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
Just read Thunder of Engines and it was again a lot of fun. Sorry I did not follow up on your reply sooner but let me try again.
You wrote:Otis,
If you think of the portals as if they're doorways, then you could think of it as if the "A" side of one opens a doorway to the "A"side of the other. The "B" sides aren't connected unless they're especially set up to do so (for instance in the Venus to Mars ports where they're trying to move twice as much atmosphere with the same amount of power.
I understand that but I think you missed my point. What would the physical properties of that back be if it was NOT connected? What would happen if I tried to drive a nail into it? Would it disrupt the entanglement? If yes, then how LITTLE force would be needed to cause failure? If No, then how MUCH force would be needed? Would it disrupt it or would those backsides simply be impenetrable? Seems like it would have to be one or the other.
Your second question runs into the issue of the first. If the "A" sides of the ports are all on the bottoms of the port hoops, for the person to rise up out of the floor they'd have to come up out of the "B" side of the port (which doesn't connect).
Again, I think you misunderstood me.
Clearly, the portals work while they move independently of each other.
So imagine that you have the match pair place back to back so that as you push something through the 'open' the first, it passes right out the other side of its mate almost like lowering a hula hoop over something. Pretty much what you have described all the portals to do except for being so close together.
Now move the rings apart a some distance and move them in sync. I think this is the vision you had for the Transporter.
But you could just as easily imagine that the Portals are kept stationary and a piston pushes the item to be transported up through one portal and out the other. I think this is what all your deliver systems do.
Now imagine that the 'Source' side of the pair is lowered over than item rather than the item be pushed through it.
In both these last cases, the Portal opening and the 'floor' below the object being transported are simple closing the distance between them and an object is immerging from a stationary ring.
That was the vision I had for a transporter with only one moving side.
I hope that clears up what I was saying. I know that last Time I commented about Comet violating conservation of Momentum, I did not explain myself well enough to be understood. I hope I did better this time.
Looking forward to your next book in ANY of the series! Thanks for writing such interesting tales.
I loved "A Thunder of Engines". I am glad I was too impatient to wait for my paperback copy to arrive: (1) I have already read the Kindle version three times starting about 11:30 pm on June 10.
(2) I could use the Kindle dictionary to look up "indium" and "interdigitations" -- these words were so unfamiliar that I thought they were typos for "iridium" and something else.
Something has been bothering me about “Transporter” ever since I read it. The first time there is some sort of accident with the transporters Ell is going to take it very hard. So in a way it surprised me that this is something that she would release en masse.
Now, her using it herself, that is totally “in” character.
But this is fiction, and I know I am overthinking it. But for some reason this has stuck with me.
Sincerely,
Vaz’s number 1 fan.
Magnificently marvelous day!Thinking more about the using stades for airplanes, I realized it would be relatively trivial to make scramjet planes that could travel upwards mach 15 or more and therefore traveling to pretty much any where in the world in a couple of hours. One of the major limiting factor to creating scramjets now are the materials needed, both for the air-frame and the engine, that can maintain their strength due to the heat of friction at those speed Stade eliminates the friction in the first place and is strong enough and does not suffer from the effects of heat in the 2nd and 3rd places. I think the idea might originate from one of the new aerospace engineers. The biggest issue would probably be the windows.
That leads me to another thought. I think it would be perfectly reasonable for Kaem to either accidentally discover the ability to make transparent stades (or maybe he realizes it by reviewing the underlying theory). The current reflective stades are reflective because they perfectly reflect any incident radiation which represents an interaction between the radiation and the surface of the stade. It seems to me that it would be equally reasonable for a stade to have absolutely no interaction with radiation on the surface, and therefore perfectly transmissive. In this case, any radiation capable of transversing the vacuum of space would simply vanish into one surface of the stade and reappear from another surface with no elapsed time betweeen them. This would make the stade invisible. This might be somewhat similar to Ell's 5th dimension but limited to radiation and the boundaries of the stade.
