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Mars Flash Fiction Contest Winners! |
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Myouterspace is pleased, honored and all-geeked-out to announce the winners of our flash-fiction contest with Open Road Media. The entries (which can be read here) were all fantastic, fun reads. But don’t take my word for it – here’s the low down from our guest judge, author Andrew Kessler, whose spectacular real-life interplanetary adventure “Martian Summer”, about the NASA Phoenix mission to Mars, was our contest’s muse: "Thanks to all those who entered in the Mars-inspired flash fiction contest! It's nice to see what a hub of creativity the Myouterspace sci-fi community has become. It’s a bit sad we had to pick two winners. But happy to have the opportunity to read through all your entries—that sounds so official—but no time for being glib at the moment of truth. There were some really awesome candidates and some were downright spacey. And seeing as I like to avoid conflict, it was hard to pick my overall favorites. But alas, I did, and here they are:
The first winner is The-Reluctant-Author, for the story, Martian Dreams. Only a true space geek could make the barren Martian wilderness seem so vibrant and inspiring. This story almost read like a poem. Space poetry is a much-underrepresented genre. Lo, ye sentences were like stanzas, you Bard of Mars. In fact, if you didn't know it was a story about Mars, you could almost be forgiven for thinking it was describing the harshness of the Colorado Plateau, or the plains of the Great Basin. And that’s one amazing truth about Mars and how it captures our imagination -- its strange familiarity.
The second winner is VendettaJones, for the story, Dust To Dust. This piece has a simple hook, cleverly personifying things that are otherwise lifeless and inanimate. It is a difficult literary task, particularly given the word length, but VendettaJones manages to write seamlessly, and with great structure. As the story reaches its conclusion, you feel genuine empathy for the characters and their loneliness. In some ways, it reminded me of the film, Wall-E, or that Ikea commercial with the sad lamp that gets left out in the rain. It would make for an interesting visual piece of its own. So let’s get a director attached and shoot it.
Cheers,
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Pi Questions – With Martian Summer Author Andrew Kessler |
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MYOUTERSPACE (Jeremy Lewit): Martian Summer follows the Mars Phoenix mission, which by all accounts was extremely successful. Having been with the team for such an extended time, seeing the day-to-day operations, what do you think was the least celebrated but most effective success of the team?
ANDREW KESSLER: Perchlorate! First off, I love the story of its discovery. It caused a lot of heated debate inside mission control and then there was a very public media kerfuffle. The short short version is that the team found something they weren’t expecting, and they were very excited—no, extremely excited. The press got wind of a story and started poking around-- that’s their job.
Since the results were unclear, no one inside mission control was quite ready to comment. One bold reporter decided to go ahead with a story he believed was true: that the team briefed the President on some new potential for life. It wasn’t exactly accurate, but no matter, the Internet exploded with “LIFE ON MARS!” stories. Whoops. Then there was a round of damage control trying to convince the Internet there was no conspiracy – not an easy task.
The science team worked through it. They did their darndest to confirm the actual results: that they saw perchlorate in the soil. So that was amazing. Still, it gets better. The amazing thing about this perchlorate stuff is that it’s probably the reason we haven’t seen any organic material on Mars. It burns up—it’s a strong oxidant—and it ends up hiding the signal of organic material. That’s cool. Then if we take a step back and get all stony, there’s a place, one of the most arid regions on Earth, called the Atacama desert. It’s not just super-dry but it also is one of the most similar places to Mars that we have here on Earth. We find perchlorate in the soil there. And we also find little microbes that eat perchlorate. So this substance (that’s toxic to humans and burns up like rocket fuel) is also food for these weird little bacteria. Awesome. So post Phoenix, we have evidence of water, a new way to think about the presence of organic material and even a potential food source for life on Mars. Boom. Sounds like a great mission.
MOS: You opened a “Monobookist” store in Manhattan, “Ed’s Martian Book”, which stocks only your Martian Summer. In an age of closing bookstores, how did you manage this hilarious, nose-tweaking monument of marketing?
