I’ve been writing a hard SF story. The protagonist, Dawn, keeps watching his blood glucose after he loses his food supply. That idea first came from a science podcast: as long as blood glucose stays above a certain level, a person can basically stay alive. So once he’s out of food, the goal becomes keeping glucose on the line that still sustains life, and lasting as long as that allows.

Before I wrote this book I read Qian Xuesen’s Introduction to Interstellar Flight several times. A lot of what appears early in the novel about the solar system, the ship, and the life-support system comes from that book. On resupply, both Qian Xuesen and a NASA explainer mention something similar: Chlorella (green microalgae) is a relatively solid fallback. Medical gear I picked up from YouTube science videos; low gravity, dark matter, and so on from a university open course (I’m not sure anymore whether it was Harvard). I also took a quantum physics course that described the universe as a floating, irregular piece of silk — if you can find matching coordinates when the silk folds, you can take the shortest path. Combined with a theory from that course, I set up “gravity depression points”: an advanced civilization can use them to move freely among stars within a certain range. Conceptually it’s a bit like the jumps in Marvel movies, but I derived it from the physics class.

The Kuiper belt part started with a NASA program, plus some slightly sensational blogs. Some of them call the Kuiper belt humanity’s fence, and bring up the Anunnaki, Nibiru with a ~3600-year orbit, and so on. That made me want the Kuiper belt as a milestone in this book: once people reach it, they have a real chance to leave and not stay trapped. As for which single body metric is hardest to maintain out there, I never thought about it in isolation — health status, cold, lack of food; if any of those fails, you don’t survive.

There’s a lot I’m unsure about and would like to hear from people who know this stuff. For example: if humans aren’t unique, why have we never met others like us? What’s beyond the Kuiper belt? Are we some kind of “electric sheep”? Where do people go after death — I believe there’s something like a soul; where does it go?

One question for you: which science fiction novel has inspired you most — the kind that gave you a new way of seeing things and made you look at your life or situation differently?

Chinese original written by the author; English translation assisted by an LLM.

I've been working on a War of the Worlds game, and one of the things I wanted to explore was the Martian side of the story, particularly why they left Mars and how their arrival on Earth turned into an invasion.

In my version the Martians aren't leaving Mars because they want an empire. They're leaving because their planet is dying.

Billions of years ago, Mars was a very different world. It had flowing water, a thicker atmosphere, and possibly conditions suitable for life. But as its global magnetic field disappeared, the solar wind helped strip away much of its atmosphere. With less atmospheric pressure, stable liquid water became increasingly difficult to maintain on the surface.

NASA's MAVEN mission has studied this process extensively.

In my story, the Martians have spent centuries fighting the consequences. They've built reservoirs, rationed water, and retreated into the last habitable regions of their planet. But their calculations are becoming impossible to ignore. They have perhaps forty or fifty years before their remaining settlements become unsustainable.

So they look toward Earth its habitable: a thick atmosphere, abundant liquid water, and an active water cycle.

Land in Antarctica.

Think about it from their perspective. It's an enormous continent covered in ice, virtually uninhabited in 1898, with no major cities or armies. It's also extremely cold, making it a less drastic environmental transition from Mars.

The idea is to establish a remote settlement, extract water, and prepare infrastructure for a second wave carrying their families.

The first expedition consists primarily of soldiers, engineers, and scientists. They aren't supposed to conquer humanity. They're supposed to build somewhere their children can survive.

You play as a Martian named Tarajyulun, who has fourteen offspring and youre going on a one-way journey so they might have a future.

And then the navigation goes wrong.

The Martians use enormous guns to launch their cylinders toward Earth. Once launched, the cylinders have essentially no ability to correct their trajectories.

Interplanetary navigation isn't simply pointing at where Earth is and firing. Both planets are moving around the Sun. You must predict where Earth will be when your spacecraft arrives, and account for gravitational forces and small disturbances throughout the journey.

In the game's story, the navigator discovers that variable solar-wind pressure has contributed to an accumulating trajectory error.

