Saturday, July 26, 2025

Newsletter - August 2025



Introduction

Hello, and thank you for reading. I find that I am finally getting over a summer cold which seemed like it would never end. You don't realize how great “normal” is until it's not. Anyway, I can look forward to August now.

If anyone has any comments about my newsletters or books or anything, please don't hesitate. And if you do choose to read one of my stories and enjoy it, I hope you will consider leaving a review at the retailer.

Old Business

Before I get into new releases, I would like to point out that the three novels Mach's Metric, Mach's Mission, and Mach's Legacy I just released on Amazon are still 99 cents and will be until the end of July. (See purchase links at bottom).

New Works

As far as new works, on August 10 the third and final novella in the MarsX series, MarsX3, will be released in paperback on all retailers. That completes the trilogy in paperback. Similarly, on August 20 in ebook and KU the last two novellas in the series, MarsX2 and MarsX3, will be released on Amazon.

Also, on August 20 L4 Station will be released in ebook on all retailers.

Finally, on August 30 World Brane (Amazon)/Brane World (Other) Book 2 will be released in paperback everywhere. (Yes, I wish I had not messed up the title between Amazon and other retailers, but it's too late now).

Remember, excerpt and purchase links are below.

Other News

Someone did actually comment and motivated me to put some of my stories back up on Substack but as paid. Usually, the first chapter is free, and the rest are behind a paywall. I have thought a lot about posting all my stories for free, but I stop when I think that my family might benefit from the earnings no matter how small, and I mean not just now, but after I can no longer write. So, I have ten novellas, one short novel, and one novel posted, please check them out. More are coming as I find the time.

Here are some links to excerpts (you may notice that many of them are from my Substack) of the stories mentioned in this newsletter and their purchase links:

Excerpt / Amazon/Other:

Mach's Metric / Purchase

Mach's Mission / Purchase

Mach's Legacy / Purchase

MarsX2 / Purchase

MarsX3 / Purchase

L4 Station / Purchase

World Brane 2 / Purchase

(If any links don’t work, please let me know).

Stay well.

Friday, July 25, 2025

World Brane (Brane World): Book 2



WORLD

BRANE

Book 2

D.W. PATTERSON

Copyright © 2025 D.W. Patterson

All rights reserved.

First Printing – September 2025

Future Chron Publishing

Cover – Copyright © 2025 D.W. Patterson

Cover Image – ID 305930513 | Futuristic © Vampy1 | Dreamstime.com

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission, except in the case of brief quotations for the purpose of review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events and people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Hard Science Fiction – Old School

Human Generated Content

To Sarah

One man's 'magic', is another man's engineering.

Robert A. Heinlein


PREFACE


Humanity had discovered that across the large, extra-dimension known to physicists as the bulk, there lay other universes, other worlds, other branes. They had learned to travel there using the boundary drive which created a cocoon-like void (or bubble) in spacetime in which a ship could be carried. Motion was created by the pressure-like gradient between the bubble and spacetime and with direction and speed controlled by warping the bubble with an energy source, like a powerful laser.


But something had gone wrong, ships had been lost in the bulk and now there was a danger that the settlements founded throughout all those universes would be cutoff and isolated. Something had to be done.


The essential problem was time, frozen time spheroids which like a submerged reef, could sometimes trap an unwary ship and sometimes destroy it. To solve the problem humanity would have to learn what was causing it, and if it were a natural occurrence or human created.


CHAPTER 1


Mark Dreyer had been working on the problem of the frozen time spheroids for months now. Mark, a physics professor at Pacific Tech, with the help of Dr. Ed Balmer, had come up with a method of dissipating the spheroids when in normal spacetime.

The method involved the use of the spin-two generator, which was a form of wormhole generator, as an intense plasma generator. According to the equations of wormhole generation, which Mark taught to his students as follows:


These are the equations of a wormhole generator,” Mark said. “They come out of the solution of a particular configuration of spacetime which is called the Mach metric, after the nineteenth century physicist Ernst Mach. They describe the geometry of a wormhole, a path through alternate physical dimensions that can be used to bridge distances in our universe.

Now look at the solutions of the field equation, what I call the Mach equation.

As a physical analogy, think of it this way, say you have some bathroom scales. Now those scales are only accurate when you are standing still on them. If you start jumping up and down, they will read either more or less depending on how fast you jump. And the response time of the scales. This is how the first term in the equation works.

This first term reduces or increases the mass according to the driving frequency as long as the mass is accelerating, in our case the sphere of the generator is spinning so it has angular momentum, remembering always that a change in direction is also an acceleration. All this is experimental fact.

However useful this term of the Mach equation may be for accelerating a mass it is not actually the effect we want to use, that is in the second term of the equation.

Note that the second term is divided by the square of the mass density. Also note that it has a second derivative with respect to time, and a minus sign. All this means that if we ramp up the power of the generator fast enough the second term will dominate the first term and create a negative or exotic mass according to the Mach equation. And that is just what is needed to open and hold open the throat of a wormhole.