Of course, there could also be the 3rd case where the stade is a complete void where even physical objects pass through the void with no physical interactions at all. This case would be even more similar to Ell's 5th dimension except limited by the bounds of the stade and no edge/ nerve effects. However, you may want to avoid this case just to minimize the similarities between the 2 series. There are other issues with this case also, but they could be interesting.
Cheers,
Doug
"Thunder of Engines" discusses how to keep the stasis mechanism secret. There is a mention that Kaem adjusted the settings when they first stazed a Mylar bag, so you could state that the signals needed are dependent on the item being stazed.However, I am worried that someone might read the signals sent to the laser and microwave emitters directly. You could improve secrecy by sending a bunch of false signals around the time the correct signals were sent in such a fashion that it would be hard to guess the correct signal (for example: correct microwave signal sent with many false laser signals combined + correct laser signal sent with many false microwave signals + include combinations of signals that are correct for different stazed items)
First let me say I love all your books. Just noticed that there are updates on quite a few of them and I wondered if there are just to correct minor typos or if you have changed (improved) bigger things and I need to re-read. Might just re-read anyway....:)
Saw where the next Stasis book is up for pre order. Really looking forward to reading it. Enjoy all your books.
James wrote: "Saw where the next Stasis book is up for pre order. Really looking forward to reading it. Enjoy all your books."I got excited when I saw your post and I looked at Amazon, but didn’t find it. What is the title?
Patsy wrote: "James wrote: "Saw where the next Stasis book is up for pre order. Really looking forward to reading it. Enjoy all your books."I got excited when I saw your post and I looked at Amazon, but didn’t..."
Never mind. I looked again and found it. Control of Radiation.
Just a FYI allotropes is on audible. Not sure if there will be a discount if you have the book tho. Lol
Simon Beresford wrote: "First let me say I love all your books. Just noticed that there are updates on quite a few of them and I wondered if there are just to correct minor typos or if you have changed (improved) bigger t..."Simon, I constantly update to fix minor issues and to rewrite whenever I'm doing a new book in a series and find places in the old books I think I can improve. No need to reread unless you want. It can be difficult to get Amazon to send you the newest version.
Laury
Control of radiation title was probably a mistake. Its Radiation Hazard.I expect Mr. Dahners will post anytime now since I just got the email.
So are you writing #4 next, Mr. Dahners?
Yes, for those of you who're interested, Radiation Hazard (The Stasis Series #3) is up for preorder.Hope you like it!
https://www.amazon.com/Control-Radiat...
This hard Sci-Fi novel is the third book in the “Stasis Stories,” a series of optimistic tales of technological innovation in the near future. They follow Kaem Seba, a sickly and financially destitute young man with extraordinary math talents. With his friends, he’s developed a device that allows him to stop time within limited volumes of space-time.
In this story, Kaem and company are commercially developing “Stade,” which is what they call a piece of space-time that’s in stasis. Stade’s phenomenal properties (because it essentially can’t be altered as time has been stopped within it) allow it to reflect all radiation. When a nearby nuclear reactor undergoes a meltdown, the first thought is that stade might be used to limit the radioactivity from the accident.
But a little further thought makes it obvious that stade is also the perfect material for dealing with radioactive waste. They become interested in using it to remediate a toxic chemical dump.
They’re still using it to build rocket engines. And working on plans for a space elevator!
--
Laury
Tyson wrote: "Control of radiation title was probably a mistake. Its Radiation Hazard.I expect Mr. Dahners will post anytime now since I just got the email.
So are you writing #4 next, Mr. Dahners?"
Yes, original title was Control of Radiation, but I didn't like it and changed it to Radiation Hazard.
Will be starting on #4 a soon as I get everything done on getting #3 up. Still full of Stade ideas!
Laury
Sorry to hit you guys with two announcements, one right after another, but Allotropes (an Ell Donsaii story #8) just came available as an audiobook. https://www.amazon.com/Allotropes-Aan... Hope those who enjoy audiobooks like this one!
