I was excited by the opportunity to take part in the Exoplanet Demographics conference hosted by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at IPAC/Caltech over the 9-13th of November.
The organisers of the virtual conference were surprised by the amount of interest they received from science fiction writers and decided to do a Collaborative STEAM public outreach project, soliciting science fiction stories, poetry and art inspired by the discoveries being presented during the conference.
I was given the abstract of a presentation by Juliette Becker entitled The Origins of Multi-Planet Systems with Misaligned, Nearby Companions. Inspired by the details of the discovery (at least those that I understood), I wrote a short-and-sweet science fiction story called “The Missed Connection”.
This was published in the Wednesday edition of the Heavy Metal Jupiters and Other Stories e-zine edited by Jessie Christiansen and Heather Clitheroe.
I’m doubly excited to discover that the author of the research talk said that she loved my story!
I absolutely love the story Sylvia Spruck Wrigley wrote about my #ExoDem research talk. I won't spoil it, but Rocky the sentient asteroid has a bad time because he makes some assumptions about STIP geometries! Link: https://t.co/c6eZhcYwbr https://t.co/7lguTpCzDC
— Juliette Becker (@jcbastro) November 11, 2020
This was a great initiative and I am proud to have been a part of it.