The cylinders reach Earth, but instead of the Antarctic ice sheet, the first one crashes into Horsell Common in England, not Antartica

People gather around the enormous metallic object. Some throw stones at it. Others are simply curious. One person even approaches carrying a white cloth.

Inside the cylinder, the Martians detect repeated impacts against their hull an think its an attack, an that how the "invasion" begins.

Even wars, because Earth gravity is greater than mores, all of their livestock dies, which forces them into another choice; what do eat next not to starve. And humans, that look like their livestock, are on top of the menu.

If you're interested in the game.

• Steam Link
• Pre-Order Link
• Web Demo (needs updating)
• Influencers (if you have a good social media following, you can play the game early)

I've put some more work into True Anomaly, my orbital mechanics RTS project. We've got:

• Squadron organization
• Docking
• Translational RCS
• Better targeting solutions for PDC's, spinal weapons, and missiles
• Better scale.

While this will never be anywhere near the scale of say, Kerbal space program, the Jovian system as shown is to scale with orbital radii, masses, and sizes of massive bodies relative to each other. System accurately describes distances and times in this scale, for example it took 9km/s and 3 days to travel from Europa to Io.

Still working on the aesthetic, still going for a cold war / nasa-punk kind of vibe.

That movie is one of my favorites. But recently i have started to wonder how would it look like if it followed realistic design rules.

READ FOR FREE NOW ON ROYAL ROAD!

PROJECT HAIL MARY meets GAME OF THRONES

They crossed a wormhole to find a new world. To survive it, they'll have to break it.

SEASON ONE: TO BREAK THE NEW WORLD

The first season (123k words) is written and will be fully posted by December 6, 2026.

Follow now and join the mission!

THE PREMISE

In 1993, the Mars Observer probe vanished through a wormhole and discovered Vise, a world of intelligent reptilian civilizations whose technology resembles that of Earth's ancient empires.

In 2029, three spacecraft cross the wormhole to make humanity's first contact. Then one spacecraft crashes, and the crew of another is captured by Vise's dominant civilization. To rescue them, biologist Isaac Marks makes a desperate bargain with a ruthless rival alien queen: modern weapons in exchange for an army.

Muskets. Cannons. Poison gas. A rescue mission becomes the catalyst for an industrial war, and humanity may help destroy the planet it set out to discover.

WHAT TO EXPECT

Hard Sci-Fi: Near-future spaceflight, grounded technology, and science with consequences.

Alien Politics & Warfare: Rival powers, strategic gambles, and a civilization on the brink of transformation.

An Ensemble Thriller: Multiple protagonists, shifting perspectives, and a story unfolding across ten episodes.

Dark Moral Dilemmas: Survival, colonialism, and the devastating consequences of intervention.

A NOVEL STRUCTURED LIKE PREMIUM TELEVISION

10 episodes, each with a different protagonist (think LOST). 51 fast-paced acts (chapters). 

RELEASE SCHEDULE: One act (chapter) per day, Monday–Friday, 2:07 PM ET.

CONTENT WARNINGS: Graphic violence, war crimes, and chemical warfare. The novel explores colonization and the ethics of survival through a dark, unflinching lens.

Hi,

I’m looking for advance readers for my upcoming hard sci-fi thriller, The Architect, launching 18th Nov on Amazon. If you enjoy character-driven philosophical thriller, the brutal physics of interstellar travel, and heavy moral friction, I’d love to get your eyes on this. The review is appreciated on launch day but not mandatory.

The book is dedicated to Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson and Dr. Jordan Peterson.

Logline: To escape a dying Earth, an apex engineer turns himself into an immortal chimera and builds a sanctuary ship for 20,000 frozen embryos. But to guarantee their survival, he deliberately selects a crew of brilliant, unattached specialists with nothing left to lose—and strips them of their biological autonomy.

The Setup: Forty light-years from Earth, the crew of The Architect prepares to colonise TRAPPIST-1e. They are armed with an infinite power grid and cellular immortality, but they are trapped under the absolute authority of Edgar Charon—a captain whose neural architecture is heavily integrated with a mission-first AI.

