Wednesday, February 26, 2025

L4 Station - Chapter 1

STATION

Remembered Earth Universe

Volume 17

L4 Series

Book 1

D.W. PATTERSON

First Printing – March 2025

Future Chron Publishing

Cover Image – ID 159616182 © limbitech | Dreamstime(dot)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

“But for Man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet with its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.”

― H.G. Wells

Chapter 1

History of Mare Frigoris – Dr. George Pohl – Planet Publications

By the middle of the 21^stcentury commercial settlements were being established on the Moon. Two Earth companies, Luna Limited and New Lunar Corporation, were busy developing settlements in Mare Frigoris, which was a lunar sea stretching almost two thousand miles across the face of the Moon roughly 30 degrees south of the north lunar pole.

All these settlements had one thing in common, they were all founded just south of a lunar crater, which because of the latitude, had a south wall and floor that was always in darkness. And there in the dark, was a supply of water-ice which could supply the needs of the adjacent settlement for hundreds of years to come.

By the eight decade of the century twelve settlements had been established (from west to east); Markov, Babbage, Robinson, Horrebow, Fontenelle, Tima, Archer, Sheepshanks, Demos, Thales, Hayn, and Dugan. Almost always the settlement was named after the nearby crater.

Power was provided by a nuclear plant in the south of the mare and solar farms at the far east and west. The solar farms were separated at such a distance as one or the other was always receiving sunlight. From farthest eastern settlement to farthest western, was a distance of over 1700 miles.

2070 A.D.

My name is Raymond Jones, but I'm usually called Ray, and I think growing up on the Moon was a great experience. At thirteen I had been on the Moon for eight years and I had seen a lot of changes. The population of the great settlement complexes had tripled in that time. My family’s settlement, Markov, located in the western part of Mare Frigoris had thirty thousand residents and was growing.

My parents had brought me here from Earth several years after it became apparent that children could develop just fine on the lunar surface. At the time I was the youngest person to ride a rocket to orbit, but I don't think that's still true. And now, not counting the few astronauts on Mars, I was about to leave the Moon with my parents and my younger brother for the farthest of human settlements, located at the Earth-Moon Lagrange point L4, nineteen million miles away.

Grok and Me

My conversation with Grok, mostly about my speculative science:

Grok:

"Null Infinity: Book 1" by D.W. Patterson is the opening installment of a science fiction series published by Future Chron Publishing. The story follows Harry, a brilliant physics student at a top-tier school, who teams up with Lauren to pioneer a revolutionary advancement in space travel: the boundary drive. Their journey is not just a scientific endeavor but a perilous adventure that poses risks not only to themselves but to the entire world. The novel blends speculative fiction with themes of innovation, danger, and exploration, appealing to readers who enjoy futuristic narratives grounded in scientific possibility.

Released in 2024, this paperback spans 222 pages and is written in English. It’s a compact read, with dimensions of 203 x 127 mm, making it an accessible entry into Patterson’s "Null Infinity" series. The plot hints at a mix of cerebral challenges and high-stakes consequences, characteristic of the sci-fi genre’s focus on humanity’s reach into the unknown. If you’re into stories where cutting-edge ideas meet real-world peril, this might be worth a look.

Have you read any of Patterson’s other works, or is this your first dive into his universe?

Me:

explore boundary drive

Grok:

In D.W. Patterson's "Null Infinity: Book 1," the boundary drive is a fictional concept central to the plot—a groundbreaking advancement in space travel developed by the protagonists, Harry and Lauren. While the novel doesn’t provide a real-world blueprint (it’s speculative fiction, after all), we can explore what the boundary drive might imply based on context and common sci-fi tropes, as well as Patterson’s style as an author who often weaves plausible science into his narratives. The term "boundary drive" suggests a propulsion system that manipulates or interacts with some kind of physical or theoretical boundary—possibly the edge of spacetime, gravitational fields, or even the limitations of known physics (like the speed of light).

