Torn MacAlester's Blog, page 2

27 May 2025: Another Plot by Torn MacAlester

In a high-stakes game of deception and betrayal, Milton has stolen priceless artifacts from his dangerous brother, Morris, and hidden them where no one would dare look—on the Moon. Under a false identity, Milton navigates a web of family grudges and cosmic ambition, with his sister Mary as his wary ally. As they plot to outmaneuver Morris and dodge the suspicions of their egomaniacal nephew Mark, Milton sets his sights on Carmike, a desperate man who might hold the key to their next move. With hundreds of millions at stake and a trail of secrets stretching from Earth to the lunar surface, this thrilling tale of vengeance and intrigue asks: how far will Milton go to settle old scores, and who will pay the price when the truth comes to light?

 

Another Plot“Milt,” said Mary, tired of the conversation. “You didn’t really want to be an astronaut?” “No, it was a means to an end. Nothing more.” “I wish you wouldn’t antagonize our brother. He scares me.” “Morris is a fool,” Milt said. “A dangerous one. “True, we cannot underestimate him.” “Then why all this messing around with the fake identity and the trip to the Moon?” Mary asked. “I took something that he didn’t deserve to have.” “The artifacts?!” “Yes,” Milton said, nodding slightly. “They disappeared from his vault a little over two years ago.” “Brother, I realize you want to […]

 

 

Check out this and other science fiction tales at http://tornmacalester.com

Books by Torn MacAlester Torn MacAlester’s Fabulae Lunae The Lunadyne Incident  and Other Stories (buy now)

 

 

Books by Torn MacAlester

 

Fabulae Lunae 1Thunder Moon Tussle (buy now) [image error] Coming Soon

 

Fabulae Lunae 2Mask of the Joyful Moon [image error]

The post 27 May 2025: Another Plot by Torn MacAlester appeared first on Torn Macalester.

26 May 2025 : 847 by Torn MacAlester

Stranded on an uncharted island after a brutal hurricane wrecks their ship, a group of castaways clings to hope fifty-three miles from Bermuda. Sent to find help, one survivor treks along the endless beach, GPS in hand, only to discover a chilling anomaly: no matter how far he walks, the coordinates refuse to change. As the shore stretches impossibly on and the numbers taunt him with their frozen digits, he suspects this island harbors a secret far darker than isolation. In this gripping sci-fi mystery, reality unravels step by step, and the truth may be more perilous than the storm they escaped. Explore this vignette for 26 May 2025: 847 by Torn MacAlester
847 by Torn MacAlesterI headed along the beach. It had been at least ten hours since we had run aground. We had agreed that going into the interior of the island was unlikely to be useful. The jungle would hide things too well for us to find. The beach, however, would eventually reveal signs of civilization somewhere on the island. We could easily see a dock, a boat, or even a settlement on the beach. Or if the island was uninhabited, we’d meet each other on the side of the island. Mac and I flipped a coin. He’d go north, and I would […]

 

Check out this and other science fiction tales at http://tornmacalester.com

Books by Torn MacAlester Torn MacAlester’s Fabulae Lunae The Lunadyne Incident  and Other Stories (buy now)

 

 

Books by Torn MacAlester

 

Fabulae Lunae 1Thunder Moon Tussle (buy now) [image error] Coming Soon

 

Fabulae Lunae 2Mask of the Joyful Moon [image error]

The post 26 May 2025 : 847 by Torn MacAlester appeared first on Torn Macalester.

