Introducing the authors: Nigel Brown

Source: NASA

I will admit to being surprised the International Space Station proved so popular a location for stories submitted to Rocket Science. Not that I can complain, as it led to the three excellent stories set on the ISS I bought for the anthology. One of them was by Nigel Brown:

I was born at the beginning of the Space Age. As I grew up in the Sixties, the news was that of inexorable progress. The Apollo Programme was proceeding apace, and all the technological optimism of the time pointed to a bright and exciting future for any of us interested in manned space-travel. And America was the Future.

Amongst other things, I collected the Brooke Bond Tea Picture Cards series ‘The Race Into Space’ which set out a positive agenda , promising Skylab after Apollo, then a 12-man Space Station, then a nuclear-powered manned flight to Mars by 1982. Alas, it’s been compromise, reduced ambitions and delays all the way since those heady times!

Although the International Space Station isn’t the American Space Station, the USA has had a major part in it, and it appears that, with the loss of NASA’s capability even to put astronauts into low Earth orbit, we’ve reached a nadir in American capabilities. I know that the harness has been taken up by private ventures, but still, it’s a fracture in America’s ambitions as a national entity in Space.

John Campbell, the legendary editor of Astounding Stories, renamed the magazine Analog because he viewed science fiction as a useful way of exploring future worlds as an analog of what was to come, perhaps as a
warning…

In that spirit, I considered that the decommission of the ISS could be a key point in America’s Space Programme, and possibly a wake-up call if the emerging nations (India, China) were beginning their own ventures into Space. I wrote ‘Final Orbit’ as a future I didn’t want to see happen. When I heard about Rocket Science, it appeared that my story pushed all the buttons for the anthology. I was delighted that my story was accepted. Now, in the words of the great Bob D: “Senators, Congressmen please heed the call…”

Introducing the authors: Iain Cairns

Source: Lockheed Martin

Iain Cairns’ story in Rocket Science, ‘Conquistadors’, most definitely features rockets. It also harkens back to an essay on exploiting asteroids for their mineral wealth in Jerry Pournelle’s A Step Farther Out, which I remember reading back in the very early 1980s. Happily, Iain’s take on the topic is very much 21st century…

I was first tipped off about Ian Sales’s Rocket Science anthology last July by Michaela Staton, who runs the Cola Factory speculative fiction writing group in London.

Checking out the website for the project soon convinced me that Rocket Science was a real labour of love for Ian. The theme of the anthology, realistic portrayals of space travel, really excited me. I had been thinking about the subject for quite a while anyway…

When I was a kid in the 1970s, there still seemed to be a lot of public interest in space exploration, as a noble and worthwhile venture for all Mankind. Apollo had ended, but the Space Shuttle was new and exciting. Being an astronaut still seemed like a viable career option. I had a book with a projected timeline of space exploration, and I looked forward to a steady stream of milestones in my lifetime, including the first Mars base being established in 2012.

By the 1980s, however, it seemed like the optimism had faded. The huge financial cost of space exploration that had killed Apollo now loomed over the Shuttle. After the Challenger disaster, sudden awareness of the potential human cost dampened the general enthusiasm even further.

Through the 1990s, the Shuttle kept flying and there were other high-profile space projects like Hubble and the ISS, but it became increasingly clear there would be no return to the Moon in the near future, let alone manned missions to Mars or beyond.

In SF, space exploration began to seem like a rather old-fashioned, even far-fetched subject. The internet, virtual reality and cyberpunk were the new frontiers to explore. If you wanted to tackle space exploration seriously in the hard SF of the 2000s, you had to deal with the mundane realities. No faster-than-light travel with warp drives, wormholes or hyperspace. You’ll never get to Alpha Centauri in your lifetime, and even if your great-grandchildren arrived there on the generation starship, there’d be no fascinating alien cultures waiting there. Major SF buzz kill!

