Laurence Dahners

It is always a joy to begin a new series of science fiction novels by Laurence Dahners. We know there will be likable, gritty characters who are unafraid to explore the science behind amazing events. In The Warp and the Weft, Ryn Wilkie, a promising surgical resident at a teaching hospital in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is out for a drink at a local bar when someone spikes her drink. Her struggle with her would-be rapist causes a blackout. She wakes in a hay field in an alternate version of show more 21st-century North Carolina, where technology has not progressed much further than the late 19th century. She has to unravel the mystery of where she is and how she got there. She also wants to get back to her own timeline and get justice for the sexual predator.
Write quickly, Laurence. I want to read the rest of this series. show less

Dahners, Laurence E. Telekinetic. Hyllis Family No. 1. Kindle, 2014.
Laurence Dahners usually builds worlds that are close spinoffs of a recognizable near future America, but in the Hyllis Family series he goes to the trouble of a postapocalyptic future a bit further on. A pandemic, which may have been started by a minor mistake in a biology lab, reduced the world population to 1,000 BCE levels, and years later industrial technology is still not possible. Only scraps of ancient science show more remain. The Hyllis family--a tavern owner, his wife, who is a local healer, and their teenage children--have a heritable trait that gives them varying degrees of telekinetic power. These powers are a closely held family secret for fear of a superstitious response from the provincial community. When the town is invaded by bandits, they must put their TK to work. As usual, Dahners centers his story on smart kids and inventive ways to use a new ability, for self-defense and as a tool to enhance preindustrial medicine. Gorier than usual, but fun. 3.5 stars rounded up. show less

Dahners, Laurence E. A Pause in Space-Time. Stasis No. 1. Kindle, 2019.
A Pause in Space-Time begins a series of novellas with a lot of promise. It develops a straightforward hard science fiction premise: A college science student creates a circuit that can send an object unchanged into the future. No return trip is possible, but it creates a stasis field with unusual properties as it travels forward. It was fun to think along with our hero as he tries to design experiments to discover what show more those properties are, I was pleased that the story avoids some obvious tropes. For instance, there are no years-long trips into the future as in Heinlein’s Door into Summer. Our protagonist is an impoverished student who needs to raise money to treat two different kinds of inherited anemia, including sickle cell. He hopes to market the stasis field to someone with the resources to scale it up. But it turns out to be hard to find an honest buyer. The novella already has six sequels, and I am curious to see where Dahners goes with the story. Four stars. show less

Dahners, Laurence E. DNA. Ell Donsaii No. 13. Kindle, 2016.
Ell Donsaii is still remotely exploring exoplanets using her wormhole technology that has revolutionized space travel and several other technologies. She has passed her genius (the result of a neurotransmission mutation) on to her five-year-old son, Zage. Zage has an intuitive grasp of how proteins fold and is working on a gene therapy to correct obesity. Ell and her husband maintain a double identity to shield Zage from the dangers show more and distraction of their fame. But kindergarten is not the right place for him. The challenge for him will be to get adults to take him seriously as their intellectual superior. It looks as if Zage is going to become the central character of the series, which should be fun. Dahners continues to write entertaining hard science fiction with a clear “what if” premise. 4 stars. show less