Monthly Archives: December 2011

2012 Mars Society Poster Contest

The 2012 Mars Society Poster Contest is now underway!  The winning design will be used as the primary graphic for promoting the 15th Annual International Mars Society Convention, to be held in Pasadena, California, August 3-5, 2012.

Winner of 2011 Mars Society Poster Contest

When designing posters, members and friends are asked to use the main themes of the 2012 convention: “Mars Science Laboratory rover”, “robotic exploration” and “finding life on Mars”.  The poster should seek to emphasize the critical importance of robotic research and exploration of the Red Planet as a key stepping stone to a humans-to-Mars mission within the decade.

The winner will receive free admission to all sessions of the convention in Pasadena, which will include a ticket to the main convention banquet and (tentatively) the viewing of a live broadcast of the MSL landing on the Martian surface on the evening of August 5.  [Airfare and hotel accommodations are not included.]
The deadline for submitting all poster designs is Friday, February 3, 2012 at 5:00 p.m. EST.

With regard to technical requirements for the contest, the poster size should be 11″ x 17″.  There are no restrictions on color.  If your poster is chosen, in addition to the full color poster we will need a gray-scale copy.  Posters can be submitted as a .pdf file, although it is preferred in the original format (i.e., Photoshop).

To submit your poster, please e-mail the sample to: [email protected]  Please also use this e-mail address for any questions regarding the contest and/or the submission process.

io9 Article on Space Themed Storytelling

io9, a daily publication that covers science, science fiction, and the future has published a fun thought provoking article on space themed storytelling. 
(Please click through to read the article in full.)

Why Adding “In Space” Makes It Better

Everybody always says that every story idea has been done before – which is totally not true, because nobody’s done a “nuns raise an ostrich to be the perfect killer” story before. But even if a story idea has been done to death, you can always make it fresh and brilliant all over again, by adding just two little words: “in space.”
Science fiction fans have known this forever, but it’s time that everybody was told. There is no genre, no type of story, no set of story beats, that cannot be improved by adding “in space.” It bears the same relation to storytelling that “in bed” does to fortune cookies. And we’ve got the proof, right here.