Rocket Science Update

If this really were some sort of space mission, we’d be in that portion where Mission Control has suffered from Loss of Signal. Which doesn’t, of course, means nothing is happening. Since the New Year, I’ve been busying editing the stories and articles that will appear in Rocket Science. Although only fifty-nine percent of the contributors are British, Rocket Science is still a British anthology. So I’ve been converting a lot of US and Canadian spellings to UK spellings.

source: Wikipedia

In fact, while editing and formatting the manuscripts for Rocket Science, it struck me that I need a style guide. Everything in the book needs to be consistent – from spelling, to the presentation of quotations from other documents, to headers and footers. Fortunately, there are some good style guides online. I’ll be using elements of the Guardian’s and… well, I was going to reference the Economist style guide too, but it seems it vanished during their move to a new content management system last July and has yet to be re-instituted.

Myself and the publisher have also been working on the cover-art. I am, I freely admit, not very good at that sort of thing, so his help has been invaluable. I think we’re getting close to a quite striking cover design.

Meanwhile, plans are still forging ahead to launch Rocket Science at Olympus 2012, in Heathrow, sometime over the weekend of  6 – 9 April. I’ll also plan to attend alt.fiction in Leicester the weekend after that (14 – 15 April), where we may do a second-stage launch or something.

As for this blog… starting in March, I’ll be posting bios of the authors in Rocket Science, and perhaps even teasers for some of the contents. And, when I find the time, I’ll continue to post pieces here that might be of interest to potential readers of the anthology. So don’t forget to keep on visiting…

The sky’s the limit

Since first coming across the concept a couple of years ago, I’ve felt that air-launching rockets is a pretty cool idea. Put basically, you chuck a launch vehicle out of the back of an aircraft at high altitude.

This gives a number of benefits. For a start, the rocket is already partway to orbit. Also, should the engines not fire, for whatever reason, then out pops a parachute and the payload can safely return to earth. Not to mention the fact that the actual launch can take place anywhere the carrier aircraft can reach, and so is not constrained by local weather conditions or the orbits reachable from fixed launch sites. And should anything catastrophic occur during launch, then it all happens miles away from anyone.

Unfortunately, the system is constrained by the weight that can be lifted by the carrier aircraft. The Antonov An-225 Mriya is the world’s heaviest aircraft and can carry up to 250,000 kg of cargo. The Saturn 1B launch vehicle weighs more than that double that… without payload. The Ariane 5 rocket weighs 777,000 kg and the Soyuz-2 weighs 305,000 kg. Of course, any rocket designed for air launch would not need as many stages, and so would be somewhat lighter. But no one had ever gone as far as to actually design build such a rocket…

But now they might.

Paul G Allen of Microsoft fame and Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites have just announced a new venture, Stratolaunch Systems, which aims to do just that. They plan to build a huge carrier aircraft, powered by six Boeing 747 turbofans, which will be able to lift a a specially-designed SpaceX booster which will launch at high altitude.

Given the expense and difficulties of getting to orbit, a move into space in any kind of useful numbers is unlikely in the near to medium future. An orbital elevator would certainly make travel to orbit both cheaper and easier, but construction of one is well beyond our present capabilities – or companies’ abilities or willingness to invest. An air-launch system could be an excellent interim system. It might actually be the system that makes the commercial space transportation sector a very real alternative to national and transnational space agencies.

Looking upwards and outwards

I have taken a short break from Rocket Science here at Mission Control in order to work on some other projects. But everything is still on track for the anthology’s intended launch date. Meanwhile, in the real world there have been a few developments of potential interest.

First, it looks like Fobos-Grunt is dead. It missed the window to Mars, but there were hopes they might be able to send it to a Near Earth Object. But neither Roscosmos nor the ESA have managed sustained communication with it. And bits of it have already started falling back to Earth. It’s a shame the mission failed, though Russia doesn’t have a very good track record when it comes to Mars. Since 1962, eleven (including Fobos-Grunt) of their fourteen missions to Mars have failed. Having said that, they were the first to put a lander on Mars, Mars 2 in 1971, but it doesn’t really count as it crashed. Mars 3 the same year was the first real landing but lasted only 14.5 seconds on the surface before contact was lost.

source: universetoday.com

All over the news this week has been the discovery of what might be an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting Kepler-22 587 light-years away. It’s thought the planet, Kepler-22b, is a Super-Earth, and could have a mass 13.8 times greater than the Earth and a surface gravity of 2.4G. It seems the Edenic worlds so beloved of science fiction are likely to remain just that: science fiction. Whether that means we will eventually become a space-based civilisation, adapt the worlds we find to suit us, or adapt ourselves to suit the worlds we find… remains to be seen. All three is perhaps most probable.

