Galactic Beacon: Volume 1 is now available from Amazon for the Kindle.

Don't have a physical Kindle? You can also get free Kindle reader software for the following platforms:

• iPhone
• iPad
• iPod Touch
• Android (Droids, etc.)
• Blackberry
• Windows
• Mac

That's a bunch of platforms.

To pick up your copy, just hop on over to the Galactic Bazaar.

Working away at the Kindle version and very nearly done.

I'm hoping that by the end of the week I'll have it up in the Kindle Katalog. No, they don't really use that wacky spelling, but I personally think it was a missed opportunity.

Stay tuned! Once the Kindle version is done, I'll work on an ePub version.

The WebOS version of Galactic Beacon: Volume 1 is now available in the Palm App Catalog. The link is here.

Galactic Beacon: Volume 1

One-Way Trips to Mars

Our first anthology, Galactic Beacon: Volume 1 is now available for Palm's WebOS Phones.

Available on:

Palm WebOS

In this volume we primarily speculate on one-way trips to Mars.

In the essays department we have Mars And Bust which ruminates on a New York Times article that talks about one-way trips to Mars. We also have Man Vs. Robot wherein I speculate on manned vs robotic space missions and which of our robotic explorers I could best in personal combat.

Four short stories are found in the fiction section.

On Second Thought explores what would happen on a one-way trip to Mars if someone changed their mind… People do that, you know.

Sarah is the second one-way trip story, but it takes a very different and more personal approach to the story. It features a robotic mule whose ancestor can be seen on Youtube. Very cool technology for a space prospector like Sarah, as long as they switch to electric motors and not those damn buzzing lawnmower motors! Watch the video and you’ll know what I mean.

Raven 2.0 is the first in our series of “Better Literature Through Science” stories. Our good friend Albert, Lord Graspington will explore ways to improve classic literature through strategic updates.

Finally, we have The Duel which is the only fantasy story in this volume. This is the first in a series of stories set in a fantasy world that could be likened to Rome in decline. But with pyramids. Because I like pyramids.

 There is also a collection of comics, some of which also appear here on the Galactic Beacon website.

Check it out, and I hope you enjoy it!

I just finished the last short story for Volume 1.

It's the story of the first people on Mars and their wacky misadventures. OK, not so much wacky.

I'm not going to reveal much about the story, but it is my attempt to be as dead-bang realistic as I possibly can based on current technology and what is a possible future for manned space exploration.

With luck I can wrap things up this weekend and get Volume 1 up to the Palm app store next week.

After a series of setbacks, I have finished the main coding on the Web OS version of Galactic Beacon Volume 1.

That's the good news.

Now I need to finish one more short story, one essay and a few more comics before I publish.

Following the Web OS version, I will make ePub and Kindle versions.

Real life (with a big R) has intruded into my efforts and forced me to take a break from creative efforts for a season.

With luck this is a temporary setback, and I will return to the fun I was planning for this site and my others. If not, then I will have littered the information superhighway with the various carcasses of my literary and artistic endeavors like so many flattened 'possums, squirrels, raccoons, and armadillos.

Since I had only just begun this site, I don't actually have any readers yet, so hopefully no one is disappointed.

I've been working on the WebOS (Palm Pre and Pixi) version of the eReader app for our first anthology, and it's coming along nicely.

The reason I'm trying to get that one out first (even before the Kindle version), is because Palm is holding a developer contest that runs until the end of May. The sooner I can get my app up, the more chances I have to win a MAJOR PRIZE (with apologies to A Christmas Story).

With any luck I'll get that up within a couple of weeks, and then the Kindle, and ePub version soon after.

Once I get Volume 1 of the anthology out, I'll have more time for the comics. I have a whole file full that I want to do, but there are only so many hours in a day. Once Vol 1 hits the streets, I'll start maintaining a publishing schedule for the comic.

That's my update. I'll try to get some screenshots up over the weekend along with a couple new comics.

OK, sometimes the crap that happens in the real world is far funnier than the stuff we make up.

Case in point...

Zebra Caught In Atlanta.

That link is to my technical/general blog wherein this Ace Reporter cracked the case of the appearing zebra...

In the world of travel it has long been a fact that buying a one-way ticket is cheaper than buying a round-trip ticket. Stands to reason. Taking someone somewhere and bringing them back should cost you twice as much as ditching them, right?

Well The New York Times has an article about the prospect of sending people to Mars less expensively by NOT BRINGING THEM BACK.

Now THAT is outside the beltway thinking!

Who knew our space program was being hobbled all these years by an antiquated insistence that people shot into space should expect to be brought back. Alive even!

The article suggests that many people, especially scientists, would be perfectly willing to sign up for a one way ticket to the red planet where they could live out the remainder of their lives doing SCIENCE! Think of the exciting research they would probably produce! Oxygen producing machines, water producing machines, cosmic ray block (SPF 40 X 10²³)…

Cosmic rays, it turns out, are less likely to give you superpowers than cancer. I KNOW! I was shocked by that thought too. Turns out that even if we DO try to bring the astronauts back to earth, they will STILL DIE sooner than if they hadn’t gone to Mars thanks to the non-super-power inducing radiation exposure.

That brings us to part two of the plan: send old folks. Well, it stands to reason that if you are going to shorten someone’s life, you should make it be by the smallest PERCENTAGE possible. If you shave three years off the life of duffer of 100, then you have only knocked off 3%. If you do that to someone who is 50 then it balloons to 6%. If you sent a one year old it would be a staggering 300% of his life so far! Outrageous!

Sen. Al Franken (D – MN) proposed in one of his books that sending senior citizens into space would help solve the Social Security crisis. No, really he did. Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot (Of course it was one of his humor books and very funny, I might add.)

I can see the advertisement now:

Yes, Mars is the land of Milk of Magnesia and Honey flavored cough drops. Send Granny to a better place. ALL her health care needs will be provided FREE OF COST on Mars. You will be GUARANTEED BY THE GOVERNMENT a regular EMAIL UPDATE from Granny, since radio signals from Mars tend to be garbled. Don’t you worry about Granny! She’s made of hardy, pioneer stock!

The last bit of the article I found interesting was the account of polling scientists about whether or not they would sign up for such a trip.

"One of my peers in Arizona recently accompanied a group of scientists and engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on a geological field trip. During the day, he asked how many would be willing to go on a one-way mission into space. Every member of the group raised his hand."

I imagine that later that day he told them how much science could be conducted by someone who jumped into a volcano, and they all made a mad dash like so many apocryphal lemmings leaping gleefully to their molten doom.

Ask NOT what your country can do for you, just get your butt on the rocket Professor Granny!