Monsters in the Dark, A New Short Story by Torn Macalester

In the frigid, uncharted expanse of the Kuiper Belt, where the Sun is but a distant pinprick in an endless void, Ian Baird stands alone—a solitary caretaker of a deep-space radio telescope array, tasked with listening for whispers of alien life. But the darkness here is more than just the absence of light; it’s a living, breathing entity that claws at the edges of his sanity. Haunted by the monsters of his own mind and the siren call of a forbidden stimulant, Ian uncovers a signal—a haunting, otherworldly music that could herald first contact or unravel his grip on reality. In Monsters in the Dark by Torn MacAlester, the vastness of space becomes a crucible where science, fear, and the unknown collide, forcing Ian to confront the shadows within and beyond the stars.Monsters in the Dark by Torn MacAlesterMonsters in the Dark By Torn MacAlester “Mister Baird,” said the Director at the inquiry. “There is a famous quote from the twentieth century. It states: ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ We have exactly that situation.” Ian noticed the shifted honorific. Officials had referred to him as Candidate Baird in all discussions up to that point, indicating that he had been a candidate for a doctorate. During the inquiry, the subtle shift suggested they had already decided about the signal. It had been the contention of several of the Saturn Science Council that Ian had failed to provide evidence of […]

 

This is a short story that was written to meet the qualifications of a Case 1 First Contact as presented in:

 

Case I of First Contact, an Article by Torn MacAlesterThis article is the first follow-on to a series on first contact.   First Contact: An Article By Torn MacAlester First contact is one of the mainstay themes of science fiction. In fact, it would not surprise me if it was the most common theme in all science fiction. To the scientist in me, I’d like to understand many of the aspects of first contact and figure out what the most likely case of contact would be. Thus, I undertook this analysis to estimate what I might do for my world building for my stories. First off, in science fiction, […]Now Available Torn MacAlester’s Fabulae Lunae The Lunadyne Incident  and Other Stories (buy now)

 

 

Available Now

 

Fabulae Lunae 1Thunder Moon Tussle (buy now) [image error] Coming in 2025

 

Fabulae Lunae 2Mask of the Joyful Moon [image error]

The post Monsters in the Dark, A New Short Story by Torn Macalester appeared first on Torn Macalester.

IQE a New Vignette by Torn MacAlester

When does instant communications become a liability? Check out this new Vignette.

 

IQE by Torn MacAlesterIQE by Torn MacAlester 1 It was a strange situation. I needed to be in three places at once. Of course, I was stuck on the Endeavor eighteen years on its way on a forty-year journey to Proxima. I also needed to be on the ship arriving at Proxima that very month. And, if all wasn’t hard enough, I needed to attend the directors’ meetings on Earth. Instant communications made that possible, the instant communications of quantum entanglement, or IQE. The IQE allowed me to inhabit a robot at the other end of the communications connections. I saw through its […]Now Available Torn MacAlester’s Fabulae Lunae The Lunadyne Incident  and Other Stories (buy now)

 

 

Available Now

 

Fabulae Lunae 1Thunder Moon Tussle (buy now) [image error] Coming in 2025

 

Fabulae Lunae 2Mask of the Joyful Moon [image error]

The post IQE a New Vignette by Torn MacAlester appeared first on Torn Macalester.

Case I of First Contact, an Article by Torn MacAlester

This article is the first follow-on to a series on first contact.

 

First Contact: An Article By Torn MacAlesterFirst contact is one of the mainstay themes of science fiction. In fact, it would not surprise me if it was the most common theme in all science fiction. To the scientist in me, I’d like to understand many of the aspects of first contact and figure out what the most likely case of contact would be. Thus, I undertook this analysis to estimate what I might do for my world building for my stories. First off, in science fiction, we have cases where there are both slower than light travel and faster than light (FTL) travel. So, I will […]

 

This is part of a series of articles about science fiction world building:

World Building for Science FictionImage by Snapwire on pexels I wanted to share some insight into the world building process that I am using in my science fiction stories. First off, most would call my science fiction as ‘Hard’ science fiction because of my use of scientific rigor when developing my stories. For myself, it’s part of the reason for storytelling. The situations I like to consider an interesting science or engineering problem as part of my story. As part of that effort, I try to keep the science as correct as possible. The question that every science fiction author faces at some point […]Introduction

