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

Spotlight On Indie Science Fiction & Fantasy

Thanks to Spotlight on Indie for putting my novel Zero Point in the carousel. Click the Pic to go to the site and see my book and others.

Science of The Einstein Nexus

Image: Bruce Rolff

My current work in progress, The Einstein Nexus, is my first to deal with time travel. The supporting extrapolated science is described below.

The Science

In 1935 Einstein and Rosen wrote a paper in which the Einstein-Rosen Bridge was introduced. This appeared to be a “bridge” between widely separated regions of the universe. At the middle of the bridge was a singularity. 50 years later, the results were used by Throne and Morris to construct traversable wormholes. But there is another interpretation of the bridge, that is, at the singularity, the arrow of time reverses.

Trillion Year Spree

In 1986, Brian Aldiss, in his book Trillion Year Spree, had this to say about science fiction coming out of the 60s:

In 1969, Donald Wollheim, then guiding light of Ace Books, published an anthology called Men on the Moon. He persuaded twenty-seven writers to give their views on the first lunar landing, which took place in July of that year. Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, E. C. Tubb, Alan Nourse, and others had their say.

Only Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, and Poul Anderson were full of unqualified praise and excitement. Most of the authors
took a very sceptical view of the proceedings. The phrase on the plaque, “We Come in Peace for All Mankind”, stuck in their gullets; they started remembering the Indians.

Michael Moorcock quoted J. G. Ballard's wry remark: “If I were a Martian I'd start running now!” Isaac Asimov hoped we

MarsX

My next release is a novel called MarsX. It is the story of how mankind settles the red planet. Except, it's not the usual story. The motivation is the key, and that's tied to the development of AI.

When I wrote the three novelettes that became this novel, development in AI was not entering the knee of the exponential as it appears to be now. The AI in the story naturally developed into a much bigger role than I planned. Looking back almost a year later, what I thought was years away may be directly ahead. The frontier AI companies think super-AI is close, I don't know, but the difference between fiction and fact continues to compress.

The paperback will be available at online stores April 20, the eBook May 20. If you would like to read it before then, it is

Anti-Science Visionary

Image: Frank R. Paul, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

H.G. Wells is well known for his early science fiction. While providing exciting stories and thought-provoking scenarios the reader may believe that Wells was a science and technology optimist. But upon further reflection they might note that the stories and novels carried an undercurrent of foreboding. They were essentially a warning siren for scientific apocalypse, though he changed his mind later and found a way to use science and technology to enable his utopias, Wells was at the start of his writing career a science and technology pessimist. Looking at the short story Lord of the Dynamos Wells's early attitude towards technology and science can be examined.

Based Book Sale Last Days

Zero Point: A Quantum Adventure is number four in the Based Book Sale on Substack. All books are 99 cents or free. Here's the update from the organizer:

D.W. Patterson is in fourth with 25 sales for Zero Point: A Quantum Adventure. Jack Carson had a stroke of luck; a great-uncle had left him land in Arizona. But that’s when Jack’s luck began to change, mysterious sights and sounds threatened to make his inheritance worthless as a center for the study of physics. Marta Merritt decided to help, and she didn’t think it a mystery, she thought it was an artifact of a forgotten physics theory called pilot-wave mechanics.

Patterson definitely grabbed me with “pilot-wave mechanics.” Check this one out!

What a Beautiful World This Will Be

(Title from Donald Fagen, IGY Lyrics).

The CEO, Dario Amodei, of Anthropic, one of the leading AI labs believes that strong AI is only 1-2 years away, probably 2027. And once strong AI is available, 100 years of progress in biology, medicine, economics, etc. will happen in 5-10 years, or 2032-2037.

As I [Dario Modei] wrote in Machines of Loving Grace [Essay, October 2024], powerful AI could be as little as 1–2 years away, although it could also be considerably further out.

