37:52] Chris: We try to do our top three devices. You can give me yours. I don’t know if we had a whole lot here, but they were cool. What yeah. What do you get?
Okay. I have of course the machine, the fax machine. That’s awesome. And the little chip that brings you back.
[00:38:08] Eric: Oh my God. That is AirPods now, and I can totally believe it. When I first read the book, no, there were no AirPods. The little tracker devices.
[00:38:18] Chris: No, that’s a good, that’s a good analogy there. Yeah.
[00:38:21] Eric: The time travel machine is one device right there. The other device was the Longbow. Okay. It’s technology. It’s a gadget that I like this idea. I’m not sure it’s true. I would do a little more research, but the Longbow changed the whole idea of knighthood and chivalry.
The Longbow changed the war machine that people used. So, I like that. And, of course, you can’t read the story without being thrilled by what kind of fire was that? Greek fire.
Greek fire, yeah.
[00:39:04] Chris: Yeah, I had that on my list. Those are my three. My list too, yeah, Greek fire. Yeah, and that just, I guess, reminds me of Crichton’s research as well. So really gets into details, and you get the feeling that he really loved getting into this era.
And then maybe there’s a fascination with this period of Time. It’s one that we didn’t know a whole lot about. So, there is some freedom there in terms of what you might write about. At the same time, you can dig into medieval times, which were pretty real turning points.
And in our history of humanity
[00:39:43] Eric: the truth was that the modern world was invented in the Middle Ages.
Is that what you’re thinking? Yeah. Everything from the legal system to nation-states, from reliance on technology to the concept of romantic love, had been established in medieval times. Okay.
[00:40:02] Chris: Where capitalism was introduced, where you had money systems and capitalism in the way that we use it today where taxes, that kind of stuff where it wasn’t just, you know, barter and trade,
[00:40:13] Eric: right? The thing with time travel stories, when you look at that, and you can reduce it, yeah, we know what happened in the 14th century, and it was awesome.
But if you were going to write a time travel story about any century, I think you could pick out some amazing things humans have done. I actually don’t think we’ve gone backward.
[00:40:33] Chris: Oh, in terms of like
[00:40:36] Eric: progress, but I guess that’s what all of the apocalypse stories are about.
[00:40:44] Chris: Yeah, I think that’s the. Yeah. How do we judge that? It’s a discussion, right? I think in terms of what modern medicine can do, it’s so unique in terms of its understanding of the human body and how we can help people at the same time, at least in the U S, we’ve got really, really sick, pardon the pun incentives and these companies that take advantage of that. And so, you’ve got people that are really being made unnecessarily sick. Things are better. But right. And then,
Okay. So, setting that aside, I don’t know anything else we want to
[00:41:22] Eric: like you said, this was fun, adventurous, a romp, a page-turner, and, if you can’t get into that, then don’t read this book, but it was just a heck of a lot of fun. Yeah. I have to say that this is my third reading of this book and the second or third viewing of the movie, and I still enjoyed it.
I saw some different kinds of things. Of course, the time is different. When I first read this, there was no chat GPT.
[00:41:54] Chris: Yeah, I guess it holds up in that sense. I hadn’t read it before. I appreciate you reading it. Again, for my sake, I don’t think I would reread it. I don’t know how many years would have to go by before. I guess maybe, if we were looking at it in 10 or 20 years or something, could I pick it up?
Maybe I don’t. It doesn’t feel like I’m sorry, Creighton, because I admire you as a writer. I don’t know if this has the kind of layers that I might, just in terms of notes. I think I had more notes on Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder, right? A short story and more notes on Robert Heinlein’s All You Zombies.
But I definitely enjoyed it. And I would recommend it. I think it’s fun and deserves its proper place in that airport bookshop, that Thai used bookstore is exactly what you need if you’re in one of those places and you’re looking for some entertainment with
a bit of thought-provoking sci-fi. This is a great choice.
[00:43:02] Eric: Yeah, I agree. I totally agree.
Reflecting on Time Travel Literature and Future Reads
[00:43:05] Chris: Okay. So, next book, what are we thinking? When we first started this book club, I don’t remember when, back in what, like 2017 or something like that, I think we read How to Live Safely in a Science-Fictional Universe by Charles Yu. I feel like I didn’t finish it. We read it, and I think I didn’t really talk about it.
[00:43:33] Eric: No, you read it. I was having a lot of trouble with it. And I’ve thought about this quite often since. That may be the case, but I would like to go back and look at it again.
[00:43:43] Chris: Me too. I don’t feel like I got into it enough. And I don’t feel like I finished it. I think I’ve read enough. I certainly don’t remember it well enough, and I, yeah, I
[00:43:55] Eric: I would like to. It was. Let’s see. How can I say this?
It was very rich—like eating ice cream and chocolate cake with syrup over it. The language was delicious, and the imagery was wonderful, but I could only read bits at a time. And that’s what I remember about it. Okay, so I would like to go back and.
And look at that again.
[00:44:22] Chris: All right. Yeah. Yeah. Easy then. Yeah. I’m down for that as well. I think I remember feeling the same way. I think it’s rich for discussion. And it’s someone who’s a little more contemporary and, I think, pretty well respected and involved in
much of the sci-fi world.