The main thing I kept wondering about was what the real driver of future space exploration might be. Cynically, I didn’t think the ineffable human need to slip the surly bonds of Earth and touch the face of God was enough on its own. It seemed like most major phases of human exploration and expansion are motivated by the hope of personal betterment or an improvement of circumstances. Sometimes that has been escape from oppression, but often it’s the promise of economic wealth or strategic power. The conquistadors went to the New World for many reasons, but the promise of silver and gold was a major one. The US went to the Moon, not just because it was hard, but also because they didn’t want the Soviets getting there first and painting it red.

So for Rocket Science I wanted to write a story of space exploration that was authentic not only in terms of science and technology, but also economics and motivations. If governments are now reluctant to pay billions for space missions, who will? The oil, gas, mining and minerals industries seem to be well placed to solve huge engineering challenges, conduct exploration in hostile environments, and invest billions in the hope of even greater returns. Where would a commercial space mission go for profit? Perhaps to a near-Earth asteroid that contained valuable metals and minerals. And would such a project face the same kind of ethical and environmental issues as on Earth?

Researching the details of the story reignited my interest in space exploration, and made me aware that, even though we still have no Mars base in 2012, this is the perhaps the most exciting time in the history of space exploration. The entrepreneurs leading the new commercial space race may partly be motivated by lifelong dreams of being astronauts – but it’s their outstanding grasp of economic business realities that gave them the billions to make their dreams a reality. SpaceX, led by PayPal’s Elon Musk, will launch the first private-sector mission to the ISS in April, and has just announced plans to offer $500,000 tickets to Mars in 2013. Richard Branson’s space tourism venture Virgin Galactic will start suborbital test flights this year. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin will test launch its latest all-reusable VTOL rocket this summer. Even Google’s founders are getting in on the act with their Lunar X Prize competition to encourage robotic Moon missions. It even struck me that the first thing I see every morning when I exit Old Street tube station is the headquarters of Inmarsat – a business generating billions in revenue from the exploitation of space. Now, more than ever, we’re living in the space age!

So I’d like to thank Ian for accepting my story ‘Conquistadors’ for Rocket Science, and for his brilliant editorial guidance in the polishing process – including teasing out a subtle Adam Smith reference to bolster the space economics theme! But I must also thank him for relaunching my passion for space. I may not get to Mars in 2012, but in 2013 – who knows? Now where did I put that $500,000…

Introducing the authors: Helen Jackson

Source: Time

It had never occurred to me that some of the submissions I’d be sent for Rocket Science would be based on wildly creative interpretations of the anthology’s guidelines. Admittedly, I did say repeatedly that I wasn’t necessarily looking for stories with rockets in them, or stories set in space. In hindsight, that actually leaves the field pretty much wide open. Nonetheless, some of the stories that appeared in my inbox had taken approaches to Rocket Science‘s remit I hadn’t expected. Helen Jackson’s was one such story. But as soon as I read, I knew I wanted it.

The call for submissions to Rocket Science* got me thinking.

Not about rockets (my story doesn’t contain any of those). No, it got me thinking about what people exploring space would have to deal with, and what they’d have to give up. Unlike the Starship Enterprise, real-world space ships are cramped, don’t have a decent bar on board, and take a long while to get anywhere.

A few months before the call I’d been fascinated by the suggestion of a one-way mission to Mars (see the paper by Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies in the Journal of Cosmology, “To Boldly Go: A One-Way Human Mission to Mars”) – or, rather, fascinated by the reaction. People volunteered! A lot of people – more than 400 according to Fox News here.

My first response was “me too!”

But, I couldn’t leave it there. A small part of my brain said “what, really?” and “you’d go mad with cabin fever” and “wouldn’t it be dull a lot of the time and hard work the rest?” and other similar things.

Rocket Science gave me a chance to explore some of those objections. I put a character who would love to go into space through an Earth-bound version of some of the hardships involved: long-haul travel, being away from friends and family, coping with unfamiliar tasks and surviving in a difficult climate. Investigating her responses made it a fascinating story to write. She’s not me, but – as with all my characters – she contains some elements of me.

