President’s Message for September’s Issue of Author’s Voice
Congratulations South Florida Writers Association you’ve made history.
You’re going to the Moon as part of the Lunar Codex.
The Lunar what?
Well, we’ll let J.D. Biersdorfer, of The New York Times answer that question.
The Lunar Codex is a vast multimedia archive telling a story of the world’s people through creative arts heading for permanent installation on the moon aboard a series of unmanned rockets.
The Lunar Codex is a digitized (or miniaturized) collection of contemporary art, poetry, magazines, music, film, podcasts, and books by artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers… It’s the brainchild of Samuel Peralta, a semi-retired physicist and author in Canada with a love of the arts and sciences.
Howard Camner, Samuel Peralta’s friend and a fellow SFWA member is the co-editor of The Sea of Tranquility—A Literary Anthology, (The name given by Samuel to our moon-bound anthology) says:
“The Lunar Codex is a one-of-a-kind phenomenon. There has never been anything like it. The New York Times calls it, “A time capsule of human creativity stored in the sky” because that’s what it is, the works of some 35,000 contemporary artists, writers, poets, musicians and filmmakers from 253 countries, territories, and indigenous nations on planet Earth. Those creations are rocketed to the moon for a three- day journey of 238,900 miles in time capsules that will remain as a permanent footprint; a gifted archive from one planet to another. For those artists included in this historic event, it’s immortality, in a very real sense. At a time of great division on planet Earth, it is the artists who rise above, unify, and make the impossible happen.”
So when Howard selected me to be his co-editor on the “Sea of Tranquility” project, I closed my eyes and tasted: History and Immortality.
If you want to know, they’re phenomenal flavors.
As I realized that a contingent of our poets or short story writers would have the opportunity to go along on this ride to the moon I smiled.
And thanks to the SFWA’s team of Monica DeZulueta, Neil Crabtree, Howard, and myself, we gathered, compiled, and created our anthology.
An anthology that’s going to be digitized, etched on a disc, secured to a satellite, and launched to the Moon in February of 2025.
Congratulations SFWA you’re going to have your footprint on the Moon.
Illustration by Cathy Lowen
