Now departing for MARS---OUTPOST ready for blast-off!!

Yes, it's true. Given my 25 year career writing for newspapers, film and video, stage, kid's books, web-and-Internet, magazines, and various laundry-lists, it can more-or-less be demonstrated that I will write darn near anything for a paycheck---even a small one. I used to tell my wife, "I can write 1,000-words about a bag of macaroni in 20-minutes." Now with Tom Luong's story, OUTPOST, I'll have the chance to write 100,000 words about a far more mysterious and thrilling topic (and maybe more than 20-minutes to do it). Starting up the Blog today on Oct. 2, 2009---but the OUTPOST story is far in the future, another 80 years ahead in the long story of humanity and Earth's struggle to survive and flourish. Film-maker Tom Luong has a great sense of what makes a compelling modern tale. Tom is an aeronautics-engineer, and also a pilot. Perhaps in some way, an appropriate living metaphor for the hero of OUTPOST---space transport pilot Guy Reisling, in the year 2075, whose job it is to ferry supplies and goods from Earth to the world's first successful Mars base, there across the abyss. If and when Earth space efforts can place a real base on Mars---one that people can live and work in, and that would sustain itself as an on-going human habitat for many years at a time---it might be predictable that more mundane and traditional Earth powers, such as states and nations, would see it as quite a valued resource, or even a tool for the survival of the species. When has it not been true that nation-states on Earth did not persue conquest and control of resources, cities, lands and peoples, ships-at-sea, or amazing new weapons? Thus the fate of the 2075 Mars-base, may not be as simple as building a new shopping mall, with a title-search downtown from the Manhattan Title Company. Complicating matters---Earth astronomers in 2075, and even some astronomers today, are predicting the confirmed arrival of a meteor-object---a giant rock from deep space---that could actually hit the Earth, causing vast devastation, some ten years ahead. Once the news is clear, the race is on for control of the Mars-base, with the obvious notion that survival for any remaining human populations, may be more likely on a functional and fully-operating base on Mars, then back on Earth in the path of a huge meteor. This is what we writer-types call the 'set-up' for Tom's story. And I have to say, Tom really is great at these kinds of ideas and concepts--I guess he hires me to write them because we are 'muy-sympatico' on the genres and styles he likes. There's much more to OUTPOST---by the end of the novel, about 25 chapters from now, I'm hoping to visualize and explore a future deep-space or near solar-system traffic corridor between Earth and Mars, and a system of space-travel between the two planets, as well the people who run these systems, operate the ships, command the launches, and run the bases and computers. Could our current level of knowledge create such a future? And if we did---would war be one of Earth's exports to our dead neighbor-world of Mars? In a way, OUTPOST is the story of Earth's first 'war in space'---and not against giant insects. A 'real' Mars base---a real approaching meteor---and 'real' space-flight traffic systems and conditions making it possible for more-or-less regular interplay between the two planets: the reality of a second or third Earthside space-force or space-industrial state, that would take action against the base for control and ownership, even despite international treaties and agreements---yeah, that sounds like 'us'-the modern, fearful, greedy, high-tech and militaristic humanity we all know and love. The 'us' of tomorrow. Future-we. OUTPOST will be a great project, and I'm looking forward to it. Please enjoy following the story along with others on these Blog-pages, and let me know your thoughts or comments.

And if you have $10-million to acquire the project for a major feature film---Tom or I would be glad to talk with you, so don't be shy!

Peace-Ahimsa