It also let me explore a utopian vision of animation (when I’m not writing I’m an animator). There’s a lovely section in Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston’s The Illusion of Life describing how the animators at Disney studied real deer when working on Bambi. They had live fawns in the garden and a fawn cadaver, found by a forest ranger, to dissect and draw. Oh, the luxury.

In ‘Going, Boldly’ my main character, Frankie, is in the enviable position of working for a near-future games studio that takes a similar approach to research. Yet, it’s that research which makes her life difficult: it brings boredom, loneliness and fear as well as excitement and satisfaction.

It may not be rocket science, but there are parallels.

There’s more from me over at www.helen-jackson.com.

* Which – full disclosure – I received from the anthology’s publisher Mark Harding, a fellow member of Edinburgh spoken word group Writers’ Bloc.

Introducing the authors: Bill Patterson

Source: NASA

Bill provides one of Rocket Science‘s five non-fiction pieces, ‘A Ray of Sunshine’. But that’s not what he originally submitted…

I didn’t start out writing non-fiction. I just knew that the story I submitted to Ian Sales was so good that he would take it, and all would be well. But it wasn’t, and I was seriously stuck.

Maybe some history is in order. In 2010, I wrote a most excellent novella for the 3 Day Novel Contest. Well, I thought it was good. The judges, less so. Fortunately, when it came limping home, I had seen a contest that would take a twenty-thousand word story in the same genre. The novella was thirty thousand, so out came the knives. I got it down to nineteen thousand and change, submitted it, and ducked as it sailed back even faster. Fortunately, by that time, I saw another contest where the size limit was twelve thousand words. I made Honorable Mention and publication in Ninety Minutes to Live, but alas, no pay.

There was still that eight thousand I cut out. I could reform it into yet another story, which is a good thing, for I had found Rocket Science!

So, when Ian wrote back to me that my story just didn’t clear the bar, it was already too late to submit another – that’s what I get for sending in a story a day before the deadline. I went to this very same blog that you are reading, only to discover that Ian had extended the deadline for non-fiction by two weeks.

Well! I should be able to do something about that! But I was already deep into National Novel Writing Month, cranking out 3333 words or more per day, and running the Central NJ region besides. I queried Ian about a possible topic, and he suggested linking it to various SF stories. I squeezed in the research during lunch, and ransacked my bookshelf at night. It took me far longer than I thought to write ‘A Ray of Sunshine’, but Ian accepted it. My first professional sale. My face hurt from grinning all day.

That’s how I got in Rocket Science. But what comes next?

I’m currently working on a comedy about demons. An agent is tapping her foot, for it was due 1 March. When I deliver that, JournalStone, the publisher of Ninety Minutes To Live, is expecting a full novel from that 12k short story, which I call Riddled Space. I will be writing other novels in the Riddled Space universe for NaNoWriMo, as well as participating in 3 Day Novel again this year. It keeps me off the streets, and somewhere where my wife of 28 years, Barbara, can keep an eye on me.

Introducing the authors: Duncan Lunan

Source: ASTRA

Duncan provides one of Rocket Science‘s five non-fiction articles, about the Waverider Re-entry Vehicle… and he’s certainly qualified to do so:

Duncan Lunan was born in Edinburgh in 1945, and grew up in Troon, Ayrshire, attending Marr College and Glasgow University. He is an M.A. with Honours in English and Philosophy with Physics, Astronomy and French as supporting subjects, and has a post graduate Diploma in Education. After graduating in 1968 he was a management trainee and researcher, before becoming a full-time writer. In 1990-91 he was Photo-Archivist for the Press Centre during Glasgow’s year as European City of Culture, and otherwise, apart from occasional temporary or part-time jobs, since 1970 he has been a full-time author, researcher, tutor, critic, editor, lecturer and broadcaster with emphasis on astronomy, spaceflight and science fiction, and undertakes a wide range of other writing and speaking.

