Debra Parmley’s short story, The Road to Groom Lake, in the Area 51 anthology, We KNow the Truth, Do you? is going to the moon through the Writers on the Moon project. The anthology authors are included as “stowaways.” Now, what is the Writers on the Moon project? Debra will let others tell you, as science was never her best subject. And maybe you’ll see some authors you know, or discover some new ones.
Copied from Chrys Fey’s website:
WRITERS ON THE MOON
Mother and Daughter Florida Authors Send Books to the Moon – Press Release
I am a part of a project with 124 other authors called Writers on the Moon. In late 2021 we will be launching a digital data card in a lunar time capsule to the Moon. There will be stories on it, art, and so much more.
This lunar time capsule project is organized by Susan Kaye Quinn, Speculative Fiction Author.
Writers on the Moon Website: https://www.writersonthemoon.com/
Writers on the Moon Blog: https://www.writersonthemoon.com/blog
Manifest of Authors Participating: https://www.writersonthemoon.com/our-team
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/401157097809015
#WritersontheMoon
From the Official Website (written by Susan Kaye Quinn):
THE IDEA: Writers on the Moon is a lunar time capsule project. We’ll send a rag-tag fleet of stories to the Moon aboard a digital data card. We hope this snapshot of indie fiction from around the world in 2021 will reveal the humanity of today to the readers of tomorrow.
For more info, check out the official README file for the project written by Susan Kaye Quinn.
HOW WE’LL GET THERE: Astrobotic and DHL have partnered to deliver “MoonBoxes” aboard Astrobotic’s lunar landers. Our payload will ride on the first Astrobotic lander to reach the Moon, the Peregrine Lander. It will remain there permanently, a time capsule for the future.
LUNAR CODEX:
The complete Writers on the Moon payload (including all stowaways) will have TWO separate launches into space and will land on the moon and be archived in TWO different locations.
Samuel Peralta, a WOTM participant and the creator of Lunar Codex, received permission from Susan Kaye Quinn (the creator of WOTM) to archive the entire WOTM payload on the Polaris time capsule. “Polaris is a multilayer memory card & nickel nanofiche time capsule with shielding,” which will further help to protect and extend the WOTM archive life.
1. The official Writers on the Moon launch will be this year (2021) in December. The exact date isn’t known yet. United Launch Alliance will send up a Vulcan rocket from Cape Canaveral, FL with Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander onboard. Peregrine will land on the moon, with the WOTM payload, at Lacus Mortis where it’ll stay.
2. In 2023, Space X will carry Astrobotic’s Griffin lander and NASA’s Viper Rover to the Lunar South Pole on the moon. The Griffin lander will have the Polaris time capsule on it that contains a backup of the Lunar Codex time capsule (for the 2022 IM-1 mission) AND the entire Writers on the Moon payload, including all official and unofficial stowaways.
Also, Writers on the Moon will be memorialized in a THIRD location on the moon.
In 2022, Space X will be launching Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Lunar Lander to the moon at Oceanus Procellarum. Although the WOTM payload will not be on this lander, there will be two “art pieces” for WOTM as part of the Lunar Codex time capsule that’ll be on board.
1. The first art piece is an etching of the “International Library on the Moon” with a list of all the author participants, their manifest number, and the WOTM website URL. This info will be etched on “indestructible nickel foil (nanofiche).”
2. The second piece is a nickel wafer that’ll list the location on the moon where the Writers on the Moon payload/library can be found, with exact coordinates for future archeologists to be able to find our stories.
FAQ:
1. What about radiation? Won’t radiation damage the disk?
We will be using TWO SanDisk’s Extreme microSD cards (one is a backup). Along with them, there will be a paper mini-book that explains what Writers on the Moon is to any being who may discover it and includes the website’s URL, as well as a thin piece of sheet metal (aka MoonChip) with the website’s URL. The website is our backup on Earth containing information about every participant’s payload and the stories behind the stories.
There will also be the complete copy of the WOTM payload on Lunar Codex’s Polaris time capsule that’ll be on a multilayer memory card with shielding to extend the archive life, as well as the nickel nanofiche pieces described above with the website’s URL and coordinates for the payload at Lacus Mortis.
Susan Kaye Quinn also notes “our payload will be buried inside a lander with other payloads. Lunar radiation is not so severe that it can penetrate more than a few thin metallic sheets, and we’ll have a lot of armor all around us. That’s the thing most likely to protect our stories.”
For more info, check out THIS blog post.
2. Why are payloads being sent to the Moon?
The Astrobotics and Intuitive Machines missions are the first cargo deliveries being sent to the Moon, consisting of science and technology experiments.