--
Laury
Hey Mr Dahners hope your doing good during our version of zombie apocalypse ! I was wondering if you plan to have Zage follow Ell as far as sports goes? I was hoping since his mother did the summer Olympics maybe he could do the winter Olympics? Lol i can see it now he could do the ski jumps and speed skating and ice hockey, he could be a chip off the old block! Thanks Joe
Joe wrote: "Hey Mr Dahners hope your doing good during our version of zombie apocalypse ! I was wondering if you plan to have Zage follow Ell as far as sports goes? I was hoping since his mother did the summer..."
Hah!That'd be fun, but it's a long way in the future for now. Might be cool if his dad took him to a pro baseball game at his current age where he caught a fly ball in the stands, then (not knowing he could/should keep it) zinged it back to the pitcher with some heat on it.
L
Sports: Been there, done that. And i do not see Zage looking for the limelight. I really loved the story of aliens, you seem to bring something to them that most other writers don't.
But then, i really like the Zage research stuff too.
You write it, i will read it.
Of course Zage won't look for the limelight. However, like his mother, he might stumble and bumble his way right on into it.
Joe, Muehe, Tyson,Thanks for the ideas!
Laury Dahners
Muehe wrote: "He has a new book for pre-order !!!https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08..."
Yea he announced it over a week ago. The release is already starting to circle the globe, starting in Australia.
As excelent book as ever. As for striving for better, you might want to research how RosAtom operates in comparision with Westinghouse. RosAtom is verticaly integrated company that handles all stages of nuclear cycle from mining uranium ore to enrichment to manufacturing fuel to designing and building reactors to recycling spent fuel and storing remaining waste products. Main difference with american companies is that russians strictly control quality on all stages of the cycle and don't pray for the conscience of the lowest bidder. And another difference is that RosAtom doesn't store all of the spent fuel they recycle it and only about 3% remains to store at the dedicated facility. Now russians developing new reactor on fast neutrons that will allow to include depleted uranium and torium as sources of fuel for reactors.
Great book. However, I realized here is a slight problem with stazed lighter-than-air rocket shells: they could float away before you add fuel, etc. I think the manufacturing process should include a heavy (lead ?) skirt that can be removed on the launch pad after the rocket is fueled.
Laurence,I made a 'mistake':
I started reading book 1 late, so I didn't get to book 3 until 1.5 hours after it was sent to my Kindle (9:00pm PDT on 8/14/2020). That meant I had to stay up late to finish it.
It was a great book anyway (I am now reading it for the third time)
I am in the middle of your latest stasis book and wanted to point out a math error. When Kaem give the length of 10 mega seconds in days, it looks like you multiplied the kilosec (16.7 min) rather than the megasecond one(11.6) . He says 167 day but I think it would be 116.But I am enjoying it none the less!
DougVC wrote: "Magnificently marvelous day!Thinking more about the using stades for airplanes, I realized it would be relatively trivial to make scramjet planes that could travel upwards mach 15 or more and ther..."
No this is a great idea bit the implementation would break the physics of the world I would like to believe kaem's story exists in. However, there is an alternative. Because Stades are perfectly reflective. That reflective ness could be used to build an apropriately textured surface that guides radiation around the staded volume of space. This is based on the usage of meta materials for cloaking. in our reality we need to get down to nanometers in order to control light in that way. But I could either see a strong hand wavy argument for why stade volume whose surface is appropriately textured could do the same thing.
So Mr. Dahners, the reward for doing great work, is more work. What book are you working on next? Also, any chance you will revisit your Bonesetter series?
Stasis series.I have enjoyed this. But I wonder if you have realised just how dangerous stade actually is? If a flask reflects neutrons perfectly and it is well enough made so that hardly any neutrons leak past the lid, then a tiny amount of weapons grade U235 or Pu would go critical. A fraction of a gram would be enough. The reflection would indefinitely reduce the critical mass. . With a little ingenuity you then have a pocket sized nuke, suitable for rogue states. Confining the chain reaction before dissolving the stade could result in a higher yield per gram than in the original bombs. In such a flask even mildly radioactive waste or spent uranium, or even the uranium salts we had in grade school chemistry would gradually warm up, melt, even evaporate until the pressure is enormous and you have another sort of little bomb.
