One of Those Days, Alice...

I was feeling blue today, likely due to a sore throat and bad headache that won't shake, so I decided to cheer myself up by working on an old shelved story I began a long time ago, a near-future type thing set on the moon.

By one of those coincidences that seem like gifts, a blog post from Tor.com showed up in my Google Reader that I had to stop to read: Spacing Out by Edward M. Lerner.

In it, he quotes Michael Griffin, a former NASA administer, who spoke about the recent 40th anniversary of the moon landing:

What is most striking about this 40th anniversary of the first human landing on the moon is that we can no longer do what we’re celebrating. Not “do not choose to,” but “can’t.”

I don't know why I hadn't thought about it before, but it's true that space exploration has gone backwards, now that we're no longer racing the Soviets to do things first.

Just a few days ago I lamented at Amoeba's blog  that if only the human race would band together instead of compete we each other, we could accomplish so much more. I think that's true, that we could. Unfortunately, if all the world's nations cooperated peacefully, all we probably would accomplish is new boy bands, different flavours of Cheetos, and more reality TV shows.

So now it's not just my sore throat that has me depressed.

When I was born, Star Trek had just begun airing on NBC. About the time its five-year mission was cut short by cancellation, my parents bought our very first television so that we could watch the moon landing---not foreseeing the electricity would go out on that day of days, leaving us literally in the dark. When the space shuttle was launched in 1981, our school let us out of classes to go watch it happen live. It was an amazing moment. I was 14 and the future seemed huge and magical.

It still is, of course... whenever I watch Star Trek. But I think there's very little chance I'll live to see people touring the moon, or Mars, or travel to more distant places, unless of course a vampire gets me and I live forever. But I think that's another genre altogether.

Anyhow, after lamenting the loss of space exploration, Mr. Lerner finishes his post beautifully:

I want to be wrong—about everything I’ve just written.

I want to believe humanity has not forgotten how to explore. I want to believe humanity still knows how to take risks when the reward—there’s a whole freaking universe out there!—is so big. I have to believe SF writers will continue to inspire the public to have faith in—to demand!—a future that is at least as big and bold as the past.

Hey! Did you get that last line? There's no time to be depressed after all; we've got a future generation of astronauts to inspire. There's even a few new science fiction markets to help us do that:

Cossmass will launch in January, offering science fiction stories in audio formats; pay is £20 for first audio rights.

The Distant Worlds Anthology is currently accepting novella-length science fiction; a sister publication will feature fantasy.

And of course there are many old favourite publications, including these:

Continuum Science Fiction appears in print three times a year, and pays up to $25 for short stories.

Futurismic focuses on Earth-based, near future science fiction... could we think, perhaps, of a few stories dealing with the future consequences of turning our backs on space? For once I'm not linking directly to the submission guidelines, because there's a very interesting piece on just this subject, on their front page.

NASA's photo of the Sombrero Galaxy above and the nebula at top,

were provided free by Dover Illustrations.

G'night... I'm now off  in search of  the Nyquil I smuggled from West Virginia this summer.