I think the best way to get a handle on the risks of AI is to ask the following question: suppose a literal “country of geniuses” were to materialize somewhere in the world in ~2027. [From The Adolescence of Technology – Amodei, January 2026]

To summarize the above, my basic prediction is that AI-enabled biology and medicine will allow us to compress the progress that human biologists would have achieved over the next 50-100 years into 5-10 years. I’ll refer to this as the “compressed 21st century”: the idea that after powerful AI is developed, we will in a few years make all the progress in biology and medicine that we would have made in the whole 21st century.

Possibilities (Predictions):

Reliable prevention and treatment of nearly all natural infectious disease. [Fast evolving strains like those that develop in hospitals may be more difficult to eradicate].

Zero Point Available

My new novel Zero Point is now available at a special price on my website and will be available everywhere February 7.

The blurb:

Jack Carson had a stroke of luck; a great-uncle had left him land in Arizona.

But that's when Jack's luck began to change, mysterious sights and sounds threatened to make his inheritance worthless as a center for the study of physics.

Marta Merritt decided to help, and she didn't think it a mystery, she thought it was an artifact of a forgotten physics theory called pilot-wave mechanics.

To build the center they would have to find out, and they would have to stay alive to do so.

AI 2027

 

AI 2027 is a roadmap for developing AI. It was created by the AI Futures Project in 2025. It lists several technologies and predicts when they might occur from now until 2030. I have taken the technologies and grouped them into AI 2027's three groupings, Exists, Emerging, and Science Fiction. Then I note as the years pass which group each technology moves to, the final being existing. Note that this is their original prediction, some things may have changed, see their website and blog for more.

Mid 2025

Exists

Image Recognition

Game Learner

Language interpreter

Creative writer

Robotaxi

Image generator

Code interpreter

Conversational AI

Expert chatbot (PhD levels)

World forces - H.G. Wells

Photograph by George Charles Beresford

As Wells looked back from the vantage point of 1934:

World forces were at work tending to disperse the aristocratic system in Europe, to abolish small traders, to make work in the retail trades less independent and satisfactory, to promote industrial co-ordination, increase productivity, necessitate new and better informed classes, evoke a new type of education and make it universal, break down political boundaries everywhere and bring all men into one planetary community. The story of my father and mother and all my family is just the story of so many individual particles in the great mass of humanity that was driving before the sweep of these as yet imperfectly apprehended powers of synthesis.... An outburst of discovery and invention in material things and of innovation in business and financial method, has, we realize, released so much human energy that, firstly, the need for sustained toil from anyone has been abolished, secondly, practically all parts of the world have been brought into closer interaction than were York to London three centuries ago and, thirdly, the destructive impulses of men have been so equipped, that it is no longer possible to contemplate a planet in which unconditioned war is even a remote possibility. 

We are waking up to the fact that a planned world- state governing the complex of human activities for the common good, however difficult to attain, has become imperative, and that until it is achieved, the history of the race must be now inevitably a record of catastrophic convulsions shot with mere glimpses and phases of temporary good luck. We are, as a species, caught in an irreversible process. No real going back to the old, comparatively stable condition of things is possible; set-backs will only prolong the tale of our racial disaster. We are therefore impelled to reconstruct the social and economic organization until the new conditions are satisfied.

Social Cohesion

Image: Public Domain, Bertrand Russell 1936

It is clear that each party to this dispute – as to all that persist through long periods of time – is partly right and partly wrong. Social cohesion is a necessity, and mankind has never yet succeeded in enforcing cohesion by merely rational arguments. Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers: ossification through too much discipline and reverence for tradition, on the one hand; on the other hand, dissolution, or subjection to foreign conquest, through the growth of an individualism and personal independence that makes co-operation impossible. In general, important civilizations start with a rigid and superstitious system, gradually relaxed, and leading, at a certain stage, to a period of brilliant genius, while the good of the old tradition remains and the evil inherent in its dissolution has not yet developed. But as the evil unfolds, it leads to anarchy, thence, inevitably, to a new tyranny, producing a new synthesis secured by a new system of dogma. The doctrine of liberalism is an attempt to escape from this endless oscillation. The essence of liberalism is an attempt to secure a social order not based on irrational dogma, and insuring stability without involving more restraints than are necessary for the preservation of the community. Whether this attempt can succeed only the future can determine.