From the moment the first experiments with radio began, the possibility of detecting alien transmissions became real. If there was an advanced civilization on Mars, it would be likely that we could detect their transmissions because of its proximity. We can find alien signals with mature radio astronomy. The real possibility of hearing aliens became real. As pointed out before, once a civilization develops radio, it sends out its calling card into the Universe. It is only a matter of time before that signal reaches a distance in which an alien receiver will detect it. The entire SETI program is an effort to detect those signals. As of this writing, apart from some unusual non-repeated and unconfirmed signals detected, SETI has noticed nothing. In fact, SETI has put some serious constraints upon what can exist within our own galaxy.

Scientific Evidence

We have found no evidence of extremely advanced civilizations, like class II civilizations, having the energy use of an entire star. This does not mean that they do not exist, but it means that they didn’t exist when the light left that distant part of the galaxy. For example, the most distant part of the galaxy is about 70,000 light years away. A class II civilization would have to emerge more recently than 70,000 years ago to prevent us from detecting them. That there is no detection implies that a collapsed ancient alien class II civilization must have fallen over 70,000 years ago.

The lack of detection also indicates that there are not any Earth level technologies within one hundred light years of Earth. If they were there, we would have detected them. With better technology, the lack of detection narrows down the potential alien civilizations. Discovery of ancient alien artifacts is also part of this case. The dating of the artifact provides clues about the alien civilization’s location and status. If they were still active, we could detect their radio signals. The absence of any detection is as significant and fascinating as discovering an alien civilization.

Carl Sagan’s Contact

Carl Sagan well described this case in Contact. In the story, the researchers, led by Dr. Ellie Arroway, detect the large unambiguous signal from the star Vega:

Briskly she entered the control area and approached the main console.

“Evening, Willie, Steve. Let’s see the data. Good. Now where did you tuck away the amplitude plot? Good. Do you have the interferometric position? Okay. Now let’s see if there’s any nearby star in that field of view. Oh my, we’re looking at Vega. That’s a pretty near neighbor.”

Her fingers were punching away at a keyboard as she talked.

“Look, it’s only twenty-six light-years away. It’s been observed before, always with negative results. I looked at it myself in my first Arecibo survey. What’s the absolute intensity? Holy smoke. That’s hundreds of janskys. You could practically pick that up on your FM radio.

“Okay. So we have a bogey very near to Vega in the plane of the sky. It’s at a frequency around 9.2 gigahertz, not very monochromatic: The bandwidth is a few hundred hertz. It’s linearly polarized and it’s transmitting a set of moving pulses restricted to two different amplitudes.” ‑Contact, Carl Sagan, Chapter 4.

The brightness is huge. A hundred Jansky’s is bright for an astronomical radio source, though not the brightest. Figure 1 below shows the Contact source on a graph of the spectrum of radio sources. Because of its brightness, only some of the brightest radio objects in the sky are brighter. At the scale of this graph, the bandwidth of a few hundred Hertz is negligible. Natural objects have much larger bandwidths and produce a spectrum of signal across many frequencies.

The content of the message is unambiguous at first. It is the counting of the prime numbers. Since there is no natural phenomenon to generate prime numbers, the signal by definition is from some kind of intelligence.

 

 

Message from Vega

Next, the location of the source is the star Vega. Pointing the radio antennas off axis (away from the signal source) caused the signal to fade; this validated the location. The center strongest point of the signal is the star Vega. The bigger the antenna that is used, makes this a tighter circle of focus (like a zoom for an optical lens). In the story, one character suggests someone faked the signal. This would have been impossible. Satellites do not move like stars. For each observer on the Earth, the place in the sky where the satellite would be located is different for each observer. Geostationary orbit only fixes the position of the satellite as seen from the ground. The satellite would still move across the night sky. Fixing the satellite against the night sky would require considerable distance-nearly the edge of the solar system. And the motion would be contrary to any orbit that gets it out far enough not to be noticed would not move correctly. I’m sure Dr. Sagan was well aware of these facts. I think it was a convenient point to use a literary license for the story.