By the way, the twentieth century physicists Kip Thorne and Mike Morris first wrote the metric of a wormhole and postulated the need for negative mass to hold the throat open.

But there is one problem, or in our case, one advantage with using this term. As you can see the mass starts out positive, or ordinary mass, goes through zero and becomes exotic, or negative mass. You have to be careful to drive it quick enough through zero to avoid the equation becoming singular.

If not you can create an infinite mass and a black hole. A small black hole develops and then immediately dissipates. As you know, small black holes less than the size of the Sun will radiate away their mass rather quickly as Hawking radiation. The smaller the hole the faster it radiates. And that creates an intense plasma which can be directed by magnetic and electrical fields against a target, in this case, a frozen time spheroid.

The spheroid is pierced and the internal time rate, which is almost zero, and external rate must equalize.

Any questions?”

A student in back raised their hand.

Yes.” said Mark.

But the wormhole generator and therefore the modern spin-two drive operated on the Mach principle, correct?”

That is true,” said Mark. “I think I know where you are going and you are right. The Mach principle, which states that the inertia of an object depends on all the other masses in the universe, is not valid in the bulk because there are no natural masses there.”

So, how do we get the spin-two drive to work in the bulk?” the student asked.

I've been working on that for some months and the answer to your question is, we don't, at least not yet.”

The class ended and Mark was off to a lunch date.

Tuesday, July 22, 2025

A Review of MarsX1

 



I recently came across this review by author Kate Rauner for my novella MarsX1 on The Science Fiction And Fantasy Bookstore website. MarsX1 is already available on Amazon and KU with the next two novellas in the series coming out August 20.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

Mach's Legacy - Excerpt


Image – ID 340509565 © Gijsvdabeele | Dreamstime.com


Emmy was on the ship that would try to influence the drift of the baby universe in the bulk. It was not easy to know their position and how close they were to the parent universe. All they knew was how far they were from the habitat. Even if they were close, it wouldn't be like running into a wall. Their path would simply curve to follow the closed curvature of their universe.

Emmy made a guess as to how far the ship should be from the habitat according to how long ago the separation had occurred and the amount of energy in their universe. She hoped it was accurate enough.

They would spend some time operating the wormhole generator and some time listening for gravity waves. The generator would cast but not completely cycle to create a wormhole mouth but would be held at the point where the created mass was just less than that necessary to open a wormhole mouth.

The ship cast as far as possible and held the mass level as constant as possible. The gravity at that point was intense. It reached out to warp the local spacetime requiring Emmy's ship, the Seven Centauri, to actively hold its position. Further, the gravity reached out into the bulk and across where it weakly but noticeably caused a smaller warp in the parent universe.


Jack on his uncle's ship had been monitoring the readings from the gravity wave interferometer for a few days and immediately noticed the warping.

There Eric, do you see it?”

Yes, it seems to be coming from an area about one-hundred thousand kilometers away. Just a minute. Yeah, the Em confirms that it could be the last location of the Centauri Two habitat in our space.”

Okay I'm requesting the captain take us to those coordinates.”

Eric said, “The source is drifting a bit.”

Okay feed that into the navigation Em also.”

They then waited.

I want to be ready to signal as soon as Emmy drops the gravity mass,” said Jack.

In a few more minutes he got his chance.

Okay here we go.”


As Emmy had done Jack brought up the wormhole generator to develop the gravitational mass. But instead of holding it steady, he had programmed his Emmie to vary the power so that the amplitudes of the gravity waves varied according to a digital code.

Across the bulk, Emmy had brought up her gravity detector and noticed the waves though they were greatly attenuated. Assuming a digital code she fed the results into one of the ship's Ems and it tried various combinations until out came a message.


Emmy this is Jack. When I terminate this message please answer.


Emmy's eyes teared. It was just like Jack to assume that she would have it all figured out. It would show him if she didn't answer. But that's not how she felt. She felt relieved.

When he stopped, she answered.


Jack we are here. So good to hear from you. I need to tell you about my plan for rejoining the two universes. Signal when ready.


Jack signaled and then Emmy explained how she was using the wormhole generator to cast gravity across the bulk and into the parent universe. She explained that it didn't matter if masses were attracted, what she was doing was trying to attract the energy of spacetime itself, essentially the universe as a whole.

She then explained that she hoped that the baby universe would be pulled toward the parent universe since the baby universe had much less mass-energy and therefore inertia. She hoped that the two universes would collide and merge. But the energy of motion necessary for the merge to happen and not be too violent was difficult to calculate so Emmy had given it her best guess. The ship she was on was able to maintain the wormhole generator in the proper state for about an hour before it had to lower the generator's energy output to prevent damage. Emmy would contact Jack after the hour.


And Jack, I love you.