Reader's Guide to Future Chron - Part 1

Image: Bruce Rolff

I recently totaled up the number of books I've published, and the number is 21 short stories (less than 7,500 words), 26 novelettes (over 7,500 but less than 17,500 words), 3 novellas (over 17,500 but less than 40,000), and 15 novels (greater than 40,000 words). In addition, I've collected these 65 stories into another 18 books. Then there are 6 more “special” novels which are actually older editions of novels I have republished. A total of 89 books.

So, here is a reader's introduction to my books which will hopefully help you find one you would like to read. I'll start with my oldest stories in what I call the Future Chron Universe. A universe in this case is a way to organize a series of books that share the same science and technology, same societal background, and sometimes the same characters.

Anti-Science Visionary

Image: Frank R. Paul, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

H.G. Wells is well known for his early science fiction. While providing exciting stories and thought-provoking scenarios the reader may believe that Wells was a science and technology optimist. But upon further reflection they might note that the stories and novels carried an undercurrent of foreboding. They were essentially a warning siren for scientific apocalypse, though he changed his mind later and found a way to use science and technology to enable his utopias, Wells was at the start of his writing career a science and technology pessimist. Looking at the short story Lord of the Dynamos Wells's early attitude towards technology and science can be examined.

Based Book Sale Last Days

Zero Point: A Quantum Adventure is number four in the Based Book Sale on Substack. All books are 99 cents or free. Here's the update from the organizer:

D.W. Patterson is in fourth with 25 sales for Zero Point: A Quantum Adventure. Jack Carson had a stroke of luck; a great-uncle had left him land in Arizona. But that’s when Jack’s luck began to change, mysterious sights and sounds threatened to make his inheritance worthless as a center for the study of physics. Marta Merritt decided to help, and she didn’t think it a mystery, she thought it was an artifact of a forgotten physics theory called pilot-wave mechanics.

Patterson definitely grabbed me with “pilot-wave mechanics.” Check this one out!

What a Beautiful World This Will Be

(Title from Donald Fagen, IGY Lyrics).

The CEO, Dario Amodei, of Anthropic, one of the leading AI labs believes that strong AI is only 1-2 years away, probably 2027. And once strong AI is available, 100 years of progress in biology, medicine, economics, etc. will happen in 5-10 years, or 2032-2037.

As I [Dario Modei] wrote in Machines of Loving Grace [Essay, October 2024], powerful AI could be as little as 1–2 years away, although it could also be considerably further out.

I think the best way to get a handle on the risks of AI is to ask the following question: suppose a literal “country of geniuses” were to materialize somewhere in the world in ~2027. [From The Adolescence of Technology – Amodei, January 2026]

To summarize the above, my basic prediction is that AI-enabled biology and medicine will allow us to compress the progress that human biologists would have achieved over the next 50-100 years into 5-10 years. I’ll refer to this as the “compressed 21st century”: the idea that after powerful AI is developed, we will in a few years make all the progress in biology and medicine that we would have made in the whole 21st century.

Possibilities (Predictions):

Reliable prevention and treatment of nearly all natural infectious disease. [Fast evolving strains like those that develop in hospitals may be more difficult to eradicate].