 

Up to this point in the novel, this is a Case I first contact. Humanity has detected a transmission from an alien civilization. The discovery of the message’s additional content showed that the aliens were responding to a human message they had received. Consequently, Contact changes to a Case II first contact.

Clarke’s 2001

Another Case I first contact is presented in 2001 A Space Odyssey by Arthur Clarke. Here, humanity discovers an alien artifact on the Moon. The artifact’s alien origin is undisputed, and it left an unmistakable non-natural signature, revealing its presence. Although buried, its anomalous magnetic signature, dubbed Tycho Magnetic Anomaly one (TMA‑1), led to its discovery.

Another picture flashed on the screen; it looked like a contour map, though it showed magnetic intensity, not heights above sea level, the lines were roughly parallel and spaced well apart; but in one corner of the map they became suddenly packed together, to form a series of concentric circles-like a drawing of a knothole in a piece of wood.

                Even to an untrained eye, it was obvious that something peculiar had happened to the Moon’s magnetic field in that region; and in large letters across the bottom of the map were the words: TYCHO MAGNETIC ANOMALY-ONE (TMA‑1). Arthur C. Clarke 2001: A Space Odyssey chapter 11.

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Digging up the artifact revealed the Monolith which signaled Saturn. (Note the novel is a journey to Saturn instead of a journey to Jupiter. The artifact excavation revealed that the Monolith builders had left behind the monoliths on the Moon and at Saturn for them. Though 2001 stipulates that the aliens had visited humanity in the distant past, there is no sign that the aliens received our radio transmission or found any of our artifacts. Other than the signal to Saturn, the aliens of 2001 had sent no detectable signals.

 

Upon reaching Saturn, we discover the aliens possess faster than light capabilities. We could classify this as a case III contact. However, the original short story of Clarke’s for which 2001: a Space Odyssey is based,

Now Available Torn MacAlester’s Fabulae Lunae The Lunadyne Incident  and Other Stories (buy now)

 

 

Available Now

 

Fabulae Lunae 1Thunder Moon Tussle (buy now) [image error] Coming in 2025

 

Fabulae Lunae 2Mask of the Joyful Moon [image error]

The post Case I of First Contact, an Article by Torn MacAlester appeared first on Torn Macalester.

Worldbuilding for Science Fiction 8 Apr 2025

In the sub-genre of hard science fiction, an attempt is made to ensure that the science in the story is somewhat correct. One issue that I have been following is the possibility of life on exoplanets. Anton gives a wonderful update on the DMS possibility on K2-18b.

—

Even though the detection has been questioned. It opens up additional possibilities of non-life worlds we could expect across the universe.

World Building for Science FictionImage by Snapwire on pexels I wanted to share some insight into the world building process that I am using in my science fiction stories. First off, most would call my science fiction as ‘Hard’ science fiction because of my use of scientific rigor when developing my stories. For myself, it’s part of the reason for storytelling. The situations I like to consider an interesting science or engineering problem as part of my story. As part of that effort, I try to keep the science as correct as possible. The question that every science fiction author faces at some point […]Now Available Torn MacAlester’s Fabulae Lunae The Lunadyne Incident  and Other Stories (buy now)

 

 

Available Now

 

Fabulae Lunae 1Thunder Moon Tussle (buy now) [image error] Coming in 2025

 

Fabulae Lunae 2Mask of the Joyful Moon [image error]

The post Worldbuilding for Science Fiction 8 Apr 2025 appeared first on Torn Macalester.

