Author: Paul B. Spence

The Sleeping and the Dead Cover Blurb

Hello everyone, I thought I would share the cover blurb for my next novel, The Sleeping and the Dead, Book Four of the Awakening.

A Daring Mission into the Heart of Darkness…

The war against the horrific Theta entities reaches new heights as the Sentient Concord is forced to fight on multiple fronts against both the struggling Earth Federation and the Wolf Empire.

Commander Hrothgar Tebrey is at the forefront of those battles, bringing the fight to the enemy again and again. He is the last hope of humanity, the only person who can consistently stand up to the Thetas and win. But never-ending war takes its toll. Tebrey knows he needs to take the fight to the Thetas if there is to be any hope for the future.

The Thetas think they are invulnerable, but they have a fatal flaw: One of their own has turned back from the darkness, and he knows where to strike against the Thetas to end the war forever.

Book four of The Awakening is finished.

I’m pleased to announce that the complete draft of The Awakening Book 4: The Sleeping and the Dead is finished at 135,000 words.

I will still need to read through it and fix any typos I find, but I’m basically done! Huzzah! Another Tebrey novel!

It should be ready to hand over to my editor next week.

Then the revision cycle begins.

I guess I need to think about the cover blurb now.

I’ll share what I can as soon as I can. Look for the blurb soon. I’ll post the cover art as soon as I get a look at it.

You may have noticed no new books…

Okay, so here is what happened. Star’s End was getting close to being done (over 100,000 words) when I realized that while it was a good Tebrey story, it really wasn’t a part of the Awakening Series. It’s the story of a long mission to the Achenar home system. Good stuff. Not really a part of the main sequence. Didn’t have the right kind of title anyway.

So, I set the manuscript aside and started over. Not an easy thing to do when you put your heart and soul into something, but Star’s End will see publication someday, just not until the main story is finished.

The new book is titled The Sleeping and the Dead.

It is currently at 115,000 words, so I should finish in a month or so. It looks to be a monster, around the size of The Remnant. Once finished, the editor gets it. Then revisions. Then the beta readers. More revisions. Likely publication next April or May.

Thanks for hanging in there!

I’ll have a blurb for you guys soon, and hopefully a peek at the cover.

Also, there will be a couple of more short stories coming soon.

The next book is nigh.

Greetings!

I’m sorry it has been a while since I’ve posted here. I just wanted to update everyone and let them know that I am working on the next story in The Awakening. This will be Book 4 of that series and continues from where The Madness Engine left off.

Stars’ End is currently at 90,000 words and climbing rapidly toward completion.

I hope to have a cover reveal soon!

Author’s Answer 135

Hello, been a while since we had one of these.

Question 135 – What is your biggest writing failure?

I have a lot of ideas, and tend to start a lot of different projects at once. I’m not sure if it is a failure or a good thing. Let me explain: I have dozens of novels started. Some of them are in my head, others written down in part. Not finishing them before starting a new one is something of a failure. I’d like to get them all written eventually, I just keep coming up with more…

Click here to read the rest on I Read Encyclopedias for Fun.

Startravel and FTL (Books)

 

 

 

 

 

Hello, everyone. This week I’m exploring the idea of travelling to other stars, a staple of science fiction. There are many possible ways of doing this, and I’m going to try to take a quick look at each one.

FTL

FTL refers to faster-than-light, the idea that the speed of light is not the fastest anything can travel. Most authors are very dismissive of this concept, mostly because they don’t understand Einstein as well as they think they do. Einstein’s theories (not laws) suggest that the speed of light is absolute, through a given medium. We have been able to slow light down to a crawl in laboratory experiments. We observe distant galaxies moving faster than light, which we attribute to space expanding, which doesn’t violate any theories or laws. We have also seen things break the lightspeed barrier.

Cherenkov radiation. This is the radiation emitted when a charged particle, usually an electron, passes through a dialectic medium at a speed faster than the phase velocity of light through that medium. Basically the maximum speed of light is determined by the medium it is traveling through. Physics tells us light speed is the fastest anything can travel through a given medium. Cherenkov radiation occurs when something breaks that rule. This isn’t science fiction, folks; this is real. The blue glow in the picture above is caused by electrons moving faster than light through water.

Now, I’m not saying things can move faster than the absolute limit of light we’ve observed, but it should be pointed out that we have only ever observed light from inside a gravity well. We don’t know for certain that the speed of light through the interstellar medium is the same as it is here. We need to get outside the solar system and observe. Maybe then we’ll begin to understand our universe a little bit better.