If Kaem is making bullet-proof clothing with holes (probably ~1 mm), Kaem should warn the police that some birdshot might go through the clothing. That may not matter, but I don't know enough about guns to tell
First off thanks for the latest stasis book. It was a good mental exercise - what can you do with a non material?The other interesting treatment of stasis I've seen recently (and that was not mentioned in the afterword) was in Varley's Red Thunder series. He postulated two sorts of stasis - one ('silver balls') where everything inside went to maximum entropy very quickly, but time was not stopped. The balls could then be made larger or smaller, and always weighed nothing. This was a primarily a plot device to create very efficient rocket engines, because by compressing water down by a factor of 1000 and then releasing it slowly, you get an incredibly efficient rocket. He also explored some similar themes though - using them for tunneling and using them as impenetrable shields. There were some obvious thermodynamic problems with this approach that were not explored.
His second contrivance, black balls, were more traditional time-is-stopped-inside stasis fields. They absorb all light that hits them; where that energy goes is unclear. They are used for both human stasis and food storage on a generation ship.
This was all explained by the inventor, a savant with a traumatic brain injury, with a lot of bafflegab using terms like "tiny little dimensions" to suggest string theory.
In the afterword there is a reference to solar farms and how nothing grows where they are placed. Recently solar farms have become more integrated with agriculture, to allow for dual use of the land. Bifacial solar panels (panels that are partially transparent and can absorb energy from the back as well) are used to allow some light through. Tests have shown that productivity for crops declines 5% to 19% due to the loss of light - but the benefits from being able to use the land for both outweighs this, as well as the inherent frost protection that the solar canopy provides.
And of course in pastures where livestock is raised, shading the pasture can result in benefits for the animals.
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/...
https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-06-0...
Another comment I noted was "a nuclear plant cannot be turned into a bomb." When I researched the chain of events that led to Chernobyl's destruction, I was surprised to learn that the power plant had indeed exploded like a nuclear bomb. To be specific, the reactor went prompt-critical (which is how a nuclear fission weapon is detonated) rather than being normally critical and relying on delayed neutrons to maintain a chain reaction (how all nuclear power plants operate.) A prompt-critical reaction is not controllable on human timescales; no control rod, for example, could be lowered fast enough to control such a reaction.
The RBMK reactor design that allowed this prompt fission to occur is fortunately rare outside Russia. And while the Ukraine was unfortunate that Chernobyl used such a reactor, they were in a way fortunate that the containment vessel was not built to higher standards. What ended the reaction was the explosion and subsequent ejection of the reactive parts of the core. Had the containment managed to hold the reaction together for a bit longer the explosion would have been exponentially worse.
That aside, I very much agree with the premise that nuclear power is currently the best option we have for generating baseload power.
G wrote: "Stasis series.I have enjoyed this. But I wonder if you have realised just how dangerous stade actually is? If a flask reflects neutrons perfectly and it is well enough made so that hardly any neut..."
I disagree the non material is dangerous. the worst case scenario I can imagine is a nuclear plasma torch emiting a kinda focused stream of hot plasma fragments. remember stade is not breakable. actually to build a bomb I think you would need the tech to unstade the material then you would have to time it to just the right time and then remove the material containing the explosion.