While the second piece of news is not really relevant to Rocket Science – those 587 light-years are, at present, an insurmountable barrier. And may well forever remains so. The first, however, is of much more interest. Not only is it possible to speculate about what Fobos-Grunt might have found on Phobos, or perhaps even imagine some form of rescue mission for the malfunctioning probe in LEO; but there’s that rich history of Martian probes to consider. The Reds were the first to land on the Red Planet. What if that had given them legal title to the world? The USSR was also the first to land on Venus. Imagine a future in which the USSR fails on Earth but prospers on Mars and Venus. The only sf novel I can think of which posits a successful space-faring USSR is Fellow Traveler by William Barton and Michael Caopbianco. No doubt there are others. Of course, it’s all alternate history now…

All of which demonstrates that the real world provides inspiration a-plenty for science fiction. There’s little or no need to look to other sf works for ideas. Perhaps that’s what the genre needs to do. Not so much a “back to basics” campaign, as a call for a return to primary sources. Look about you, and write about that in a science-fictional mode.

It may well produce more interesting results.

Contents: the full breakdown

As promised, I’ve performed the same analysis on the twenty-two pieces which will appear in Rocket Science. These charts probably say something about the type of fiction I like.

I’m not sure this chart actually demonstrates anything – it might well be that a submission stands a better chance of being bought if submitted later in the reading period, but I suspect the high number for October is simply a reflection of the higher number of submissions that month.

There is marginally higher percentage of women writers in Rocket Science than actually submitted to the anthology.

CA Canada, GB UK, No Norway, US USA

Rocket Scienceis a British anthology, so it’s hardly surprising that the contents should be mostly British – despite the fact that the majority of submissions came from the US. It’s not that the submissions from the UK were of a uniformly higher standard, but perhaps because the style of the British writers appealed to me more than that of many of the US writers. Also, many of the US submissions were what I classified as “traditional sf”, which is not what I was looking for.

I suspect the dominance of male protagonists is a result of the number of “space fiction” stories I bought for Rocket Science.

BA Bosnia, GB UK, IT Italy, KR South Korea, LY Libya, MX Mexico, RU Russia, US USA

Lots of different countries are represented by the stories’ protagonist, so a diverse cast of characters.

No stories set outside the Solar System made the final cut – not because I decided FTL, or generation ships, were not “authentic or realistic” enough, but because those stories which did include them didn’t handle them in a way I felt suited the anthology (although that was not the sole reason I rejected those stories). I had expected the contents to be spread more evenly across the planets, but they appear to be mostly group around the Earth – Moon system.

I wanted a spread of modes of fiction for Rocket Science, though the guidelines described it as a hard sf anthology. I got my wish.

Happily, there’s no over-abundance of fix problem or you die Analog-type stories. Instead, there’s a nicely varied mix of types of story. And I hope the readers of Rocket Science will think so too, when they come to read it next year.

Submissions: the full breakdown

I’ve now had the chance to analyse all the submissions I was sent for Rocket Science. While the submissions pile was not excessively large – 107 submissions in three and a half months; and the chances of any one submission being chosen was 107 : 22, or 20.5% – the anthology’s remit was quite limited. Having said that, I did post regularly to this blog about what I was seeing in the slush pile, and what I’d like to see more of. In order to choose the stories for the anthology, I read 411,670 words of fiction and non-fiction. Every submission I rejected, I did so with a personal rejection. A number of people thanked me for my comments, which was nice of them.

Not unexpectedly, there were more submissions in October, the final month of the reading period. I kept the reading period for non-fiction open for a further two weeks, hence the submissions in November. Also, a couple of people did email me and ask for some extra time, and I was happy to agree.

Sixty-five percent of people only submitted once. Two people tried four times to get into the anthology. Of the fifteen people who submitted twice, some were requested rewrites, and at least one person submitted a short story and a non-fiction piece. Of those who submitted more than once, ten made it into the anthology – so submitting multiple times clearly works.

A twenty percent submission rate from women writers is apparently typical for the genre. The fact that Rocket Science was looking for hard sf, a subgenre popular wisdom insists women do not write, clearly had no effect. The percentages hold true for both fiction and non-fiction, incidentally.

AR Argentina, AU Australia, CA Canada, EE Estonia, GB UK, NO Norway, PO Poland, US USA

The bulk of submissions came from the US. Despite the fact Rocket Science is a British anthology, this wasn’t unexpected. The Internet means distance, or the cost of postage, is no longer an obstacle, and pure numbers alone will result in US submissions always dominating. Only three non-Anglophones submitted stories – from Argentina, Poland and Norway – although they did submit in English. I bought one of them. Which demonstrates that the language barrier is there to be broken.