I don’t know of any modern science fiction stories which ignore Einstein, although it was more common when he was still alive. The only ones I can think of offhand are the stories of E.E. “Doc” Smith, which were being written around the time Einstein was gaining acceptance.

The Lensman series, on the surface, ignores Einstein and gets a bit of ridicule because of that. But the stories don’t, not really. The Berganholm drive of Lensman is a drive that negates the inertia of the craft so that the engines can push it faster and faster. Einstein’s theory tell us that an object can never achieve the speed of light because mass and energy are the same thing, and as an object travels faster, it has more potential energy, so it has more mass, so it requires more energy to propel it faster, and so on. However, if it doesn’t gain energy from traveling faster (inertia-less) then it could travel as fast as the engines could push it. Right? Well, maybe not, but it does a better job of hand-waving (handwavium) than most science fiction. Not to mention that the stories are just damn fun.

Warp Drive

This was a convenient piece of handwavium in Star Trek until someone came along and said: “Why not?” Star Trek uses the warp drive to get from star system to star system. The drive bends space around the ship, technically sending it into warp space, which is kind of like hyperspace (I’ll get to that) but not really. Roddenberry wasn’t a scientist; he was just a really big fan who made it big. However, the idea of warp travel inspired a real scientist, Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre, to try and work out the physics behind a drive of this type. What he came up with is being called the Alcubierre drive. Basically it warps space by compressing the fabric of spacetime in front of the ship and pushing it away behind the ship. This means that the ship moves over a shorter distance through space and doesn’t violate any rules along the way. For example, if the drive works at 1:4 compression, then four light years could be compressed and traveled over like one light year. I’m sure you can see how this would be useful. The only problem is the math required the total energy annihilation of a Jupiter-sized planet to make it work. Not something very practical.

NASA’s Alcubierre

The scientists over at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) liked the idea but not the execution, so they spent a couple of decades trying to make it better. They did. They came up with a new version of the drive in simulations that only requires the mass energy of a Volkswagen Beetle. Much more practical. They are currently working on getting this thing into operation, and also to refine the engine to use less power. They came this far in two decades. What will we have in one or two more?

Spacefold, Fold, and Jump Drives

This idea is taken from our knowledge of space being wrinkled up and not the smooth sheet of classical physics. I’m not sure who first came up with the idea, but it is best described in the 1958 novel Have Space Suit, Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein. I’m sure you’ve all heard his explanation, either in Interstellar, Stanger Things, or elsewhere, but I’ll go ahead and mention it for those who aren’t sure. Take a piece of paper and draw two points on it, the star where you are and the star where you want to go. The paper is spacetime.  Draw a line across it. It takes lightyears to travel between the two stars. Now fold the paper so the two points line up. Jab the pencil through the paper. The hole is the fastest way between the two points, not the line across spacetime.

There is nothing is modern physics that says this can’t be done, and a few things that suggest it can. A subset of this would be wormhole travel, which basically does the same thing. Some other books which make use of this are Foundation by Isaac Asimov, Falcon by Emma Bull, and my own stories, where I use several different drives. I have seven methods of interstellar travel in my stories, because I figure that if it works, someone will be using it.

Hyperdrives

The idea behind hyperdrives is that there is a layer (or layers) of reality  that are beyond and yet congruent with our spacetime. Imagine another spacetime that is smaller, or where the speed of light is different. You travel at normal speed in hyperspace for a light-month, pop out into realspace, and you have traveled ten lightyears. Cool concept, and not beyond current theoretical physics. Possibly the least likely drive, but real enough that it can be backed up with some physics from hyperspace theory (a real thing) and brane or m-theory (membrane theory) that uses real observation and a lot of math to explain what science fiction authors like to throw into stories because it is cool and convenient. Some notable examples are the Babylon 5 TV series, the Honor Harrington novels by David Weber, This Alien Shore (amazing story) by C.S. Friedman,  and my own stories, where hyperdrive is the most common type of drive.

There are many other types of drives in fiction. Asimov had a cool story where the AI pilot of the starship goes insane because, just for moment during the jump, the human crew and passengers are neither alive nor dead, causing some serious confliction with the Laws of Robotics.

For non-FTL solutions, there are generation ships, solar sails, cold sleep, stasis pods, Von Neumann devices… The list is endless. Ask me in the comments if you want to know more about any of these.

Book Review: Invader, Foreigner Book Two – by C. J. Cherryh

No Author’s Answers this week, so we’ll do something a little different.

As strange as it may seem, I have only just started reading this series. Weaver has been trying to get me read it for years, but I resisted because I had read some C. J. Cherryh books in the past that I didn’t care for.

