Gnome Project

From: The Great Gnome Press Science
Fiction Odyssey

"Hard to believe today, but before World War II not a single mainstream publisher in America would publish a genre science fiction or fantasy novel. H. G. Wells had once been so fanatically popular that publishers would pirate his works if they couldn’t get them legitimately, but the coming of the pulp magazine era destroyed the reputation of the field. Science fiction was written by subliterates for subliterates, or so went the opinion of the literary world.

From: The Great Gnome Press Science
Fiction Odyssey

     The forceful introduction to the Atomic Era in 1945 may have made those crazy Buck Rogers ideas a bit more respectable, but not to publishing. Mysteries sold in the millions, westerns remained popular, and romances had steady sales but fantasy and science fiction couldn’t even get a foothold in the paperback world, let alone mainstream hardbacks of the type sold in bookstores….

From: Modern Mechanix

    In its first five years, Gnome would publish Robert Heinlein’s Sixth Column, The Sands of Mars and Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and the three volumes of the Foundation trilogy, Clifford M. Simak’s award-winner City and his Cosmic Engineers, reprints of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, and works by L. Ron Hubbard, Jack Williamson, C. L. Moore, A. E. van Vogt, Leigh Brackett, Henry Kuttner, Hal Clement and half a dozen others. That’s Golden Age science fiction in a nutshell."
— The Gnome Press Release
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Get it out there...

From: Retronaut

"I have not entered a literary contest since I was 11, when I was utterly convinced my poem was going to win (it didn't). But I think I'm going to have to brush up by poetry skills after learning that Nasa is looking for haikus in the form of a 'message to Mars,' and will take the three best, on a DVD, on board its Maven spaceship, due to begin a mission in November to study the upper Martian atmosphere.  

     I have said before that I'm a little obsessed with Mars exploration and Martian literature – Kim Stanley Robinson, Ray Bradbury, Philip K Dick, Robert A Heinlein."
— Alison Flood, The Guardian
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"NASA is inviting members of the public to submit their names and a personal message online for a DVD to be carried aboard a spacecraft that will study the Martian upper atmosphere.
     The DVD will be in NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which is scheduled for launch in November. The DVD is part of the mission's Going to Mars Campaign coordinated at the University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (CU/LASP).
     The DVD will carry every name submitted. The public also is encouraged to submit a message in the form of a three-line poem, or haiku. However, only three haikus will be selected. The deadline for all submissions is July 1. An online public vote to determine the top three messages to be placed on the DVD will begin July 15."
— NASA
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