So dropping this hear because I need to get this out of my head so I can sleep at night. piggy backing off of an earlier post. did some research in the books and lets assume the 1mm detail limit is not a hard limit. Why? because it could reasonably be hand waved away as being a side effect of the wavelength of the microwaves used as a part of the process. So changing the frequency of the em radiation used during the process while maintaining some ratio between them would allow for stazing as expected by provide finer details.If this is allowed then we gain some interesting use cases. For example. the over heating problem with the vests goes away because you could leave nano sized pores almost like skin to allow for transpiration to wick heat away. though my hands down favorite outcome of this is selective cloaking of electro magnetic radiation. So hello stade windows. But it gets even more interesting. Staze would be able to single handedly deliver that nuclear powered future that was bandied about in the dawn of the nuclear age. a combination of the right nano pattern on the surface and you can selectively guide infrared radiation out of a seemingly solid peace of material. Which means you could build nuclear reactors all the way down to the watch battery size. Get the right patterning and you could build a gamma ray laser. since you are basically selecting for what em spectrum gets emitted and where and how it gets emitted. Now for the really cool part. as long as the inside remains reflective to the range of em that triggers stasis. you could staze and un staze the core on demand.
Now with that kind of power density. you now have the ability to build power armor and mechs. the introduction of Stade to the NRC pretty much makes it a forgone conclusion that kaem will have to deal with the military at some point. If Darpa isnt knocking on his door in the next book to talk about armor plating for every mechanized kit the military takes into theatre I will definately be shocked beyond belief. The nuclear batteries would basically turn the US government in to the defacto strongest military on the planet, as long as the secret remains in kaems head. and his head remains on his shoulders. the US could scrap their entire fleet of carriers and build marvel style helicarriers to replace them. powered by nuclear fission reactors made from nano patterend stade reactor walls. Why? well if its not obvious. the ability to perfectly contain the nuclear fision reaction why at the same time perfectly channel out the heat energy via infrared em radiation cloaking. Means you could build the theoretically best nuclear thermal rocket and operate in atmosphere with zero concern for a spill. Hell it could airbreath up to a certain altitude and then switch over the perfectly contained LH2 to boost up to orbital velocity. further amplified by the fact that the helicarriers mass is so close to zero because its super structure was made of vaccum stade.
Perfect nuclear energy sources aside, stade would cure world hunger if kaem figured out how to build a self contained box that could stade and unstade food. Even better if the theory was expanded to show that you can create different frequencies of stade. So that a single unstazer cannot unstade every thing. with those two things all food would be staded. The harvest fresh from the field. The catch fresh from the ocean. The lifestock fresh from slaughter. In addition there would be restaurants just cooking and stazing their food and mailing it out next day or free 5 day delivery. It would be an interesting alternative to the replicator in a sense.
Feel free to use any or all of these ideas. especially since they are based on the staze concept in your story
Fantastically spectacular day!Having worked in nuclear power for a few years, I found Radiation Hazard to be interesting and another excellent book.
Birchoff just mentioned the possibility of nuclear batteries. Interestingly enough I have seen two articles in the last two days about that very subject. According to the articles NDB Inc. has demonstrated the viability of Nano Diamond Batteries which are encased in diamond and use Carbon-14 as a power source. They have the potential to be scaled to virtually any size and use and could last decades. If true, this will be a truly disruptive technology. They are trying to commercialize the tech and expect to be marketing them in 2-5 years. https://newatlas.com/energy/nano-diam...
Cheers,
Doug
Farez_87 wrote: "As excelent book as ever. As for striving for better, you might want to research how RosAtom operates in comparision with Westinghouse. RosAtom is verticaly integrated company that handles all stag..."Farez,
Thanks for the suggestion. There are a plethora of companies developing smaller safer reactors with modern computerized control systems. Hopefully we can get back to nuclear power, but there's a lot of resistance to it.
Laury
Walter wrote: "Great book. However, I realized here is a slight problem with stazed lighter-than-air rocket shells: they could float away before you add fuel, etc. I think the manufacturing process should include..."Walter,
Thanks, addressing that in the next book (4).
Laury
Otis wrote: "I am in the middle of your latest stasis book and wanted to point out a math error. When Kaem give the length of 10 mega seconds in days, it looks like you multiplied the kilosec (16.7 min) rather ..."Otis,
That was embarrassing, thanks. I fixed it.
