Starting a blog.
Hi, I'm Laurence (goes by Laury) Dahners and I write science fiction. I've mostly published on Amazon since I love the Kindle. A lot of readers communicated with me and other readers on the Amazon Author's Forums, but those don't seem to be getting much support any more and there have been a lot of complaints.
So I thought I'd start a blog here on GoodReads as well as responding to "Ask the Author" questions that are posted on this site.
I'm not sure how well this will work for those of you who like to have discussions that don't necessarily involve me? Let me know if you're aware of a way for me to facilitate such discussion that I may not be aware of.
Hope this works for at least some of you who like to express your opinions!
Laury Dahners
So I thought I'd start a blog here on GoodReads as well as responding to "Ask the Author" questions that are posted on this site.
I'm not sure how well this will work for those of you who like to have discussions that don't necessarily involve me? Let me know if you're aware of a way for me to facilitate such discussion that I may not be aware of.
Hope this works for at least some of you who like to express your opinions!
Laury Dahners
Hi! I was wondering how your next story was coming along. Are you going with the Porter/Guitar Girl adjacent story, or are you going in a different direction?
For those of you who enjoy audiobooks, The Mistress of Space-Time (The Stasis Stories #7) is now available on Audible.
Sorry that Goodreads doesn't allow me to include a link anymore.
I hope you enjoy it!
--
Laury
Dana wrote: "Hi! I was wondering how your next story was coming along. Are you going with the Porter/Guitar Girl adjacent story, or are you going in a different direction?"Hi, Dana,
I'm working on a book about a kid who can slow time (or make himself fast - however you want to look at it) and what that lets him do.
He's going to encounter Allie, the guitar girl from Porter and hopefully they'll be able to combine their talents in some fashion (I write to see what happens, without any fully fleshed idea where a story's going to go).
I'm hoping you'll enjoy my take on the timestopper idea.
Laury Dahners
Thanks for the reply, I'm looking forward to the new book sounds like it will be fun.
Have you ever thought of doing a do over book. A Freash Start is one that i loved. PC Allen also has a good sent back in time story also. With these type of book its the planning, or using knowleadge that make them fun for me. Would like take on them
Hey Kevin, I've thought of it.
I have a short story, "Billy Benoit" in my compilation of short stories called "Six Bits" that's about a guy sent back in time.
Also, the "Bonesetter" books are about a kid in caveman times who's figuring out the technology of the day (starting fires, spear throwers, etc.
I may do something more someday. Right now I'm writing a book about a young man who can speed up and slow down time around him. I'm finding it quite a bit of fun to write. Hopefully readers will enjoy it too!
Thanks for your interest!
Laury Dahners
Hi,For those of you who like audiobooks, BIoterror, an Ell Donsaii story #14 is now available on Audible and Amazon. Hope you enjoy it!
Laury Dahners
Hi any news on El or her kid Zage coming out soon? Lol getting Donsaii withdrawl you can only read things over so many times!
Sorry, Joe,Haven't had an Ellspiration yet, though I do think about those stories pretty fondly.
I'm nearly done with one about a kid who can control how fast time moves around him - let's him do some interesting things.
Hopefully you'll like it enough to take your mind off Ell for a bit.
Laury Dahners
A pity we can't buy you a big dose of Ellspiration.
KurtHah!
Have you checked Amazon?
Laury
For those who are interested, I've got a new book "Fast-Time at Aldmont High" coming out and it's available now for pre order on Amazon.
Sorry I can't put links on Goodreads.
Or, of course, you could also wait to order it when it's available on March 17th.
Below is the blurb:
This hard Sci-Fi novel is the first book of the “Time-Flow Stories,” a series of tales about Witt Ryllin, a young man who abruptly gains the ability to psychically control the flow of time.
In it, he navigates the plights of his senior year in high school. At the same time, his mom and family are struggling with issues arising from his parents’ recent divorce and the financial problems caused by his father’s drinking and subsequent loss of employment.
