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Mark and Joe jump around in time with Nebula- and Hugo-Award winning author, Robert Charles Wilson.

Robert brings H. G. Wells to the podcast, with a discussion of how fascinating it would be to see what happens in the future – an idea that had some impact on how he became a science fiction author.

Written in the late 1800s, The Time Machine is one of the first books of science fiction that Robert discovered. “It was obviously the work of someone who was intellectually engaged with the big discoveries of the late 19th century,” says Robert. Particularly what science was learning about geology and, of course, evolution.

The Time Machine looked directly and bluntly at those ideas, says Robert. He was struck by the ending of the book, which moves far into the future, when the sun is dying and earth is doomed.

“There’s a kind of bleak beauty in it.”

From there, the trio then move into a fascinating discussion about Robert’s new book, Owning the Unknown. He describes it as a “sort of matryoshka doll, a memoir inside a history of the science fiction genre inside a defense of metaphysical agnosticism/atheism.”

Don’t miss this deep and fascinating discussion!