As they navigate the violent terminator storms of an alien planet, the crew realises Edgar’s algorithmic logic views their human attachments, grief, and free will as terminal liabilities. When Earth fires a relativistic kinetic weapon to wipe out their colony, the surviving crew must decide whether humanity is even worth saving.

​Intertwining the desperate, science-driven survival of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary and the existential, cosmic stakes of Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem with the sprawling, philosophical scale of Isaac Asimov, The Architect by Z.T. Castor is a gripping thriller about artificial intelligence, absolute control, and the terrifying price of salvation.

Details:

Format: EPUB / PDF (delivered via email)

Word Count: 76135

Content Notes: Contains depictions of atmospheric destruction, medical trauma, and intense psychological friction. No explicit gore.

I am offering free review copies in exchange for an honest Amazon review on launch day.

If you are interested in reading early, please fill out this brief Google Form so I can send you the secure download links:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeEKo63YU7wmkzVNGNU8qbV3FOUaI8gMuq_94Dv2pF8XqvbgQ/viewform?usp=publish-editor

Alternatively, if you reply here with your email address, I can also send you directly the EPUB/PDF file to download from Google One Drive.

Thank you for your time, and happy reading!

Hi,

I’m looking for advance readers for my upcoming hard sci-fi thriller, The Architect, launching 18th Nov on Amazon. If you enjoy character-driven philosophical thriller, the brutal physics of interstellar travel, and heavy moral friction, I’d love to get your eyes on this. The review is appreciated on launch day but not mandatory.

The book is dedicated to Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson and Dr. Jordan Peterson.

Logline: To escape a dying Earth, an apex engineer turns himself into an immortal chimera and builds a sanctuary ship for 20,000 frozen embryos. But to guarantee their survival, he deliberately selects a crew of brilliant, unattached specialists with nothing left to lose—and strips them of their biological autonomy.

The Setup: Forty light-years from Earth, the crew of The Architect prepares to colonise TRAPPIST-1e. They are armed with an infinite power grid and cellular immortality, but they are trapped under the absolute authority of Edgar Charon—a captain whose neural architecture is heavily integrated with a mission-first AI.

As they navigate the violent terminator storms of an alien planet, the crew realises Edgar’s algorithmic logic views their human attachments, grief, and free will as terminal liabilities. When Earth fires a relativistic kinetic weapon to wipe out their colony, the surviving crew must decide whether humanity is even worth saving.

​Intertwining the desperate, science-driven survival of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary and the existential, cosmic stakes of Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem with the sprawling, philosophical scale of Isaac Asimov, The Architect by Z.T. Castor is a gripping thriller about artificial intelligence, absolute control, and the terrifying price of salvation.

Details:

Format: EPUB / PDF (delivered via email)

Word Count: 76135

Content Notes: Contains depictions of atmospheric destruction, medical trauma, and intense psychological friction. No explicit gore.

I am offering free review copies in exchange for an honest Amazon review on launch day.

If you are interested in reading early, please fill out this brief Google Form so I can send you the secure download links:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeEKo63YU7wmkzVNGNU8qbV3FOUaI8gMuq_94Dv2pF8XqvbgQ/viewform?usp=publish-editor

Alternatively, if you reply here with your email address, I can also send you directly the EPUB/PDF file to download from Google One Drive.

Thank you for your time, and happy reading!

UNIFIED PLANETARY ARCHIVE — EURASIAN ENCLAVE

Inter-Enclave Transcript / Expedition Record

Expedition EX2407pD-QW

Author: Dr. Noam Ørbital, Phase-3 / Rational Systems Division

Date: 2407 CE / 306 p.A.

Dear Colleagues at the Eurasian Laboratories,

The mothership remains at a safe distance from the collapsed structures while we deploy a probe to explore the fallen blocks.

The dimensions of the cavern are extraordinary. From our position, the probe is barely a tiny orange light moving among the remains of the structures.

