Chronosphere: A science fiction novel

by A. Scott Howe

In a remote colony on Mars, physicists have used a particle accelerator to artificially create miniature black holes. By accident, two black holes orbiting each other with relativistic spins have opened up a portal to another universe. Engineers Masamune Hughes and Tom Hildebrandt build bigger and better machines to enable them to peek inside, and even cross the threshold themselves. What they find defies all description.Meanwhile, a mysterious x-ray storm is slowly creeping across the planet destroying everything in its path. Scientists are mystified because the x-rays barely amount to what one might expect to find in a dentist's office.When whole communities turn up deserted and scientists are found murdered, Tom and Masamune realize there is something deeper going on than anyone realized. It becomes a race with time to solve the mystery and figure out how to use the portal technology to save the planet from a worldwide catastrophe.

235 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2014

About the author

A. Scott Howe is a licensed architect and retired robotics engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He earned PhDs in industrial and manufacturing systems engineering from Hong Kong University and in architecture from University of Michigan. Dr. Howe spent 10 years of practice in Tokyo, Japan, and taught for 6 years at Hong Kong University. He functioned as Design Integration lead for the NASA Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Deep Space Habitat team, and was the original designer of the Habitat Demonstration Unit (HDU) at Johnson Space Center, which has been renamed the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) doing mini missions with multi-week crews. Dr. Howe worked as a member of the JPL All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (ATHLETE) robotic mobility system development team.

Dr. Howe is an avid scuba diver, backpacker, amateur radio operator extra (N3ASH), 4-wheeler, and outdoor enthusiast. He is the author of over a hundred technical papers covering topics of space habitation, robotics, and architecture, and has been co-editor for technical books (as listed on this page). Technical papers can be viewed on the spacearchitecture-dot-org website, under "publications".

Dr. Howe has been writing science fiction as a hobby for over thirty years, culminating in a series called "One Eternal Round", which is written as a possible distant future fictional history based on his experience in the NASA community. the series (so far) includes:

Near future:
Book 1: Theoloop (2021)
Book 2: Chronosphere (2014)
Book 3: Replicycle/Retrocause (2022)

Far future:
Book 4: Waterball (2012)
Book 5: Blister (2013)