Witt first realizes he has a talent for controlling the flow of time when one of the football players throws a punch at him—for the sin of talking to the big guy’s girlfriend. Time slows around Witt and he suddenly finds himself easily able to dodge the blow.
Witt’s aptitude for science and math stands him in good stead as he tries to understand why colors change and light dims when his personal time-flow speeds up.
It also helps him understand some of the things his new ability might enable him to do. He sets to work, figuring out how to use his new gift to help his family and perhaps even improve his college prospects. This is far from as easy as he’d first hoped.
Through all this he must deal with his sarcastic friend Jesse. A friend who’s sometimes helpful, but at least as often a big part of the problem.
Oh, and Witt’s got girl trouble!
Laury Dahners
Laurence wrote: "Hah!Have you checked Amazon?
Laury"
Nothing! I'm crushed. I was able to find a recliner and a giant u-bolt.
Hey, do you play golf?
jk
Kurt,I played a lot as a kid, now I only play to socialize, shooting around 90 usually.
It's a frustrating game
Laury
Laurence wrote: "Kurt,I played a lot as a kid, now I only play to socialize, shooting around 90 usually.
It's a frustrating game
Laury"
I was joking about giving you the "presidential" treatment to get some time focused on Ell's next adventures. I'm a much better comedian in my own head, honest.
Kurt
Hah,My head's the same way! Hilarious
Laury
Magnificently marvelous day Laury!Just finished the excellent Fast Times book. Thanks for another fascinating, hard-to-put-down story! I don't suppose you have a 'fast time' mode so you can write the next one quickly so we don't have to wait so long for the next book?
Cheers, Doug
DougVC,Thanks,
Very glad you liked it.
Laury
Please sir, may we have some more? I was curious if you've started your next book, and where you might be going with it?
Dana,Thanks for your interest!
I'm writing #2 in the Time-Flow series (Witt Ryllin and his ability to control the speed of time from "Fast-Time at Aldmont High).
I realized it'd be interesting if he met Roni and Hax from the "Blindspot" books so they're encountering each other in college.
It's been a lot of fun to write and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
Laury Dahners
Hi Doc,Glad to hear that you are pulling these series together! It will be interesting to see what Allie, Witt, Roni, and Hax get up to. I just reread the Blind Spot series to get up to speed on it. I had hoped you would do more with both that scenario (Blind Spot) and the guitar girl scenario, so it’s nice that you will be integrating them all in the Fast Times story. I look forward to seeing what you do with the continuing series!
Best,
Brent
Thanks!It's fun for me, hopefully you'll like it as a side effect of that.
Laury Dahners
SCALING and why it is very very difficult to get it rightThis is a discussion of scaling from a physics point of view. I am well aware that given a choice between a good story and accurate physics an author's job is to go with the story. I thought you still
light find this interesting. If it's all old hat to you, I apologize for insulting your intelligence.
Consider Witt Ryllin's time bubble. To Witt, the physics and chemistry of the matter inside his bubble, is the same as the physics and chemistry of the world outside his bubble -- it's just that in volume inside the bubble time is running 400 times the speed of the outside world. Let me call the unit of time inside the bubble a bubble second, or bsec. Inside the bubble a bubble second feels to Witt like a second feels in the normal world. (We'll define bubble meters (bm) and bubble grams (bgm) similarly.) Then
bsec = 1/400 sec.
The physical constants Witt observes inside his bubble must be the same as those outside for physics and chemistry to work the same way in both places. For the speed of light this means
c = 2.998 * 10^^8 m/sec = 2.998 * 10^^8 bm/bsec
so
bm = 1/400 m
So a 180 cm tall man would be only .45 cm tall inside the bubble.