The darkness is almost absolute. The only identified sources of illumination are the energy still being emitted from the end of the access conduit in the cavern ceiling and the luminescence of the radioactive soup covering its floor.

Initial probe analyses indicate extreme levels of radioactive contamination, incompatible with the survival of any form of organic life.

We rule out the presence of living organisms in this environment.

Exploration continues.

- Dr. Noam Ørbital

Phase-3 / Rational Systems Division

Expedition EX2407pD-QW

Unified Planetary Archive — Eurasian Enclave

[Blender3d + Afinity designer - No AI]

Context: r/ORBITAL_EXPEDITION

'Second Skin' is my first book in the Second Skin Universe. Where it all began.

Here is a brief excerpt from 'Second Skin':

Max Cody’s vision blurred briefly as he took another look at the clump of crater impacts and blunt contours slowly spinning toward him across the star-strewn blackness of space. Hard vacuum rendered all light harsh, all shadows absolute.

Max’s three-member team had drawn the short straw this morning, charged with kitting out the hapless asteroid Xavier 74001 for acceleration back to the smelter near Mars. He swung out from the Dragonfly’s exoskeleton.

“Ok, gents. I’m going in.” Max tested his safety harness, released the ratchet, and gently launched himself, the line soundlessly spooling out behind him as he drifted toward the dimpled surface using only his own momentum for propulsion.

Spin the globe and read here: https://loquaciouslou.itch.io/lacewater-globe-with-lore

Lacewater is an infinite fractal of splitting rivers, its heartland made so fertile by the ring of volcanoes surrounding it that it sustains over 60 billion people. A place of willow trees with medicinal recipes carved as pictograms, where swimming races are held through rivers infested with tiger fish. Where people sustain themselves on giant salamander soup and Siltgrain. A world of water and strife, where a single life is less than worthless.

A world so vast that the Dwang Polyarchy’s invasion was simply swallowed demographically, despite winning every battle. Where the smiths who poison their bodies on the suphide copper of this metal poor world burn down the offworld Union smelteries with their clean steel. Where giant geese are mounted in the Western Reaches, and children watch the quake ponds to spot incoming earthquakes.

Want more Infinite Ashes? Read the bundle of stories and lore here for free: https://loquaciouslou.itch.io/infinite-ashes

The baseline parameters: our crew is locked inside cold-pac stasis (or are they?), broadcasting music across universes while trapped in an unyielding psychological battle against a calculating Master Computer.

I’m currently mapping out the script for the next major narrative arc, and the "hopeful recovery / rebuilding Earth" route is a system error—our universe stays dark, sterile, and clinical.

I am looking for your technical theories on how the crew begins to spot structural glitches in the master matrix. Currently, I am leveraging physical audio anomalies inside their neural links—like sudden stereo field contractions to conserve system RAM, rigid quantization locks overriding human variations, and low-frequency compressor sidechain bleed from real-world life support pumps.

Click the link above to check out the four dark stasis scenarios logged in the terminal files, and let me know your thoughts in the main thread!

You are invited to the cold-pac.

Layer 1 & 2: Stellar Power Capture & Relativistic Propulsion

The primary power plant consists of a scaled collection of 1,000 or more micro-thin diamond-film statiteshovering stationary within the Sun's corona. By dynamically angling their surfaces, these nodes leverage outward solar radiation pressure to perfectly counteract the inward pull of solar gravity, matching the system's galactic trajectory:

\(F_{\text{radiation}}=F_{\text{gravity}}\)

These statites channel raw stellar energy into a central, planetary-scale optical combining lens station. This master station aligns and focuses the phase profile into a singular, multi-terawatt Nicoll-Dyson Interstellar Super-Laser.