The Astrobotics Peregrine lander, that will be bringing up our Writers on the Moon payload, “will carry instruments to study several aspects of the moon’s environment. The different instruments will study the chemistry of materials in the lunar regolith, which future astronauts could harness and use; the radiation environment, which is perhaps the biggest obstacle to human survival and well-being on the moon; and the chemistry of the moon’s thin atmosphere, or exosphere. ” [1]
For more info on the Astrobotics payload, check out their manifest HERE.
Future cargo deliveries will be for further discovery and data gathering purposes.
3. Isn’t this like putting manmade trash on the Moon?
The Peregrine Lander is 1.9 meters X 2.5 meters, not much taller than an average person. [2]
According to NASA, “[their science and technology] payloads are each about the size of a shoebox.” [3] And our Writers on the Moon contribution is 0.75″ X 0.125″.
Astrobotics accepted other capsules (DHL MoonBoxes) like ours as “small personal mementos for inclusion on its first mission to the Moon.” [4] How many, I can’t say, but the capsule sizes were 0.5 Inch, 0.75 Inch, and 1 Inch, all very small. [5] The purchase of a MoonBox supports lunar exploration, opening “the Moon to scientists, explorers, and other pioneers who will expand human activity in space.” [6]
Also, the MoonBoxes will be inside a single pod attached to the lander, where they will stay until its discovery by future Moon archeologists, meaning this will NOT create space debris. [7]
Not only are the payloads small, but there’s a purpose for them. With our payload, we are essentially building the first library on the moon and bringing glimpses from the past in the form of art to future generations. I don’t believe science, technology, education, books, and art could ever (and should never) be considered trash.
4. How did Susan Kaye Quinn come up with Writers on the Moon and sending a digital data disk to the Moon?
Read about it in her own words HERE.
Read about it in her own words HERE.
ASTROBOTIC TECHNOLOGY’S WIKIPEDIA PAGE:
CHRYS FEY’S OFFICIAL PAYLOAD:
- Heaven Born Series (4 eBooks)
- Avrianna Heavenborn File (containing: Ghost of Death eBook, Detective Heavenborn eBook, Avrianna Heavenborn Illustration by Loni Townsend, three fashion designs by Chrys Fey)
- Disaster Crimes Series (9 eBooks: The Crime Before the Storm, Hurricane Crimes, Seismic Crimes, Lightning Crimes, Tsunami Crimes, Flaming Crimes, Frozen Crimes, A Fighting Chance, and The Disaster Curse)
- Write with Fey: 10 Sparks to Guide You from Idea to Publication
- Keep Writing with Fey: Sparks to Defeat Writer’s Block, Depression, and Burnout
- We Know the Truth, Do You? Anthology
- Liftoff by Tyrean Martinson
- Abducted Life by Patricia Josephine
- Pieces of the Heart Anthology
- Woman of Steel (essay)
- If I Could Donate My Heart (essay)
- A Girl from Pluto (essays)
- Sky, The Littlest Witch (8 children’s stories)
- The TRUTH OF Mary Magdalene (essay)
- Un-Grow (song lyrics)
- Here in the Grass (poem)
- The Angel (poem)
- More About Chrys Fey (info from her website)
- Real-Life Memories that Inspired Flaming Crimes (essays)
- Chrys Fey and Her Grandma, Her Angel (image)
- Chrys Fey and Elaine Kaye – Mother and Daughter (image)
- Young Chrys Fey – 5th Grade (image)
- Chrys Fey Author Logo (image)
THE STORIES BEHIND CHRYS FEY’S PAYLOAD:
Heaven Born Series – The Heaven Born series is currently an unpublished series consisting of four books, but I could not do this (send books and other creations to the Moon) without sending the most important creation of all, the one that I consider my life’s work and lovingly call my Secret Book Baby Series. I’ve called it that because on social media, (up until now) I haven’t revealed the name of the series or the names of the individual books. Some people may think it’s insane to include books that aren’t published yet and that haven’t been professionally edited. Well, call me crazy, but I felt deep in my bones and in my heart that I had to send these stories that mean so much to me to the Moon. I had to send these characters (Avrianna and Rainer) who have been a part of me for so long to the Moon. It only makes sense to send characters who are out-of-this-world…well…out of this world. They are phenomenal in every sense. Their love is epic. And, dang it, launching them and their stories to the Moon is phenomenal and epic. While the four books in the time capsule won’t be what will get published one day, they are my visions. As close to my vision as they ever will be, considering I may have to cut out scenes to get them to an acceptable word count. And that means a lot to me. These copies will be rare. As rare as Avrianna and Rainer are.