Rocket Season - Chapter 1

ROCKET SEASON

Manifold Earth Universe

Volume 5

Rocket Series:

Collection 1

D.W. PATTERSON

First D2D Printing – July, 2024

Future Chron Publishing

Cover Image – Photo 115346712 / Rocket Launch © Nexusplexus | Dreamstime.com

Previously published as:

Rocket Summer

Rocket Fall

Rocket Winter

Rocket Spring

Contains added material.

Hard Science Fiction – Old School

Human Generated Content

To Sarah

If we want to expand into the solar system, this tyranny [The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation] must be somehow deposed.

Don Petit – NASA Flight Engineer

PREFACE

Almost a hundred years ago science fiction authors would publish their stories in one of many science fiction magazines. Sometimes it was an actual novel which was serialized in the magazines first and later released as a novel, and sometimes it was a series of short stories and novellas with a common thematic development. These might be later put into novel form with some connective additions. This was called a “fix-up” novel. Examples of this would be Clifford Simak's novel City and Isaac Asimov's I Robot.

Rocket Season is a collection of the stories Rocket Summer, Rocket Fall, Rocket Winter, and Rocket Spring with some connective material and some new material. In this way it is similar to one of those fix-up novels.

Rocket Season is the story of Jack Williams and his quest to develop a new type of rocket based on Mach's Principle and not chemistry. The principle or effect was posited by 19^th century physicist-philosopher Ernst Mach and can be stated as the inertia of an object is determined by all the distant masses in the universe. Though it might sound bizarre this idea was originally incorporated by Einstein into his General Theory of Relativity.

If true, the effect could lead under the right circumstances to the coupling of mass to the gravitational field of spacetime. Frame-dragging, a proven effect, is a manifestation of this coupling. In frame-dragging an accelerating mass (a rotating black hole for instance) drags spacetime with it. Spacetime, in turn, will drag, or accelerate, other masses in the vicinity, and so an accelerating mass could drag spacetime which in turn would accelerate other masses (such as a rocket body) with it.

This would allow a reactionless rocket engine (that is a rocket engine that does not expel mass to develop thrust), and that would revolutionize the access of space.

ROCKET SUMMER

CHAPTER 1

Williams' Farm

Hell's Hollow Road

North Georgia, USA

Jack liked to sit just inside the edge of the forest and look out on the farm's pasture. Before baling, the grass was as high as a nine-year-old boy sitting cross-legged, and when the wind blew the waves of grass looked like an ocean to such a boy. Jack had never been to the ocean, but he imagined it something like a windy day crossing the pasture.

The farm was nestled in a closed valley surrounded by low mountains, some people called the mountains, hills, and the valley, a hollow, but to Jack they were mountains and valley. He looked up at the peak called Muletop across the pasture and thought that anyone who thought it a hill instead of a mountain should try to climb it.

Deep in such thought he didn't hear his dad the first time he called but he heard him the second time.

“Jack come on,” said his dad, “it's about time, the live-stream's starting.”

“Okay,” yelled Jack as he got up and started running through the sea of grass towards his home. He was short but he was fast.

The two-story white house was about fifty feet from the much larger red barn. Jack liked his house, but he loved the barn. All the smells of hay and horses brought him comfort when he was upset. He had spent many hours sitting in the barn, usually in the hay loft, while reading and thinking and recovering from whatever insult he had suffered at the hands of his three older sisters.

After all, life for a nine-year-old boy wasn't without its trials. Sometimes it was the adults who talked to him like he was a baby. Sometimes it was having to bear every decision his mom and dad might make without his consultation. Other times, it might be his sisters torturing him because he was the youngest. Still, he usually liked his family, even his sisters, and heading home after a day outside was always a joy. He reached the yard, and his dad again spoke up.

“We're going to miss it Jack, hurry.”

Jack rushed by his father, around the side of the house and bounded onto the front porch. He was already camped in front of the wall-sized television when his dad entered the room.

“All right,” said his dad. “everyone's here now, let's watch this carefully, we are about to see history made.”