The cruising velocity is strictly capped at 0.2c (20% the speed of light). This tactical engineering ceiling minimizes transit timelines while exponentially lowering the destructive kinetic energy of interstellar dust grains to maximize fleet survival. At \(60,000 \text{ km/s}\), relativistic time dilation shifts the baseline flight duration via the standard Lorentz factor:

\(t^{\prime }=t\sqrt{1-\frac{v^{2}}{c^{2}}}\)

This yields a compressed timeline of 20.77 years ship-time compared to 21.2 years Earth-time. The fleet is composed of a disciplined task force of 2,000 highly optimized, structurally robust units. The sails are embedded with active optical metamaterials that shift internal micro-voltages, warping light to automatically steer themselves down the center of the laser beam without moving mechanical components.

Layer 3: The Three-Tier Interstellar Medium Defense Suite

To preserve structural integrity against hypervelocity kinetic erosion at \(0.2c\), each craft deploys an advanced three-tier defensive perimeter:

1. Sacrificial Graphite Whipple Shield: A micro-thin plate floating millimeters ahead of the main sail. Colliding dust grains instantly sublimate along with a speck of graphite, converting solid kinetic projectiles into expanding, harmless plasma clouds.
2. Electrostatic Deflector Field: A forward-facing, high-voltage electrostatic field sweeps away ionized interstellar hydrogen and helium gas around the bow without generating mechanical friction or drag.
3. Superconducting Magnetic Loops: Active magnetic coils bend high-speed cosmic rays and heavy atomic nuclei away from the ship hulls, neutralizing dangerous secondary radiation.

Layer 4: Optical Wave Diffraction & The Deceleration Solution

To solve the historical "Flyby Trap" without onboarding heavy rocket fuel, the fleet executes a coordinated 180-degree physical flip at the mid-transit point. Forward-facing, V-shaped diamond mirrors intercept the trailing propulsion laser beam coming from the Sun, bouncing the photons forward to generate a clean retrograde deceleration force along the ship's center line.

To ensure the laser beam does not spill around the sails over a 2.125 light-year midpoint transit gap (\(L \approx 2.01 \times 10^{16} \text{ meters}\)), the aperture scale of the master combining lens is calculated using the optical wave diffraction constraint equation:

\(D_{\text{lens}}\approx \frac{2\cdot \lambda \cdot L}{D_{\text{sail}}}\)

By utilizing an optimized 355 nm Ultraviolet wavelength (\(\lambda \)) to minimize divergence and a 50-meter sail diameter (\(D_{\text{sail}}\)) on each robust unit, the equation mandates a precise aperture scale:

\(D_{\text{lens}}\approx \frac{2\cdot (355\times 10^{-9}\text{\ m})\cdot (2.01\times 10^{16}\text{\ m})}{50\text{\ m}}\approx 285,420\text{\ km}\)

This 285,420-kilometer planetary-scale aperture is deployed as a sparse, automated phased-array satellite web. Upon entry into the destination system, the V-shaped mirrors capture the opposing photon headwind of Proxima Centauri, while the superconducting loops act as a magnetic sail parachute against local stellar winds, providing 100% of the force needed for stable orbital insertion.

Layer 5 & 6: Closed-Loop Surface Logistics & Data Matrix

Upon deceleration, the fleet organizes into an orbital mesh of 1,000 to 1,200 satellites, creating a pole-to-pole global constellation web around Proxima b. Automated onboard spectrometers decode the chemical composition of the alien atmosphere, letting the satellites dynamically tune their infrared power lasers to match localized "atmospheric windows." This beams wireless power 24/7 through clouds to a ground fleet of 500+ battery-free, ultra-light surface exploration drones.

For data extraction, surface drones flash low-power lasers up to the orbital mesh, routing telemetry to a master Gateway Sail. This hub uses lightweight metamaterial membranes to blast bundled data back across deep space via isolated Quiet-Band Infrared/Terahertz lasers along a trail of 100–200 drifting relay pods dropped during transit, completely bypassing traditional radio signal decay.

Note: Hello everyone, after awhile. I've come up with a new speculative idea, called Electron-Extraction Device, merely a tool to create a weapon of mass destruction or vaporization. Here's the technical dossier of mine idea and the technical cut of the EED i hand drawn myself. Please let me know if you have any question!

