Robert A. Black, Mathematical Storyteller

You may recall my entry from a couple of months ago, about the Japanese anime series Twin Spica . In case you don't recall, it was about a group of kids in the near future, who have been chosen for the first class in an official Japanese astronaut academy. Well, now the NHK network has announced that it's making a live-action version of the story, which will premiere June 11. 16-year-old newcomer Nanami Sakuraba will play the lead role of Asumi Kamogawa. I don't know about her acting, but visually she's a good match: The Japanese space agency JAXA is acting as an advisor for the production. They did the same thing on the anime series Rocket Girls , and did a great job of it. Meanwhile, a bit closer to home, the History Channel is working on Moonshot , a new movie about the Apollo 11 mission. It will premiere July 20, which is the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. The only cast member I know of so far is James Marsters, best known as Spike on Buffy the Vampir...

Happy 2009! Okay, I know I'm late with that, but better late than never, right? The new year brings a big change for my publisher. Windstorm Creative has reorganized and is now Orchard House Press . I even get my own author page at the new website - you can find that here . Meanwhile, I'm working on getting a new manuscript started, and that means I'm moving on to new research topics. I'm leaning toward a World War II story that's been going through my head, so today I'll offer you a link related to that. Words at War was a radio program that ran from 1943 to 1945. It was a series of half-hour book dramatizations, each related to some aspect of the war effort. The Internet Archive has all 87 episodes available for download - you can find them here . They're an interesting window into that era - and at half an hour, they're the perfect length for playing on my mp3 player during my lunchtime walk!

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...

This Christmas season is a special one in space history. It was 40 years ago, Christmas 1968, when Apollo 8 sent the first human beings to the Moon. They didn't land - the Lunar Modules weren't ready yet - but they made ten orbits and sent back the first TV transmission from another world. For the first time, people could see the entire Earth as a planet floating in space. They also read from the King James Bible on Christmas Eve. There are lots of online commemorations you can check out if you're interested: National Public Radio ran a story on Morning Edition that you can listen to here . There's also an online video bonus story. David Livingston welcomed space historian Robert Zimmerman to Monday's edition of The Space Show , to talk about Apollo 8 and the Bible reading in particular. You can listen to that here . Finally, NASA-TV is running Apollo 8 coverage all day today and tomorrow. You can check out the schedule here . Merry Christmas, everybody!

It's been quite a whirlwind the past couple of weeks. It started right after Thanksgiving, when Lunar Pioneers was named... Best of the Moon 2008 Youth Moon Fiction Category For OutOfTheCradle.net's complete list of the winners, you can click on the banner above. Since then, I've been scrambling to get the word out, and also getting ready for my trip to Indianapolis. Last Saturday was the Holiday Author Fair at the Indiana Historical Society. Here's how it looked: While I was in town, I also paid an author visit to Park Tudor School, where I talked to middle school and high school book lovers: Now I'm home again, and ready to get back to work. There are new projects ahead!

CNN's Anderson Cooper brings you... Thanksgiving in space! That's what they're having on the space shuttle Endeavour today. You can find out more here . Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Today, NPR reports that the Government Accountability Office has listed NASA among "13 urgent issues facing the new administration." Yup, you heard that right. With all that's going wrong in the country these days - the stock market crashing, homes being foreclosed, the auto industry going bust - NASA made the list of things that President-elect Obama needs to focus on. Specifically, the GAO is concerned about the multi-year gap between the retirement of the space shuttles and the launch of the new Ares rockets. I've mentioned that in this blog before. Now that the International Space Station is almost done, we're going to be stuck relying on another country - most likely Russia, who isn't being entirely friendly right now - to get there. It's got people worried. And Barack Obama wasn't exactly the most NASA-friendly presidential candidate. A position paper his campaign released early in the year proposed cutting NASA's budget and delaying th...