His publications include three books on spaceflight, Man and the Stars, New Worlds for Old and Man and the Planets, and he edited Starfield, an anthology of science fiction by Scottish writers. He has contributed to twenty other fiction and nonfiction books, among over 700 articles and thirty short stories published, including ten stories for the comic strip ‘Lance McLane’ created by Sydney Jordan for the Daily Record. His stories and articles have appeared in Analog, Galaxy, If, New Moon, Spaceflight, the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Space Policy and many other journals and magazines. He was science fiction critic of the Glasgow Herald 1971-92, running its annual SF and fantasy competition 1986-92, and currently reviews science fiction and fantasy for Interzone and Concatenation. His monthly news column ‘The Sky Above You’ has appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines since 1983, and currently appears in Cosmic Aspects, published online by Astronomers of the Future, and Jeff Hawke’s Cosmos, published three times yearly by the Jeff Hawke Club, for which he also writes notes on the classic Jeff Hawke and Lance McLane comic strips as they are reprinted. His next book, Children from the Sky, is scheduled for publication by Mutus Liber in late May 2012, and he is under contract with Springer International for two more, The Stones and the Stars, a new stone circle for Scotland, and Incoming Asteroid! What could we do about it?. As Manager of the Glasgow Parks Dept. Astronomy Project, 1978-79, he designed and built the first astronomically aligned stone circle in Britain for over 3000 years. From 1963 to 2010 he was a Council Member of ASTRA, the Association in Scotland to Research into Astronautics, as President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer, head of the exhibitions committee and a member of the publications committee 1970-2010, was Curator of Airdrie Public Observatory 1980-81, 1987-97 and 2005-2008, and in 2006-2009 ran an educational outreach project from the Observatory to schools, funded by the National Lottery.

Duncan lives in Glasgow and is a Director of the educational company Astronomers of the Future, with his wife Linda. His other interests include ancient and mediaeval history, jazz, folk music and hillwalking, and he ran folk song clubs in Ayrshire continually from 1965 to 1981.

Introducing the authors: Carmelo Rafala

Source: atlas.ch

There are no rockets in Carmelo’s story in Rocket Science, but there is science. And people. Because stories should always be about people.

I don’t know about others, but trying to write for a publication’s specification can sometimes be difficult for me. Some say it is easy, as it gives you the topic to write about. True, but there still needs to be a story somewhere in that topic an author can find and dig out. And the story will still need to remain within a framework that is acceptable to the publication.

When I had become aware of the specifications for Rocket Science, I was already playing around with a story idea that revolved around the Large Hadron Collider. While I do read many forms of speculative fiction, including hard science fiction, I discovered early on that my own work tended to shift toward the more relational aspects of human interaction, and often using the science aspects as a backdrop to the story.

So there I was, with this idea about the Large Hadron Collider. I also had a story in my head with two characters in a room, and a very personal dilemma unfolding. It was a good little relationship story idea, but it had no real speculative fiction element to it.

Large Hadron Collider. Relationships. Hum…

As a writer, I often put two or more story bits together to create one whole. (That’s why saving bits of stories can be a good idea.) So I decided to marry these two ideas together to see what would happen. Now, writing even a short story can sometimes take me months – I draft, redraft, pull in more parts from bits of story lying around, eliminate other parts, etc. But sometimes the story is right there, up front, and I am lucky enough to write it in a few weeks. ‘Slipping Sideways’ is one of those stories. When I married these two ideas, the story was right there and it “happened” before my eyes.

Sending it off to Ian Sales resulted in a very kind request for a small rewrite. To be honest, I wasn’t sure the story was what Ian was looking for. However, I was happy to discover that Ian not only liked this little relationship story, but was willing to publish it pending a small fix-up. Now, rewrites are usually itching powder for most writers who think they’d nailed it in the final draft. But I was amazed to find that my rewrite came quickly, smoothly.

And you know what? Ian was absolutely correct in requesting a rewrite. Having read back the story to myself, I find it is a much better story as a result of Ian’s clear direction. I hope you do, too.

Carmelo Rafala’s work has appeared in Jupiter, Estronimicon, as well as the anthology The West Pier Gazette and Other Stories. In addition to Rocket Science, he is also slated to be published in an upcoming anthology by Wildside Press. When not sleeping – which is often – he is Senior Editor for Immersion Press. Follow him at carmelorafala.wordpress.com.

