Breakthrough author Stephen Tremp

Lucky me! Lucky you! Stephen Tremp from Breakthrough Blogs is here today. He's on a blog tour talking about his novel Breakthrough and all kinds of writerly stuff. You're going to love what he has to say today. I mean, he's even tied in Steampunk! How cool is that?? :)

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Steampunk is a recent sensation and is a sub-genre of science fiction and speculative fiction that often incorporates elements of fantasy. The setting is usually late 1800s Victorian Britain. Futuristic inventions and innovations are powered by steam and introduce conflict that help drive the stories and often lead to alternate historical paths. Steampunk generally tends to be less dystopian than its literary cousin cyberpunk.

H. G. Welles and Jules Verne were masters of using fictional machines that took their audiences on a magical mystery tour without having to leave the comforts of their home. These writers were far ahead of their time.

Today we see an emerging genre similar to Steampunk called Near Future Sci-fi. Instead of using futuristic steam powered machines in the present setting, we see potential breakthroughs in physics, technology, biochemistry, and nanotechnology leading the way. Near-future science fiction is set in the present day or in the next few years. Elements of the setting should be familiar to the reader, and the technology may be current or in development. Stories about theoretical physics, nanotechnology, genetics, and techno thrillers often fall into this category.

Example: Einstein-Rosen Bridges, or wormholes as they are commonly known. In a nutshell, wormholes are theorized and predicted portals though the space-time continuum. The term ‘wormhole’ gets its inspiration from the idea of a worm traversing from one side of an apple to the other side. The idea is that if a worm could tunnel through the apple to the other side, then a shortcut would be established. In the same sense, a wormhole through the space-time continuum could theoretically allow matter, including people, to be transported through a hole from one point to another such as Los Angeles to Boston. For now, wormholes are filed under theoretical physics as a proposed theory, something physicists believe may be true about our universe but have yet to prove it in a laboratory under rigorous conditions.

Hollywood likes to fantasize and sensationalize wormhole concepts and place the setting in the future, develop strange characters with pointy ears, and (gulp) use wormholes for time travel, which simply is not a practical or realistic use of wormholes. But they make for a good story nonetheless.

However, using a wormhole to punch through the fabric of space (length, width, and height) is far more realistic. In fact, governments, militaries, universities, large global conglomerates, and the guy working in his garage have committed larges sums of time and resources to discovering a breakthrough in practically using wormholes to travel through space, even if it’s a short distance such as from one side of the laboratory to the other side. We know space is already curved. If space can be folded like a piece of paper, then punching a hole through the two pieces can make a shortcut, or a wormhole.

Wormholes (also called Star Gates and Jump Points in fiction) are seen everyday in children’s TV programs such as Pokeman, Dragon Tales, Dinosaur Train, and Fairly Odd Parents and shows like Stargate, Sliders, and the Star Trek series among countless other shows. They’re also in popular movies such as Déjà Vu (Denzel Washington), Jumper (very cool movie), the Terminator series, and Contact (Jodie Foster). After a cursory glance of my kids DVDs I see two movies with wormholes: Princess and the Frog and Meet the Robinsons.

My book Breakthrough, the first in a trilogy, begins with a breakthrough in wormholes at M.I.T. in Cambridge, MA. It is used as a means to assassinate powerful global figures. However, wormholes are merely the key that opens Pandora’s Box. In the second and third installments titled Opening and Escalation, wormholes open the door for more unexpected discoveries and breakthroughs in theoretical physics that will threaten the world and life as we know it. This is a series of technology gone too far, discoveries and breakthroughs mankind is simply not ready to steward. Can Chase Manhattan and his friends destroy this technology before mankind destroys themselves? Stay tuned …..

Please join me tomorrow as I visit Matthew Rush at The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment as we ask: do you use morals, ethics, and social matters in your stories to convey lessons learned. As always, thanks for stopping by.

Stephen Tremp is author of the action thriller Breakthrough . You can visit Stephen at Breakthrough Blogs .

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Told you it would be a great post! Thanks so much for visiting, Stephen! I'm looking forward to the rest of the tour! :)

Wormholes create so many possibilities! I can think of a few occasions where I'd like to use one! How about you?