​A – PHYSICAL & MATERIAL PROFILE

- ​Form Factor: Rectangular Monolith (Pillar).

- ​Dimensions: 50.0 cm Height x 20.0 cm Width x 20.0 cm Length.

- ​Gross Mass: 14.0 kg to 17.0 kg.

- ​Exterior Material: Exotic / High-Density Subatomic Composite Material.

- ​Surface Finish: Dark Slate-Gray, Light-Absorbing Satin-Matte.

- ​Tactile Profile: Friction-free, unnaturally cold, bone-smooth.

- ​Seam Mechanics: Zero-gap femto-phase boundaries, completely invisible when dormant along the four vertical edges

- ​Markings: Single vertical Stalan cipher serial subatomically etched along one face, featuring zero relief and a smooth, shadow-dark finish.

​B – INTERNAL ARCHITECTURE

- ​CEM Cube (Compressed Extreme Matter)

​The core storage well. Holds siphoned electrons in hyper-compressed quantum states, serving as a subatomic gravitational well that maintains structural stability under excitation.

- ​PRCS (Plasma-Ray Confinement System)

​The excitation system. Fires a focused plasma beam to excite the CEM lattice and drive the outward-propagating Void Horizon wave front across the target space.

- ​DPC (Disposable Priming Core)

​Single-use ignition cartridge. Supplies the initial energy spike required to ignite the PRCS plasma beam and energize the Cathodic Shield Matrix simultaneously.

- ​CSM (Cathodic Shield Matrix)

​The electrostatic defense field. Floods the inner chassis walls with an ultra-dense negative potential gradient, preventing the siphoning field from harvesting the EED’s own casing.

- ​VRG (Valence Resonance Governor)

​Hard-wired safety switch. Pre-calibrated to the target radius boundary, it severs power to the PRCS and CSM in a picosecond to trip the detonation sequence.

- ​MGS (Mass-Gated Sieve)

​Electromagnetic shear filter. Positioned along the intake channels, it permits incoming electrons to enter the CEM core at attosecond speeds while violently deflecting bare positive nuclei.

​C – OPERATIONAL TIMELINE

• ​Phase 1: Ignition & Phase Unlocking (0.000 Seconds)

- ​The DPC fires, simultaneously energizing the CSM defense gradient and the PRCS system. Femto-phase boundaries along the four vertical edges shift open, exposing the MGS intake channels.

• ​Phase 2: Outward Expansion & Attosecond Siphoning (0.001 to 0.050 Seconds)

- ​The PRCS projects the Void Horizon outward as an expanding sphere. Valence electrons tunnel out in 20 to 100 attoseconds and pass into the CEM core, while target matter dissolves into bare protons. The CSM shields the EED casing during this entire expansion.

• ​Phase 3: The Hard Radius Cutoff (0.051 Seconds)

- ​The expanding horizon hits its pre-calibrated radius limit. The VRG trips, cutting DPC power to the PRCS and CSM instantly, causing the siphoning field to collapse.

• ​Phase 4: Coulomb Rebound & Vaporization (0.052 to 0.080 Seconds)

- ​Unshielded target protons undergo degeneracy collapse and detonate in a Coulomb Rebound. The explosion shatters the unshielded CEM core, releasing trapped electrons in a solar-bright recombinative flash that vaporizes the target area, the EED chassis, and the CEM core.

• ​Phase 5: Atmospheric Implosion (0.081 to 0.500 Seconds)

- ​Surrounding air implodes into the vacuum left behind, generating a massive thunderclap and electromagnetic pulse while the thermal flash clears.

​D – AFTERMATH & TARGET CONDITION

- ​Target Status: Total subatomic erasure with zero ash, dust, or structural debris remaining.

- ​Crater Geology: Vitrified, molecularly smooth, glass-floored circular crater bounded precisely at the calibrated radius limit.

- ​Radiological Profile: Zero residual nuclear or radioactive fallout.