Similarly, plank's constant must be the same in both places so
h = 6.626 * 10^^−34 kg*m*m/sec = 6.626 * 10^^−34 bkg*bm*bm/bsec
implies:
bgm = 400 gm
Just to rub it in, the density of water inside the bubble is:
1 bgm/bcm^^3 = (400)^^4 gm/cm^^3 = 2.56 * 10^^10 gm/cm^^3
That's between the density of a white dwarf and a neutron star.
SCALING and why it is very very difficult to get it rightThis is a discussion of scaling from a physics point of view. I am well aware that given a choice between a good story and accurate physics an author's job is to go with the story. I thought you still might find this interesting. If it's all old hat to you, I apologize for insulting your intelligence.
Consider Witt Ryllin's time bubble. To Witt, the physics and chemistry of the matter inside his bubble, is the same as the physics and chemistry of the world outside his bubble -- it's just that in volume inside the bubble time is running 400 times the speed of the outside world. Let me call the unit of time inside the bubble a bubble second, or bsec. Inside the bubble a bubble second feels to Witt like a second feels in the normal world. (We'll define bubble meters (bm) and bubble grams (bgm) similarly.)
Then:
bsec = 1/400 sec.
The physical constants Witt observes inside his bubble must
be the same as those outside for physics and chemistry to work
the same way in both places. For the speed of light this means
c = 2.998 * 10^^8 m/sec = 2.998 * 10^^8 bm/bsec
so
bm = 1/400 m
So a 180 cm tall man would be only .45 cm tall inside the bubble.
Similarly, plank's constant must be the same in both places so
h = 6.626 * 10^^−34 kg*m*m/sec = 6.626 * 10^^−34 bkg*bm*bm/bsec
implies:
bgm = 400 gm
Just to rub it in, the density of water inside the bubble is:
1 bgm/bcm^^3 = (400)^^4 gm/cm^^3 = 2.56 * 10^^10 gm/cm^^3
That's between the density of a white dwarf and a neutron star.
Donald,Thanks for your comments!
There are endless problems with "time-stopper" stories if you try to keep to real science.
But they're so dang fun to read and write!
I hope you'll be willing to suspend your disbelief for a couple more books.
Laury Dahners
Hi,I’m really enjoying the Ell Donsaii series. Your stories are fun to read (and listen to) and I love the inventiveness, integrity and positivity of the characters. Are there plans for the last two books in the series to be available through Audible? I listen to them while exercising.
John
John, It's great to hear you like them!
Laura Bannister, the narrator, is working on Terraform (the next to last) at present and plans to finish them out. It'll be a few more months I'd imagine.
Laury Dahners
Laurence wrote: "John, It's great to hear you like them!
Laura Bannister, the narrator, is working on Terraform (the next to last) at present and plans to finish them out. It'll be a few more months I'd imagine...."
Cool! Thanks for the update. I'm looking forward to their release.
I recently read an old Heinlein book - Beyond This Horizon. It made me think of your statis series since early on in the book they mentioned the "Adirondack Stasis" which is desribed as "an impenetrable area of total reflection, a cubical mirror." Two characters discuss it:"Suppose they do release the field? . . .What will it amount to? What will it contain? Some artifacts possibly, perhaps some records of the period in which it was set up. But nothing more than that. The notion that life could be preserved in it, unchanged, in absolute stasis, for several centuries is preposterous."
"How do you know? It's certain that they thought they had found a way of suspending, uh, shall we say freezing entropy. The instructions with the field are perfectly plain."
Of course it turns out that the stasis contains a 1920's era man who plays a minor role in the rest of the story. They didn't develop the idea beyond that.
But I found the rest of the book fascinating. First off Heinlein gives a somewhat accurate but very oddly worded description of human genetics. The first jarring line was that "each man's cells contain forty-eight chromosomes - twenty-four pairs."
Aha! I went back and looked up the date of publication, and discovered it was 1942. Which meant it was written in 1941, before Watson and Crick, before the number of chromosomes had even been accurately counted.