Earth proved to be a surprisingly popular setting, despite the anthology’s title. The popularity of the Moon and Mars is less surprising. I’ve used “unnamed star” and “named star” to distinguish between stories set in made-up planetary systems, and stories set in the systems of stars with real-world names, such as Gliese 876 or 55 Cancri K. Stories set in “interplanetary space” were typically on spacecraft journeying across the Solar System. For stories set during interstellar journeys, I’ve split out those which involved some form of FTL as “interstellar ship”. Low Earth Orbit – i.e, the International Space Station – also featured in more stories that I’d expected, but I did think there’d be more submissions set among the moons of Jupiter or Saturn. The Kuiper Belt obviously attracted several writers, despite there being very little there.

The fact that the percentage of female protagonists is higher than that of female contributors shows that a number of male writers were happy to write women characters. But not as many as I would have thought. Most stories did feature female characters, but the main point-of-view character was typically male. One story had an intersex protagonist, and several featured non-gendered aliens, robots or AIs.

AU Australia, BA Bosnia, CN China, FR France, GB UK, HR Croatia, IE Ireland, IT Italy, JP Japan, KR South Korea, LY Libya, MX Mexico, RU Russia, US USA, WS Samoa

A good spread of nationalities for protagonists, though I have assumed many were the same as the writer’s as they were not categorically stated. However, several people made an effort to write characters of different nationalities – from Croatia to Mexico to Samoa. Some were impossible to discern, so I’ve put them down as “unknown”; and some were aliens or AIs, and so are marked as “N/A”.

Not every story I was sent qualified as hard science fiction. But then I didn’t want only hard sf. A number I’ve categorised as “traditional sf” because I felt they used too many tropes not common in hard sf, or the tropes were used without the rigour typical of hard sf. A couple of stories weren’t even science fiction, though they  did otherwise meet Rocket Science‘s guidelines. I’ve used the term “space fiction” to differentiate those hard sf stories set in the present or near-future which featured technology recognisably similar to that currently used by present-day space agencies.

I decided to re-categorise some of the types of stories submitted to make things a little clearer.

• bit off too much: previously I had this down as “little tailor”. These are stories in which the protagonist finds themselves in over their heads and gets their comeuppance.

• day in the life: are stories about the protagonist, either something which happens to them, or something they learn about their world or themselves.

• first contact: a science fiction staple, human beings meet alien creatures; and, in two cases, the reverse.

• first landing: a space fiction staple, the first human beings to set foot on some world or other celestial body.

• fix problem or you die: the popularity of these was not unexpected – Apollo 13 is an obvious inspiration for an anthology titled Rocket Science, and any anthology looking for hard sf is sure to attract Analog-style problem stories.

• heist: the author of the one heist story admitted to me he wrote it because it wasn’t there as a category of story on earlier charts during the reading period.

• kids today: I hadn’t actually expected to receive any stories with child or teenage protagonists, but I was sent some. Most turned out to be “trad sf”.

• lonely spacer: stories of this type generally involve the protagonist failing to handle the loneliness of interplanetary travel… which does make you wonder why the writers would think such travel would be undertaken by individuals on their own.

• love triangle: the eternal triangle is a fiction staple, of any genre.

• man against elements: the only example of this was set on Mars, although one or two of the stories set on the moons of Jupiter / Saturn could perhaps also have qualified.

• mood piece: I have no problem with plot-less mood pieces, and certainly there’s wonder a-plenty, and hence much to write about, in the Solar System.

• rescue me: a variation on fix problem or you die inasmuch as the person at risk from the problem cannot solve it.

• rite of passage: another fiction staple, though given that the sort of fiction I wanted presupposed protagnists who were professionals, I hadn’t expected to receive any.

• small town blues: even after we’ve colonised the other worlds and moons of the Solar System, some people will not be happy with their lot and will want to leave their settlement / colony for bigger and better things.

• what happened?: I had this classified previously as “mystery”, but what happened? is, I think, a better label. The actual mystery varied by story.

• left behind: I had expected more of these, given the remit of the anthology, but perhaps it’s lack can also be put down to the influence of Analog – after, all almost all of the fix problem or you die or rescue me stories had happy endings…

• test flight: I had only one example of this and I wasn’t really sure how to classify this story. In the end, I decided to give it a category of its own.

In a few days, I’ll publish the same charts but based on Rocket Science‘s table of contents only.

