Based Book Summer 2026 Sale

The summer Based Book Sale is in its fourth day. These are simply books (334 examples) that have no agenda except to tell a good story (of course, humans being humans, there are deeply held world views that influence that story).

My book MarsX is currently tied for twentieth place in sales. Your support is appreciated, if not for me, then for one of the other writers in the sale, almost all of us are independents.

Buy a book for 99 cents or free here: Based Book Summer 2026.

MarsX: The Novel - Part 2

Image – ID 218650378 | Mars © 3000ad | Dreamstime.com

As I was working on the novelettes that became the novel MarsX, I happened across the AI 2027 forecast (you can read it here AI 2027) about the forthcoming development of super-AI. All the forecasting in AI 2027 is fascinating to read but I want to cover the part that particularly influenced my novel. It is towards the end of the forecast when you can choose between the “race” or “slow” ending. The “race” ending was particularly science fictional to me (not in the sense that I question its verity, it may come true, but in the audaciousness of its prediction).

MarsX the Novel

Image – ID 218650378 | Mars © 3000ad | Dreamstime.com

I will soon be releasing the eBook version of MarsX, which is a novel combining the three novelettes MarsX1, MarsX2, and MarsX3. The epigraph of the book is a quote from Elon Musk:

“The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it's going to become multiplanetary, or it's going to remain confined to one planet, and eventually there's going to be an extinction event.”

Future Chron Universe Chronology

Image: Standard Model of Particle Physics in the Future Chron Universe. Note The Chron, Chron+ and Chron- additions that make their appearance in the Time Series of that universe.

Before I began the stories in the Future Chron Universe I prepared a chronology. This is not to be taken as a prediction of the future, but as a history of Future Chron, though of course, it is a future history which uses a lot of Earth history.

Anyway, it was written sometime in 2014, the year before I started writing. The first two stories were finished at the end of 2016.

Looking at 2026, the year this was written, I see that I had men on the Moon and robots causing unemployment. Of course, men are not on the Moon, though they just went around it, and humanoid robots are just beginning to move into industry, but if we include all AI, the job losses have begun. Never mind, as I said, it's not about this world but the Future Chron world. You can find the chronology here: Future Chron Chronology.

Art & Science of the Future Chron Universe

Image: Bruce Rolff

For me, one of the more fun things about writing science fiction stories is the opportunity to develop the future science and technology that supports the narrative. This usually starts with reading a new science paper online or a popular explanation of new science in a magazine or scientific paper. Often, I will start a story to explicate that science. I will extrapolate in the story with the goal of making the science and technology fascinating and plausible.

No matter how far I extrapolate I always try to keep it consistent. I try not to just invent a technology from nothing but try to develop it and extend it in a natural, logical manner.

Across the whole of the Future Chron Universe, I postulated quite a bit of future science and technology. I kept notes and presented many of these notes, polished for publication, in the stories. But sometimes the development of the science was in the narrative and not in a separate file. I eventually wanted to assemble all these notes into one book or file and the link below is the result, so far.

Art & Science of Future Chron