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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.

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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.

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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.

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