Two other things really stood out to me. The first was the central conflict in the book, which is between the Genetic Planning Counsel and a revolutionary group that wanted to edit genes. The Genetic Planning Counsel used eugenics to improve the race - they had "a vision of a race better than they were . . carried in its chromosomes the blueprint of a stronger, sounder, more adaptable race." They sought to eliminate defective genes through encouraging and discouraging certain people to reproduce: "It's the same with color blindness, with hemophilia, with a great many other heritable defects - we selected and eliminated them" (the traits, not the people.)
The date is very relevant there, since if it was published in 1942, it was almost certainly written in 1941, before the US entered World War II, and eugenics became associated with Hitler's regime.
A second jarring note was a scene where the protagonist meets his (future) wife. She comes by his house and he notices she has a gun. He does not like this so he overpowers her, disarms her, slaps her, then forcibly kisses her a few times before releasing her. He explains that all this is for her benefit, since "men seldom make passes at women who wear guns." They later date, then marry.
It was certainly not as jarring as (say) the assault scene in The Fountainhead, but it stands in stark contrast to modern writing, where a man who assaults a woman is pretty much guaranteed to be a villain, and more often than not finds himself brought low by the woman or her compatriots.
I find older SF fascinating both because of what it reveals about what was acceptable when the piece was written, and also to see what people from 80 years ago thought the future would hold. None other than Arthur C. Clarke thought, in 1960, that reusable boosters were right around the corner, and then perhaps someday a few centuries hence people would be able to access any data in the world through their home viewer.
Billvon wrote: "I recently read an old Heinlein book - Beyond This Horizon. It made me think of your statis series since early on in the book they mentioned the "Adirondack Stasis" which is desribed as "an impenet..."Old science fiction is notable not only for what it gets right, but even more for what it gets wrong!
I often think about how likely it is that things I have written will turn out to be incorrect, or not politically correct at some point in the future.
Laury Dahners
Laurence wrote: "or not politically correct at some point in the future."Your statues might get torn down!
Scott wrote: "Laurence wrote: "or not politically correct at some point in the future."Your statues might get torn down!"
I was just putting the finishing touches on the statue in my front yard.
A statue in the yard should keep the varmints awayLaury
For those of you who like to pre order your booksTalents and Tyrants The Time-Flow Stories #2
is up. I can't put up a link but a search on Amazon for "Dahners Tyrants" will find it.
If you pre-order it'll be delivered on July 22nd
(or of course you can wait to order it on or after the 22nd)
Here's the blurb:
This hard Sci-Fi novel is the second book of the “Time-Flow Stories,” a series of tales about Witt Ryllin, a young man who abruptly gains the ability to psychically control the flow of time.
It’s also the fifth story in a combined series of tales that begins with the novelette “Porter” and the two “Blindspot Stories.”
In this book, by luck of the draw, Witt and Hax Buchry become roommates in their college athletic dorm. Through that connection, Witt meets Hax’s sister Roni (you’ve hopefully met Roni and Hax and learned about their talents in the Blindspot books).
Elsewhere in the dorm, Witt encounters Maja, an orphaned refugee from Cyreea (similar to Syria in our parallel universe).
Recognizing the power of the many psychic talents they have between them, Witt, Roni, and Hax wonder whether they could use those abilities to rescue Maja’s brother and uncle from their desperate circumstances in Cyreea.
Meanwhile, Hax’s playing football and Roni’s hacking computers. Allie/Eva’s leading her band, Eve of Destruction.
And, Witt’s running track, excelling at math, and meeting Allie/Eva while playing music on street corners.
Can they come together to make a difference in their world?
Hope you enjoy it!
The above announcement makes me think about what other storylines you could retcon into a unified narrative. Only other two I can think of are the Hyllis stories and the Bonesetter ones. No fixed time is given in the Bonesetter series, so the beginning could well be a community that fared even more poorly than the community in North Carolina after the superflu. Might be interesting to think about how Pell would perceive even the backward (by our standards) medical science of Tarc's world, and how Pell might experience the rapid "advancement" in the sciences as he traveled out of his community and came closer and closer to the more advanced society. But the focus of the Hyllis series is on what paranormal abilities could do for medicine, so adding Pell to that narrative might not result in much that's new to explore.
