I have entered my draft manuscript in an Amazon/Penguin backed competition – actually hosted by CreateSpace.com – an e-author portal subsidiary of Amazon. Well why on Earth wouldn’t I? $15000 first prize and a contract with Penguin. I will let you know how I get on. They are taking first 5000 entries and then gradually eliminating through until June.

Only problem is that it is for unpublished works only so I have to hold off publishing now until I am eliminated or I win. It’s very interesting reading the T&C cos they go through in detail how you will negotiate the contract with Penguin if you win. It all sounds very pleasant.

Powered Debut by Cazy-net.

Well. A coupla interesting things.
It’s a bit depressing – on the face of it – that Obama has cancelled Constellation – the open-ended project stream that would have resulted at some point with men on Mars, but reading between the lines, it’s not so bad. There will be a move more to privatised companies doing the lift bit into space and supposedly a move to find more efficient means of getting to Mars (propulsion-wise). I do find the tone of the speech(?) or document by the Mars Director a little false though and I am not sure how many of their employees will buy into the ‘mood’.
What worried me most is that, as some commentators have pointed out, for many of us, a part of our hope in life is carried by NASA projects. This may be dubious in that NASA was founded on a combination of aeronautics reseach in the USA and Nazi scientists at the end of WWII but at least casting your eyes upwards to the stars provides some kind of common frontier – a reason to ‘collaborate’ rather than fight.
Without this we are in danger of becoming a species ‘looking inwards’ and this introversion, I think, seems to correspond with periods of increased conflict. Continue reading “NASA’s Project Constellation cancelled” →