Avrianna Heavenborn File – This is a special, complimentary file that contains bonus content about Avrianna Heavenborn, the heroine of the Heaven Born series. This file contains the eBook Detective Heavenborn, which is the story I published in We Know the Truth, Do you? anthology; Ghost of Death, a short story eBook I published with The Wild Rose Press that was my way of introducing Avrianna to readers (minus worldbuilding details); a digital illustration of Avrianna designed by the talented artist and author Loni Townsend; and a few fashion designs I drew by hand to go with the stories.
We Know the Truth, Do You? Anthology – This anthology, published by Pink Moon Books and Terri A. Wilson in 2019, was created to celebrate the raid on Area 51 and have fun with it.
From Wikipedia: “‘Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us,’ commonly referred to as Raid Area 51, Storm Area 51, or Area 51 Raid, was an American Facebook event that took place on September 20, 2019, at Area 51, a United States Air Force facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range. The event, created by Matty Roberts on June 27, 2019, would involve raiding the site in a search for extraterrestrial life that conspiracy lore claims may be concealed inside. More than 2 million people responded ‘going’ and 1.5 million ‘interested’ on the event’s page, which subsequently attracted widespread media reaction and caused the event to become an Internet meme.”
A raid did not actually happen, but that didn’t matter. The “event” had brought people together, such as the 25 authors who contributed a story for the anthology.
When I found out I was a part of the Writers on the Moon project and had room to include more than my own creations, I had to add this anthology. I love the idea that our stories about Area 51 and aliens will be on the Moon for future anthropologists or even alien life to discover.
The Disaster Crimes Series – I had to include the complete Disaster Crimes series (The Crime Before the Storm, Hurricane Crimes, Seismic Crimes, Lightning Crimes, Tsunami Crimes, Flaming Crimes, Frozen Crimes, A Fighting Chance, and The Disaster Curse) on my payload. Books 1-5 (including the prequel and an in-between story) follow Beth and Donovan as they fall in love and face one natural disaster after another and countless criminals. Books 6 and 7 feature Thorn, their best friend, and Amanda. Together, these four have gone through a lot. Now, their newest adventure is going to the Moon!
CHRYS FEY’S OFFICIAL STOWAWAY MANIFEST:
Loni Townsend – Avrianna Heavenborn Digital Illustration
Tyrean Martinson – Liftoff
Patricia Josephine – Abducted Life
Chrys Fey’s Grandma Clara
Avrianna Heavenborn (Heaven Born series)
Rainer McCoy (Heaven Born series)
Beth and Donovan (Disaster Crimes series)
Amanda and Thorn (Disaster Crimes series)
The Wild Rose Press (Publisher)
Dancing Lemur Press (Publisher)
We Know the Truth, Do You? Anthology:
CM Peters – Cargo
C.L. Williams – About Those Brothers
Arthur M. Doweyko – P’sall Senji
Jennie L. Morris – Galaxy Genetics Inc.
Annie Walls – Lavish Lure
Katey Tattrie – The Worst of the Worst
Chrys Fey – Detective Heavenborn
Lori Joseph – Taking Initiative
Renee Hewett – Area 51: Desert Sparkles
Carrie Humphrey – The Anniversary
Harley Easton – In the Air Tonight
C.L. Roman – Not Your Father’s Area 51
Valerie Puri – Burner Phone
Terri A. Wilson – Prison 51
Katherine LE White – LGM Duty
Jennifer Wedmore – What We Became
J.C. Layne – The King Just Went Home
Sherry Rentschler – Mermurings: An Evening Bower Adventure at Area 51
L.E. Perez – What Am I?
Debra Parmley – The Road to Groom Lake
Tich Brewster – The Failed Experiment
Cass Alex – Them Versus Us: The Siege at 51
Cherron Riser – Jewel from the Sky
Beverly Ovalle – The Road to Eden
Gracen Miller – Code Name: Nina
Pieces of the Heart Anthology:
Maggie Adams – Guilty Pleasures
Shannon Bell – Not Your Average Prince Charming
Robbie Cox – Another Page
Chrys Fey– Cancer Can’t
Joan Hazel – Show, Don’t Tell
Violet Howe – Breaking the Promise
Brenda Hunt – A Love for Sarah
Sam J D Hunt – Nicco the Eternal
Elaine Kaye – All Aboard
Tamsyn L. Key – Hunted
Michelle Louise – The Will to Love Again
Tara Ann Moore – Marigold
Nichole Parkins – The Girl in the Well
Cherron Riser – Through Frozen Shadows
Miranda Shanklin – I Got Scared