If you enjoy audiobooksTerraform, Ell Donsaii # 15
is available now on Audible and Amazon
Sorry I can't put in a link on Goodreads but a search for "Dahners" and "Terraform" will bring it up.
Hope you enjoy it!
Hello: I started out reading your Ell Donsaii books on Kindle Unlimited. After reading the first few I decided I would buy them all to put into my personnal library. I liked them that much and hope at some point you will return to them and write more. Maybe you could skip a few years like you did in between the Vaz books...Anyways loved your books and will continue through your other series.Plus we spell our first names the same. Laurence
Cool!So glad you like them!
Laury (Laurence Dahners)
I hate to say it Dr. Dahners about your new book. In your other books inteligence was the main superpower. But in this one superpower replaced brains. Heroes behave like there is no cameras, no metal detectors, no UAVs
I just read the latest fast-time book (fun read by the way) and it made me think about the potential weaponization of time contraction and expansion. You had a quick note about this at the end that I've been thinking about.Yet another Larry Niven story I read years ago (ARM, 1975) imagined that a scientist/villain created an accelerated-time bubble that had similar effects as those described in the time-flow stories. He kills one person by going into the time bubble and using a large flashlight to burn all the flesh off his face. (The explanation is that the blue-shifted energy is delivered all at once.)
I figured I'd do some math to see if that was possible. The time compression factor was not explicitly mentioned, so we can assume that it's close to infinity. If you take the largest practical flashlight back in 1975 (one of those old 12V lanterns) you have about 350,000 joules to work with. If you release that all at once what happens?
To figure that out I used the OSHA limits for arc-flash safety, since it's close to instantaneous. An exposure of 5 joules/cm2 can cause second degree burns, so I used that as a threshold. Turns out that if you assume a 60cm diameter beam, a 50% conversion efficiency (since even the infrared from a lousy old incandescent bulb becomes hard X-rays if not gamma rays) and a similar absorption compared to light (may not be valid) you can get 62 joules/cm2 on the target. That's certainly enough for serious burns (and is more than enough to ignite clothing, which causes much of the injury in arc flash incidents) so that's somewhat plausible. The beam would at least be enough to do serious damage, especially at the gamma ray wavelengths you'd get with close to infinite time accelerations.
I wanted to do a similar worst case analysis for Witt's headlamp. I couldn't use the same approach, because the maximum 400x acceleration converts an hour-long exposure to 9 seconds, a far cry from instantaneous. I chose one hour since you can get most of the energy out of common batteries in an hour.
So I assumed the largest reasonable headlight could put out about 1 watt of optical energy for an hour. (15% efficient LED, 3 AA cells.) The approach I took there was that 1 watt of optical energy was available, so the energy density is 3.5 watts/sq meter if it's a 60cm (2 foot) diameter illuminated area. 400x above that is 1428 watts per square meter. That's about 50% higher than the maximum sunlight energy you'd get at earth's surface - likely not enough for burns over 9 seconds but enough to be _very_ noticeable, feeling something like the heat of the sun on your body.
However this will be in Xrays in wavelengths from about 1 to 2 nanometers, which is also fairly far from the typical diagnostic Xray range of .01 to .1 nanometers. But the exposure is way, way higher - typical chest Xrays are around 10 watts/sq m.
That's as far as I could get there because exposure limits are not calculated in watts/square meter, and the conversion factors to units like REMs or sieverts require knowledge of the tissues exposed - and that requires more knowledge that I have (and work than I wanted to do.) Seems like it would be dangerous though.