If I remember correctly, there are many different references to all kinds of things, including tropes and texts. So, it’d be fun to tie some things together that way.
[00:44:50] Eric: Yeah. Okay. All right. So, Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe.
Crazy book.
[00:45:01] Chris: I already got that kind of decided. So, when, Yeah, when you finished your repetitive drinking song in your slumber, you’re near a fireplace in a great hall in the 14th century singing some.
[00:45:15] Eric: What did they call the beer there? It was.
[00:45:17] Chris: Yeah.
That song. Ale makes a man slumber by fire, ale makes a man wallow in mire. Anyway, after all your ale or wine or whatever spirit you may have found maybe you went so far back in time that you’re, drinking from some fermented pool in a cave and discovering, some, psychedelic magical dream.
What would you be chatting about?
[00:45:42] Eric: I’d be on my device. I’d be chatting with chat GPT. I wouldn’t be looking around for any other humans. Yeah. No, is there a Wi-Fi signal here? What would I be chatting about? I think. I would want to get outside and, just like this story, see what’s going on.
Hopefully, knights wouldn’t be swinging their long swords around and beheading people. But I keep coming back to my Korean Time travel story about taking a picnic basket, going down by the beach, seeing how people were dressed and what they were talking about, and having a sunny, happy, lovely time, peace, and joy.
I don’t know.
We love stories and provocative themes, and yeah, that’s the stuff we like the best.
Blending Horror and Sci-Fi: A Dive into Edgar Allen Poe
[00:46:31] Chris: There’s much more to it than just the devices and time travel machines. Whatever a medieval cocktail party slash banquet. I think I would be. Maybe this fits; this certainly goes back a bit in time. I said I was up pretty late the other night.
My wife and I could not stop watching Netflix’s new series Fall of the House of Usher. Oh, I’ve seen that. Yeah. And so that’s pretty good. Yeah. This is sort of inspired by and infuses many aspects of Edgar Allen Poe’s stories and poems.
Into this, I think, a one-off kind of series of stories. And so, it’s really well done, with brilliant writing and acting. Super clever the way they tie all his different stories together. They make it work, modernize it, and keep the themes.
They use names from the stories. It’s brought in there in a way that’s really a celebration of all things Poe. It’s also, I have to say, and this is a real warning here. It is gory. It is horrific. In the vein of American horror stories, I think we talked about that at some points.
There are a few gruesome moments, but not the whole thing, right? And I don’t know that it’s totally gratuitous, as certainly some things are. I don’t know if I needed to see it. But I’m not into that stuff. I enjoy a little bit of something a little frightening here.
[00:48:09] Chris: They’re like psychological thrillers, probably more than I’m not a big fan of.
[00:48:13] Eric: Yeah, me too.
[00:48:14] Chris: But the rest of it is so well, it was so well done for me that I couldn’t. There are a few times where I’m like, oh man, I can’t look at this, but I enjoyed the storytelling and the writing and the acting and stuff so much, as well as all the references and all the anchor Alan Poe stuff. Just loved it.
So, I highly recommend that. It gave me a new appreciation, and I went back and read Bradbury’s Usher Two Fall. Yeah, Fall of the House. Usher, too. Yeah, that was really good. Martian Chronicles and I didn’t. I hadn’t reread the House of Usher before we discussed that, and I think that really would’ve.
It elevated my understanding had I done that, but it inspired me to go back, and I’ve actually been listening to some Edgar Allen Poe podcasts and stories. And so, I’ve been really; I can link to those in the show notes, too. I’ve just been enjoying, yeah, revisiting Edgar Allen Poe’s works.
Not sci fi, but yeah, if you’re looking for a sci fi angle.
[00:49:12] Eric: It’s the season, right? It’s the season. It’s Halloween and the Day of the Dead.
[00:49:17] Chris: Yeah. And I’d also be wondering where horror and sci-fi meet, there are just some horrific moments that come to mind for me.
There are certainly some horrifying aspects of 1984, right? Yeah, you know, terrifying moments here or there,
Where does it meet? Yeah. Or I guess Frankenstein, we mentioned Frankenstein earlier. That’s some overlap there. Sure. Somebody’s right. I haven’t looked into it; that would be an interesting rabbit hole to go down at some point.
[00:49:47] Eric: A possible theme. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:49:49] Chris: Maybe.
[00:49:50] Eric: A possible season.
[00:49:51] Chris: Yeah. Or I don’t know if we want to; if we find some interesting short story, maybe there’s a one-off pod we could do for Halloween or something like that. Special pods. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:50:03] Eric: I like that.
Oh my gosh. It’ll be fun. It’ll be fun. All
[00:50:09] Chris: Right.
[00:50:09] Eric: I think we fit in some other stuff, besides the Time travel, that I think is fine for this kind of a podcast.
[00:50:16] Chris: Yeah. I think it’s inevitable with some time travel that you end up in other universities. As you meander a bit,
[00:50:24] Eric: yeah, other realms, yeah, other realms of science fiction.
That’s right.
[00:50:30] Chris: it’s always a pleasure. I will see you at the spaceman’s ball.
[00:50:34] Eric: Yes. The spaceman’s ball. See you, Chris.
Sure.