From History of Western Philosophy

Ultra-Intelligent Machines - James Gunn

Erewhon (1872) attacks what The Coming Race idealizes. Samuel Butler's narrator finds in the interior of New Zealand an advanced civilization which has discarded machinery because by a process of evolution machinery would develop consciousness, enslave man, and finally supersede him. In this connection we might compare Arthur Clarke's speculation that man is the organic, evolutionary bridge between the inorganic and the ultra-intelligent machine which may well be man's successor.

From Alternate Worlds

Zero Point - A Quantum Story

Currently, I am writing a story called Zero Point. Some of the science in the story is based on the pilot-wave theory that Louis de Broglie first proposed in the 1920s, when he also proposed that particles had wave-like features. Basically, the theory says that a particle such as an electron is associated with a wave (pilot) which influences its physical properties, such as momentum. Since each particle has a guiding wave then experiments such as the famous double-slit experiment of quantum mechanics can be explained (that is, an interference pattern is generated by particles traveling through two closely spaced slits, not what would be expected classically.

Now, there is a lot of development in a physics discipline called Hydrodynamic Quantum Analogs which are macro-experiments that show quantum-like behaviors. I'll let John Bush of MIT, who is a leading researcher in the field explain it:

In 2005, Yves Couder and Emmanuel Fort discovered that droplets walking on a vibrating fluid bath exhibit features previously thought to be peculiar to the quantum realm. Since 2010, this hydrodynamic system has been the focus of my group’s research. Particular attention has been given to identifying new hydrodynamic quantum analogs in the laboratory, and to rationalizing the emergent quantum-like behaviour theoretically. We have also developed and explored theoretically a broader class of pilot-wave systems that provide a mathematical bridge between the walking-droplet system and the dynamics proposed by Louis de Broglie and others for the microscopic, quantum realm. For an overview, I suggest reading the reviews on the subject, especially the most recent one, Hydrodynamic Quantum Analogs, as appeared in 2020 in Reviews of Progress in Physics.

(From his website: https://thales.mit.edu/bush/index.php/4801-2/)

So, what am I doing with pilot-waves in the story?

Hard Science Fiction - Old School

D.W. Patterson here, writer of Hard Science Fiction - Old School.

I write two types of hard science fiction. The first uses lightly extrapolated science, usually in a near-term setting, and includes such titles as my novel L4 Station, and the novella series MarsX.

The second uses highly extrapolated science, which I will call speculative hard science fiction, usually in a distant time, and includes the Mach Series, the Null Infinity Series, and the Time Series.

They are both based on current science research or technology that I’ve read about, but with a different emphasis on the degree of difficulty in implementation. Extrapolated hard science fiction needs only the engineering, though that may be years/decades away. Speculative hard science fiction needs more research, maybe further development of theory and might be decades/centuries away.

My style of writing could be considered big idea and adventure with a touch of romance (sometimes). One reviewer compared my writing to Isaac Asimov’s writing. I love Asimov, and I think that’s a fair comparison in the scope of the work, importance of ideas, and general optimism, but I do think I handle characterization differently, maybe because it interests me more.

My latest (12/25) extrapolated hard science fiction releases are L4 Station, and the MarsX series.

My latest (12/25) speculative hard science fiction releases are the Brane World series and the novel Zero Point.

AI Infrastructure

Image: ID 161808213 © 3000ad | Dreamstime

It seems Open AI has raised another 100B to expand their infrastructure. In my novella series MarsX I had the AI building giant manufacturing plants to expand its infrastructure. But in the novella the AI built AFTER it became intelligent not BEFORE.

Excerpt from Book 1:

Two years later the three were flying back to Novara from DC where they had first gone to be received by the president who honored them for their work in getting two million more people to Mars. They had then taken a trip to the company's manufacturing plant north of Atlanta for a tour of some of the new production lines Harold and Robert had designed. It had been a farewell tour though, because shortly after they got back, they would be taking off for Mars on one of the last ships to leave during this Mars-Earth alignment. The three were sitting beside each other on the airliner, where they could talk.

“It's been a long, strange trip,” said Harold.