Exposure is also measured in energy density times time, so if the headlamp illuminates someone for say ten seconds at a time at 400x speed, that becomes 25 milliseconds and is much less of an issue. Additionally energy falls off at the usual 1/distance squared so the energy will decrease rapidly with distance, and a cheap LED flashlight (like the one Witt experimented with in the first book) may only put out 15-20% of that energy.
Conclusion from all the above is that Witt's headlamp is unlikely to cause much damage if he is careful - but if he wanted to, he could do a lot of damage quickly at 400x. Flashlights with optical powers of tens of watts are available off the shelf now, and can do things like set pieces of black paper on fire even here in the normal-time world. But at those power levels - and those wavelengths - he'd have to be very careful of who was nearby, and who was behind his target.
(Sorry for yet another long post.)
I think that any "superhero" story naturally requires a greater suspension of disbelief than a "hard science" story does. I didn't have any problem with it.I really liked the merging of the three story lines into one shared world. I also liked the idea of the lead characters just trying to lead their own lives in spite of their abilities. I'm looking forward to where the music subplot goes in the next story(s).
Farez_87 wrote: "I hate to say it Dr. Dahners about your new book. In your other books inteligence was the main superpower. But in this one superpower replaced brains. Heroes behave like there is no cameras, no met..."I agree with you in that I didn't like the story as much as some of his others. However, you are forgetting that Donsai used 'super' abilities all through her first book (and scattered through several subsequent books). Also, the super-abilities of Hyllis family significantly contribute the the plots in all their stories.
Farez_87 wrote: "I hate to say it Dr. Dahners about your new book. In your other books inteligence was the main superpower. But in this one superpower replaced brains. Heroes behave like there is no cameras, no met..."Hey Farez,
Sorry you're disappointed! I feel like Witt's intelligence lets him do more than expected with his talent. Others have complained that there's too much time wasted discussing how he figures this out. It's exciting to hear from someone who wants to hear more about his intelligence!
Laury Dahners
Billvon wrote: "I just read the latest fast-time book (fun read by the way) and it made me think about the potential weaponization of time contraction and expansion. You had a quick note about this at the end that..."Very interesting analysis! I've only been thinking of him using lights to see. If you wanted to use them to injure it would seem that the best way would be to shine it directly into someone's eye which, just like looking at the sun, would blind him.
But, it'd be easier to poke their eye out.
In fast-time there'd be a lot of easy ways to kill someone...
More stories to write...
Dana wrote: "I think that any "superhero" story naturally requires a greater suspension of disbelief than a "hard science" story does. I didn't have any problem with it.I really liked the merging of the three..."
Dana, I'm having fun with just those ideas in the next book - hope you like it too!
Laury Dahners
Hi Doc,Just wanted to further add to the positive feedback…
First, you did a great job of merging the three story lines - well done! Not always an easy thing to do, but you pulled it off well.
Second, it’s great that you are furthering the stories of The Blindspot series, and Guitar Girl (or Porter, if you prefer). Those are both great story lines that I had hoped you would get back around to, and I’m happy to see you did!
Personally, I’m looking forward to any of your stories that you feel like continuing, or anything new you offer us. Thanks for the great story and please keep up the good work!
Brent
Brent wrote: "Hi Doc,Just wanted to further add to the positive feedback…
First, you did a great job of merging the three story lines - well done! Not always an easy thing to do, but you pulled it off well.
Sec..."
Thanks!
Hope you continue to enjoy.
Laury
Farez_87 wrote: "I hate to say it Dr. Dahners about your new book. In your other books inteligence was the main superpower. But in this one superpower replaced brains. Heroes behave like there is no cameras, no met..."Farez,
Don't forget that when Witt's moving in fast time, cameras and UAVs would only record faint blurs, metal detectors only millisecond blips, Even if such things were noticed, the operator would assume a glitch.
Laury Dahners
The previous narrator had some problems related to Covid. The publisher, Creative Texts is in charge of those decisions and eventually decided to go with someone else. Glad you like the new one.
Laury Dahners