Introducing the authors: Deborah Walker

Source: NASA (Apollo 15)

Mars may be our nearest planetary neighbour, but the Moon is nearer still. And we have visited it. Between 1969 and 1972, twelve men walked on the surface of the Moon… and we’re not likely to return until the middle of this century. If ever. Science fiction, however, has a long tradition of colonising Luna – indeed, many such stories imagined it would happen before the end of the Twentieth Century. Obviously, it didn’t. But that doesn’t mean we should stop writing about it. Deborah Walker’s story in Rocket Science, ‘Sea of Maternity’, is one such:

It can be tough to be a teenager, trying to find you way in the world. Just imagine how much harder it is if you’re stuck on Lunar. You’re the oldest teenager on the colony. And there’s nobody to date. And your Mum doesn’t understand you at all. Dad’s okay. He’s more understanding. At least he makes the effort. But Mum? Forget about it. No wonder they got divorced.

Two story threads came together in my story ‘Sea of Maternity’. The first thread examined the family problems that come with living on an off-world colony. Shelia’s a single mother on the Moon. She’s mother to a very unhappy teenage daughter. She’s a research scientist, who dreams of going to the next colony world, Titan. She’s juggling her ex-husband and a new boyfriend.

The second thread in my story concerns Shelia’s research. She develops new strains of radiosynthetic fungi. These fungi were first discovered in Chernobyl reactor bin.  In my story, the fungi soak up carbon-dioxide and create biomass. But instead of light, the radiosynthetic fungi use stellar radiation as an energy source. That’s quite a handy thing to have around on the Moon with all that radiation knocking about.

A long time ago, a very long time ago I did post-graduate research into photosynthesis. Although I was working on spinach, not fungi. It’s funny how these things stick with you.

Introducing the authors: Stephen Gaskell

Source: NASA

Stephen Gaskell is a name you might have seen in a few places, such as Interzone, Daily Science Fiction, or even the Mutation Press anthology Music For Another World. It seems he and I share a common view of science fiction…

First off, let me say thanks to Ian Sales. Over the last couple of decades science fiction that is informed by hard, scientific reality seems to have lost its popular appeal somewhat. Why this is, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s issues of scientific literacy, maybe it’s the increasing fragmented and specialised nature of our sciences, maybe it’s simply that the sense of wonder that’s inherent in today’s speculative epics like Game of Thrones and Harry Potter is difficult to marry with writing that deals with the quotidian and scientifically realistic. Like I said, I don’t know. What I am convinced of is that fiction that combines the kernel of scientific rigour with personal, compelling stories has an important role to play in helping us cope with the inevitable upheavals of the coming century. Ian Sales’ Rocket Science project will, I’m sure, show that off-Earth environments are more deadly, yet more beautiful than we ever imagined – but with an understanding of how the physical world works together with a little human ingenuity, could be places that we one day reach.

The starting point for my own piece ‘Fisher’s Gambit’, like much of my fiction, began in my awe of landscape. In this case not the terrestrial vistas that populate much of my work (like the frozen tundra of Siberia in ‘Under an Arctic Sky’ or the thin-aired heights of the Annapurna Sanctuary in ‘Cold Trail Blazing’), but the million sparkling shards of the Kuiper Belt. I have to admit to being a knowledge junkie, and I love nothing more than digging into the details. I’d heard of the Kuiper Belt, knew it existed out beyond Neptune’s orbit, but didn’t really know what it was exactly. What were these ices made of? How far apart were they? How far did they extend for? The trick I’ve learnt over the years is to work out why somebody might by in any given environment. My stories often come together when I figure that one out. ‘Fisher’s Gambit’ certainly did.