AK: Lots of amazing friends and supporters of books. Beer and meatballs helped too.
MOS: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are big names, when “The Right Stuff” is a quality shared by hundreds of NASA engineers. Do you think Phoenix and the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars have proven to people that some heroes really do sit in a room full of their fellows and change the world from a few million miles away?
AK: Yes. And these guys should be household names. I’m tired of our celebs. You know she’s a sweet girl and all but honestly, **** Chloe Kardashian. I want to see Peter Smith on TV, TMZ and the cover of OK! The guys in mission control and the guys coming up with crazy ideas for missions are awesome and we should treat them as the bad***es that they are. (Wow. That answer had a lot of **** in it.)
MOS: In the future, will you …
AK: … hover over my mailbox and wait for an invitation to the next Mars mission? Probably. But if it doesn’t come, I’ll write about more super-awesome scientists who do amazing things. In the more near-term, lunch and then I think I have a meeting.
Profile, Ebook link and more: http://www.openroadmedia.com/authors/andrew-kessler.aspx
Martian Summer on Amazon
Kessler Interview Featured on NPR's Weekend Edition
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Andrew Kessler's "Martian Summer" Digs Into NASA's Great Mission on Mars |
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The moon landing may loom large in the meme-sphere, but with less fanfare and crowing, NASA's unmanned missions to Mars in recent years have conducted world-changing, groundbreaking science (literally : soil samples). Kessler's book points out the simple truth that the missions really aren't unmanned: hundreds of people are working together to make this science happen. There may not be famous footprints involved, but Kessler describes the work of scientists and engineers who are uncovering and understanding more about our neighboring planet than any boots on the ground could beat.
Open Road's funny and charming video with Kessler about his "embed" with the Mars Phoenix team below promises that "Martian Summer" is a fascinating read, and reviews have yet to say otherwise. Never before has an author been given this much access to both the science and the politics of America's official space agency.
"I pretty much won the nerd lottery," says Kessler. "There's this great human drama, as you would imagine that it takes to complete some herculean task, like sending an 800 pound lander to Mars... there's this great thing that NASA is doing, and maybe we should all care about it."
Kessler, who quit his then-job to "live on Mars" with the NASA team, co-produced the Discovery Channel documentary "Mars: The Quest for Life". He once ran an illegal art gallery in the south of France and has won Webbys and many other awards. Check out his author profile and more info on "Martian Summer" at Open Road :
http://www.openroadmedia.com/authors/andrew-kessler.aspx
Also check out Aland Dean Foster's "Predators I Have Known."
http://www.myouterspace.com/index.php/News-Creatia/alan-dean-foster-predators-i-have-known.html
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New Ebooks of Bestseller Barbara Hambly's Catalogue |
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Barbara Hambly's Darwath and James Asher Novels are now available as ebooks published by Open Road Media. Hambly's novels are widely praised for their focus on the pragmatic consequences of fantasy and genre tropes, delving into the lives of fully realized characters who can't just wish their way around the debits and downsides of magic.
Open Road Media has published a short video to celebrate their release of New York Times bestselling author Hambly's novels in ebook format, with an interview at the author's home in Los Angeles. Hambly: "Sometimes it feels like I am getting into a horse-drawn vehicle and being drawn along by some kind of strength other than myself. This dream half of myself is what creates the fantasy. It's a very vivid experience for me."
Locus Award Winner and Ex-President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Hambly has explored many dimensions and worlds in her books, including the Star Wars and Star Trek universes, her award-winning alternate histories exploring American culture, magical realms and grittier realities just a few doors down from our own.
Available ebooks also include her Sun Wolf/Starhawk, Windrose and Sun Cross series novels. For more info, check out her author profile and books at Open Road :
http://www.openroadmedia.com/authors/barbara-hambly.aspx
Also check out Aland Dean Foster's "Predators I Have Known."
http://www.myouterspace.com/index.php/News-Creatia/alan-dean-foster-predators-i-have-known.html
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