Laury
Jason wrote: "So Mr. Dahners, the reward for doing great work, is more work. What book are you working on next? Also, any chance you will revisit your Bonesetter series?"Jason,
Working on Stasis 4. Stasis ideas are just exploding out of my head (and out of a lot of readers heads it would appear from these posts). I do think I'll get back to Bonesetter someday.
Laury
G wrote: "Stasis series.I have enjoyed this. But I wonder if you have realised just how dangerous stade actually is? If a flask reflects neutrons perfectly and it is well enough made so that hardly any neut..."
G, There are a lot of ugly possibilities. I'm trying to address how those kinds of issues might be limited in Book 4.
Laury Dahners
Billvon wrote: "First off thanks for the latest stasis book. It was a good mental exercise - what can you do with a non material?The other interesting treatment of stasis I've seen recently (and that was not men..."
Billvon,
Thanks. I'll have to read some of the Varley books.
I do like solar and own a bunch of stock but nothing is perfect. I'm hoping they'll continue to clean it up, work harder to recycle and put it on rooftops and toxic land. Some of it has been built out over wilderness which is sub-optimal.
Chernobyl's design and its operators response to the problem were both disastrous but I think some of the new reactors are really safe.
Laury Dahners
For those of you who like audiobooks and the Stasis seriesPodium Audio has put up (for presale) their "publisher's pack" audiobook containing the first two books. Combining the two books let them provide you with a better value (an almost 14 hour book -13 hrs 54m)
It will be fully available on September 8th
A Pause in Space-Time: Publisher's Pack: The Stasis Stories, Books 1-2 Audible Audiobook – Unabridged
Laurence Dahners (Author), Andre Blake (Narrator), Podium Audio (Publisher)
https://www.amazon.com/Pause-Space-Ti...
I hope you enjoy!
Hmm.. if you put uranium into a stasis bottle, completely sealed.. what would happen. The bottle wont explode, the reaction would happen.. but where does the power (heat/pressure) go. Would the pressure and heat of the fission reaction cause fusion? Weird.
DougVC wrote: "Fantastically spectacular day!Having worked in nuclear power for a few years, I found Radiation Hazard to be interesting and another excellent book.
Birchoff just mentioned the possibility of nuc..."
Doug,
It looks like the diamond C14 batteries have a high power density but release it so slowly that they're really only suitable for very low powered devices that can't be recharged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond... and http://large.stanford.edu/courses/201...
Give me a sad face. Maybe the people in the newatlas article have a way around this, but I'll bet the claims in that article are due to journalistic over enthusiasm.
Laury
fabulously terrific day!About the C14 battery, I am also skeptical but they do mention using a small super capacitor to collect and distribute the charge, effectively providing at least some high power capability for at least short periods of time. Then the C14 recharges the capacitor. Bu it is one of those things where I will believe it when I see it.
Cheers,
Doug
Kaem should hire an expert RenFaire armorer to create the templates for the bullet-proof vests: the armorer would be experienced in creating full armor for the RenFaire 'knights'.
Birchoff wrote: "So dropping this hear because I need to get this out of my head so I can sleep at night. piggy backing off of an earlier post. did some research in the books and lets assume the 1mm detail limit is..."I am not sure it could be adjusted much. I assume that the ratio between the microwave and the light LED must stay similar. If so, you can't reduce the wavelength of the light LED much before you get into Ultraviolet (and even X-ray) lengths.
Laurence wrote: "Otis wrote: "I am in the middle of your latest stasis book and wanted to point out a math error. When Kaem give the length of 10 mega seconds in days, it looks like you multiplied the kilosec (16.7..."How do you get the fixed version ? I have tried several ways to get it on my Kindle Fire without success. I have even returned the original and bought a new copy only to get the copy I originally bought. Also, I noticed the first 2 Stasis books have new covers which I also can not get.
Yeah, stasis fields that trigger would be great, but there's the problem that you've got to be enclosed in a mirror.
Never can tell when I'll get back to a series so wouldn't want to predict.
Laury