This was a mistake.

So far, of the first trilogy, I have enjoyed this book the most. I feel this is where Cherryh really hit her stride. I’m looking forward to reading the others.

For anyone who loves anthropology and linguistics, they will love this book. A huge part of it tied up in the study of the Atevi people. The natives of the planet human has colonized. The plot is mostly political, which I usually don’t enjoy, but it works here. Cherryh really shows just alien a mind can be because of a different culture. This is something I encountered when I first began to study anthropology. If you truly learn about a culture enough to become a part of it, you will forever be an outsider in the culture of your birth.

I highly recommend the series, and this book in particular, to anyone with an interest in reading a truly well thought out alien race. Granted the Atevi aren’t really that different physically, but that just helps illustrate the differences in culture and psychology.

The Kardashev Scale

Some of you may be asking what is the Kardashev Scale and why is this guy talking about it. Good questions. I’ll try to answer both.

First, I’d like to point out that the scale was a thought exercise by a Russian astrophysicist, Nikolai Kardashev in 1964. It originally had four levels, and has since been expanded to six. It is not an absolute law of the universe, it is just a convenient way to look at and understand civilizations based on energy consumption. I find it useful as a writer so that I can understand the civilizations in my stories.

Type Zero – Planet bound

This is us, the human race. Yes, our technology is so pathetic we haven’t even really gotten onto the scale yet. Some scientists believe that if we survive long enough, we’ll move into Type One in the next century or two. The present reliance on inefficient fossil fuels is holding us back. We need better power sources, and we need them soon.

All of human evolution, science, philosophy, technology, everything, has been at the bottom of the scale. One of the hardest things for people who are beginning to study anthropology to understand is how we went from something much like a chimpanzee to where we are now in just a few million years. The most startling evolution of our species has been in the last fifty thousand years.

That is so short in evolutionary terms. To understand that, you need to understand evolution, which is probably a whole blog post in itself, and you need to understand what technology really is and how it has driven us. Our ancestors banged rocks together and created the first tools. Since then, technology has driven our evolution. The creation of tools gave them an advantage. Making and using better tools was also an advantage. Technology selected humans for evolution. We made tools and tools made us. Keep that in mind as we explore what future technology might look like.

Type One – Planetary

This level of civilization utilizes the energy output of a star. We need to produce or collect a hundred thousand times the energy we have available now to be at this level. A Type One civilization would almost certainly have control of the natural processes of its home world. Most futuristic science fiction sits at this level. This is the level of science of most of the civilizations in my novels, with a couple of notable exceptions, of course. Think of the Krell from Forbidden Planet. Technology without instrumentality, right at the bottom of the scale. What would this do our evolution? Would we stop evolving or evolve even faster? There is no easy answer, but one thing is certain, we would be forever changed.

Type Two – Stellar

You thought Dyson sphere (not the vacuum) civilizations were pretty awesome, but they are near the bottom of the scale. At this level a civilization can control the energy of entire stellar system. Enclosing stars, and even moving planets is available with this much power. If you’ve read E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman, you’ll be familiar with an early idea of this level of civilization. They would probably feel like the ultimate masters of fate, and yet, they have so much to learn, so far to go. Would they even be recognizable to those Type Zero civilizations? Maybe not.

Type Three – Galactic

I know some of you may be asking if this isn’t the scale of the Galactic Patrol in Lensman. No. No, it isn’t. None of those civilizations harnessed the power of an entire galaxy. You’ll need to read some books by Stephen Baxter to see this in action. Some theories about civilizations at this scale propose networks of Dyson spheres linked to bring power back to a home system. The scale is staggering, as are the implications of technology. The technology would really be pushing evolution faster at this point, and we are only halfway along.

Type Four – Universal

These civilizations would harness the power of an entire universe. Possibilities include harnessing the expansion of the universe for power. They would have technology that would look like magic to us, and they aren’t even at the top of the scale. I won’t linger here, I think most civilizations that reach this point won’t either. Surely with much power, knowledge, and technology, a civilization will expand into other universes.

Type Five – Multiverse

What does this even look like? A civilization that harnesses not just the power of its own universe, but of other universes as well. They might even harness the power of all of them. All universes. They would seem as gods to us. We couldn’t understand their technology even if we could communicate with them. This is one of the subjects I explore in my books. What would this look like? What would they be like? How long can they stay at this level? How would evolution have shaped them?

For most purposes, anything beyond Type One is pointless to even think about, but it is fun, isn’t it?