Rocket Science table of contents

Here they are: the seventeen stories and five non-fiction articles which will appear in Rocket Science:

- Final Orbit, Nigel Brown
- The Complexity of the Humble Spacesuit, Karen Burnham
- Conquistadors, Iain Cairns
- Making Mars A Nicer Place to Live, Eric Choi
- Launch Day, David L Clements
- Why Barnaby isn’t on the ISS Today, Gary Cuba
- Dancing on the Red Planet, Berit Ellingsen
- Fisher’s Gambit, Stephen Gaskell
- Going, Boldly, Helen Jackson
- The New Tenant, Philip Edward Kaldon
- Not Because They Are Easy, Sam Kepfield
- Tell Me A Story, Leigh Kimmel
- Waverider Entry Spacecraft: A History, Duncan Lunan
- Dreaming at Baikonur, Sean Martin
- The Brave Little Cockroach Goes to Mars, Simon McCaffery
- Pathfinders, Martin McGrath
- The Taking of IOSA 2083, Colum Paget
- A Biosphere Ends, Stephen Palmer
- A Ray of Sunshine, Bill Patterson
- Incarnate, Craig Pay
- Slipping Sideways, Carmelo Rafala
- Sea of Maternity, Deborah Walker

And here are some pie charts about the contributors:

All closed

So that’s it, the reading period for Rocket Science is well and truly closed, for both short stories and non-fiction. It’s been an interesting experience reading submissions, and difficult too – especially when it came to rejecting stories that were really close to what I wanted. But space was limited, and I was sent plenty of good material to choose from. So many thanks to everyone who submitted.

I’ll be announcing the table of contents for Rocket Science here this weekend. So check back if you want to know what to expect when the book is published in April next year.

Meanwhile, I’ve got some editing to do…

10 things I have learned editing an anthology

It’s not exactly rocket science, you’d have thought. Except, well, yes, it is. But not in that way. Rocket Science is not my first go at editing. Back in the early 1990s, I co-edited two issues of a magazine called The Lyre. However, in those days it was all snail mail submissions. There was also no reading period – it was open submissions for the lifetime of the magazine. In other words, I thought I’d know what to expect when Rocket Science‘s submission window opened. However…

1. That story you have in your head which perfectly illustrates the theme of the anthology? You will never be sent that story.

2. Always remember that variety is good. Your readers won’t want to read twenty stories exactly the same – no matter how good the stories are.

3. Do not make the submission address less than blindingly obvious in the hope that spambots won’t scrape it. It may also fool some writers who want to submit.

4. There will always be people who will submit something that’s not on theme.

5. There will always be people who can’t keep to the requested word limits.

6. There were always be people who format their manuscripts to some weird personal layout, rather than what’s asked.

7. There will always be people who include little or no personal information in their cover emails, despite the guidelines asking them to provide some.

8. There will always be people who do not read the guidelines.

9. It doesn’t matter what the editor said about your story. They rejected it. Move on. Don’t email the editor and explain how they misunderstood and/or did not fully appreciate your story.

10. If they sent you a personal rejection, a thank-you email is not necessary (but it is nice).

Reading period closed

That’s it. The first stage, so to speak, of Rocket Science is closed. Officially, the reading period closed at midnight GMT on 31 October, but there’s little point in being a stickler about such a thing. So everything that was in my inbox when I got up this morning I’m counting as a valid submission. But no longer. Except, that is, for two people, who asked for extensions which I happily granted.

During August, September and October, I received exactly one hundred submissions. They breakdown as per the charts below:

I still have a number of submissions to work through, as well as some I’ve held back for a second reading. So if you’ve not heard from me yet, you will do in the next fortnight. You will also notice from the above graphs that I only received six non-fiction submissions. I only bought three of them, however. And I’d really like one or two more for the anthology.

So I’m going to extend the reading period for non-fiction only until 15 November 2011. I’m looking for anything to do with science and/or science fiction which fits in with the anthology’s theme of “authentic and realistic hard sf”. Everything else as per the guidelines.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll post analyses of the submissions – by setting, gender of protagonist, story type, etc. – and I hope to have a final table of contents ready to reveal by the end of November. I’ll also continue to post here on topics related to and about Rocket Science. So check back often.

Reading period final week

So as we start the final week of Rocket Science‘s reading period, the number of submisions stands at eighty stories and five non-fiction pieces. To date I’ve bought ten stories and two non-fiction articles, have half a dozen I’m hanging onto for a second reading, and another half a dozen I’ve yet to read. But there’s still plenty of room left, so if you’re going to send in something, do it in the next few days.

It’s probably a bit late to say this, but if you’re going to submit to an anthology, or a magazine, the first thing you should do is read the guidelines. I’ve only received a couple of stories that were completely unsuitable, and for those that were borderline I recognise it’s a judgment call… but I have received manuscripts in a wide variety of formats. The Rocket Science Submission Checklist clearly asks for manuscripts to be single-spaced in a non-proportional font, with every page numbered. Only a handful arrived formatted in this way. I didn’t hold it against anyone if they failed to submit in the requested format – and, it has to be said, you can’t really go wrong with Standard Manuscript Format, which many used. However… one person didn’t even put their name on their story; several didn’t include their addresses; and a few didn’t give wordcounts. Happily, most manuscripts I received included all the necessary information, and were formatted in a readable style. But, still: it’s always best to check out the guidelines before submitting.

On with the pie charts:

AR Argentina; AU Australia; CA Canada; EE Estonia; GB UK; PO Poland; NO Norway; US USA