Rejection by Torn Macalester 3 April 2025

A near future science fiction vignette by Torn MacAlester

 

RejectionBy Torn MacAlester Photo by Life Of Pix from Pexels “Deputy Miller, a serious situation has risen.” Alex said, cleaning a lunar beer mug as he spoke. “Like what?” Miller answered, clearly disinterested in the Conrad Station barkeep’s current crisis.  She checked her watch. Miller knew Nils Carmike’s schedule like the back of her hand. He would soon dock. “We need more people in the bar or else I will have to raise the price of drinks.” “What do you want me to do about it?” She asked, not really caring what he would ask. “If you can get some more people to […]

 

Now Available Torn MacAlester’s Fabulae Lunae The Lunadyne Incident  and Other Stories (buy now)

 

 

Available Now

 

Fabulae Lunae 1Thunder Moon Tussle (buy now) [image error] Coming in 2025

 

Fabulae Lunae 2Mask of the Joyful Moon [image error]

The post Rejection by Torn Macalester 3 April 2025 appeared first on Torn Macalester.

Story Glossary: Steamboat

Lunar Lander

Steamboat (Lunar Lander from “Golf and Outgassing”): This is the primary spacecraft used by Annie MacInturner and Milton Johnson for their mission in the Fra Mauro region. Steamboat is a modern lunar lander designed for a two-day surface stay. It comprises a descent stage, which remains on the lunar surface (similar to Apollo landers), and an ascent module that returns the crew to lunar orbit. Annie showed the manual flight of the ascent module when she used a contingency trajectory to escape a critical situation. It acts as a communications relay, and mission control can remotely or manually shut down its power systems, demonstrating high control flexibility. The lander’s position, approximately 1,300 meters from the Apollo 14 descent stage, suggests a compact yet precise landing capability. Mose Crane and Nils Carmike subsequently used this design of lander for their lunar landing on the rim of a crater near the Lunar south pole (“Descent into Darkness”).

Now Available Torn MacAlester’s Fabulae Lunae The Lunadyne Incident  and Other Stories (buy now)

 

 

Available Now

 

Fabulae Lunae 1Thunder Moon Tussle (buy now) [image error] Coming in 2025

 

Fabulae Lunae 2Mask of the Joyful Moon [image error]

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Is Colonization of Moon or Mars the Same Paradigm as Colonizing New Lands in the Past?

So can we colonize space like homo sapiens moving out of Africa in the stone age, or like the Pilgrims colonized Massachusetts in the 1600s? How about crossing the land bridge to the Americas during the ice ages?

The success of those efforts built upon two things:

The stuff they brought with them, andThe stuff they found and used.

The 3‑D printer fits as the hybrid of 1 & 2, allowing a smart manifest of things to bring to space. It is the equivalent of bringing an axe to cut down a tree. Here we use dirt to make habitats. Check out this article for more.

3D printing will help space pioneers make homes, tools and other stuff they need to colonize the Moon and Mars3D printing in outer space and on alien planets comes with otherworldly challenges.Now Available Torn MacAlester’s Fabulae Lunae The Lunadyne Incident  and Other Stories (buy now)

 

 

Available Now

 

Fabulae Lunae 1Thunder Moon Tussle (buy now) [image error] Coming in 2025

 

Fabulae Lunae 2Mask of the Joyful Moon [image error]

The post Is Colonization of Moon or Mars the Same Paradigm as Colonizing New Lands in the Past? appeared first on Torn Macalester.

A Review of Black Hole Radio: Furilani by Ann Birdgenaw

Review: Black Hole Radio: Furilani by Ann BirdgenawBlack Hole Radio: Furilani by Ann Birdgenaw Great Science Fiction for Younger Readers Ann Birdgenaw has brought forth another in her series of Black Hole Radio stories with the Furilani adventure. The adventurous kids, Hawk, Matt, and Celeste in the story use the Black Hole Radio, a relic from Hawk’s grandfather’s shop to travel to many worlds, in this case Furilani.  A species of furry sentient creatures called sploots populate the planet Furilani. The kids convince an exploitive alien business professional V’alvlax to prevent sploots from being used as a living adornment for aliens, something that the sploots are resistant […]

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