Stephen Gaskell is the driving force behind Creepy Treehouse, a lively blog that aims to highlight the basic science and maths that underpins everything from robot jugglers to apocalypse survival. He would love for you to visit, comment, take issue with controversial claims, and generally stomp around on the virtual carpet! Rocket Science blog readers may also be interested to know that for today and tomorrow only he is giving away for FREE his co-written novella, Strata, at the Amazon Kindle store. Set on one of the dozen-or-so massive energy mining platforms that circle through the sun’s chromosphere, Strata features worker uprisings, colossal feats of engineering, and deadly skimmer races through fiery tunnels over the surface of the sun. Grab it before it goes back to full price – and please tell your friends so as to gain maximum geek-chic street cred! For scintillating snippets of wisdom under 140 characters and entirely devoid of my eating habits follow me on twitter @stvgskll.

Introducing the authors: Berit Ellingsen

Source: NASA

Berit Ellingsen’s story is one of three in Rocket Science about a mission to Mars. It didn’t surprise me that the Red Planet proved such a popular location for submissions, but Berit’s story did manage to surprise me in other ways.

Berit Ellingsen is a science journalist and fiction writer whose stories have appeared in many places, including online literary journals Metazen, Coffinmouth and Hyperpulp, and print anthologies Rocket Science, Candle in the Attic Window and Growing Dread. Berit was a runner-up in Beate Sigriddaughter’s Ghost Story Competition and a semi-finalist in the 2011 Rose Metal Press chapbook competition. Her novel, The Empty City, is a story about silence. Her chapbook What Girls Really Think is out from Turtleneck Press. She is currently seeking publication for a collection of short stories. Find out more at beritellingsen.com.

I’m a science journalist and write about all aspects of space science, from robotic exploration to human space missions. To me, space science and the exploration of space is something of the most important that humanity can do, because it gives us a place in the universe, as well as a future.

I also see international cooperation and friendship as vital, not only for science and exploration, but for our survival as a species. When people from different countries and cultures meet, interesting things happen. They discover how different, but also how similar they are. Many of the Dutch, Belgian, German and British people I know like trance music, and I made a joke that that was the kind of music the Europeans would play when an international manned mission lands on Mars. All those elements became ‘Dancing on the Red Planet’. I hope you will enjoy the dance.

Introducing the authors: Simon McCaffery

Source: NASA

Given a title like Rocket Science, you’d expect much of the anthology’s contents to involve journeys of one kind or another. Strangely, it didn’t quite work out that way. Which is not to say some of the stories don’t involve trips – by rocket, of course – between one planet and another. Simon McCaffery’s ‘The Brave Little Cockroach Goes to Mars’, as the title suggests, is one such story. He writes:

Stories are usually the product of a collision of two or more unconnected ideas that provide the necessary “what if?” that propels the tale. I had spent the better part of a year researching Mars and the dozens of proposed manned mission profiles, spacecraft designs and related technology for a novella. I followed the daily exploits of Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars rovers that refused to die, and exciting designs for new, more complex autonomous surface robots. I discovered that there’s an entire branch of planetary robotics that seeks to mimic the most successful locomotive designs in nature including, you guessed it, the lowly cockroach.

I also enjoyed the idea of an unwanted stowaway along the lines of Tom Godwin’s ‘The Cold Equations’, and a story in which the characters must adapt to unforeseen, dire events far from home. While reading an article about cabin designs for a manned mission to the Red Planet and imagining that arduous six-month journey, my mind’s eye saw a weary astronaut spying the most unexpected thing inside a billion-dollar chronometer-precise spacecraft – a cockroach. I saw the astronaut instinctively try to swat it, and wondered what if he missed?

‘The Brave Little Cockroach Goes to Mars’ attempts to answer that question, and despite a vein of cynicism regarding the current state of the American attitude toward space exploration, rekindle a spark of wonder and hope.

I’ve published a lot of horror fiction in venues like Black Static, The Zombie Feed, various Books of the Dead Press collections, and John Skipp’s upcoming Psychos mega-anthology, but science fiction was my first love, and I’ve been spending more time in that genre. I’m proud to appear in Rocket Science, and I have a story appearing later this year in the online magazine Lightspeed and John Joseph Adams’ anthology Other Worlds Than These. And I have that pesky science fiction-horror hybrid novel to complete. Drop me a line at simonmccafferyfiction.blogspot.com.