Robert A. Black, Mathematical Storyteller

Ken Murphy over at OutOfTheCradle.net has previously written glowing reviews of two anime series, Planetes and Rocket Girls (the latter winning a "Best of the Moon" award along with Lunar Pioneers ), but there's one other series he hasn't mentioned. That's probably because it isn't commercially available in the US, although you can find it online if you know where to look. Twin Spica (or Futatsu no Spica in Japanese) is the story of five kids who make it into the very first class at a special Japanese astronaut training academy. In this version of the near future, Japan has had its own manned space program, but suffered a disaster when one of its rockets malfunctioned on liftoff and crashed into a Japanese city. The main character, 16-year-old Asumi Kamogawa, lost her mother in the accident. Her father was an engineer in the space program, but now he works elsewhere. Asumi's dream since childhood has been to become a "rocket driver." H...

The first Japanese citizen in space was Toyohiro Akiyama , a journalist who visited the Mir space station in December 1990. He's best known for the acute case of space-sickness he developed during the flight. Supposedly the Mir crew called down to Moscow at one point and said, "We've never seen anyone throw up so much before!" But if you compared the way space is depicted in Japanese and American popular media, especially in media aimed at kids, you'd think the Japanese were the ones with the long history of space exploration, and we Americans were the ones whose first astronaut spent the entire flight barfing. The Japanese have a long track record of producing stories about space flight that are far more realistic than what you typically find in the US. The latest example is Rocket Girls , a 12-episode anime series based on a set of children's novels. The premise starts with a private Japanese company that is trying to get into space, but is struggling wi...