Introducing The Martian Dispatches!

At long last, this special project (which I’ve been busy with for many months) has been released. Which means I can finally talk about it! But first, a little preamble…

About a year ago, I joined Mars City Design®, a non-profit innovation and design platform dedicated to merging architecture, design, and the creative industry with the commercial space sector (aka. NewSpace). Since their inception in 2016, they’ve hosted an annual design competition where architects and designers from around the world submit ideas for how humans could live sustainably on Mars someday.

Every year has a different theme, which in recent years has included Urban Design and Architecture, AI Robotics and Engineering, Transportation, Sports, and for the 2020 competition, Urban Farming. Their founder and CEO, Vera Mulyani is basically a rock star in the architecture, art, and commercial space industries. As a scicomm (science communicator), we know many of the same people and run in the same circles.

Eventually, we made introductions during a virtual conference hosted by Explore Mars (of which she in a Director and I a member) and I learned what she and her organization did. My interest was piqued, and I asked if I could do a write-up on them for Universe Today. Vera was suitably impressed and asked me to join MCD as a media communicator shortly thereafter. That’s when the collaboration began!

A year later, Vera and I co-wrote a series of podcasts together! Each episode is basically an account of what it’s like to live on Mars in the future, as told by a fictional character. It’s called The Martian Dispatches, and the first volume (3 episodes) is now available on Amazon.com! Each story features elements of MCD’s design competitions and explores a different aspect of what it’s like to live on Mars 100 years after human settlers first set foot on the surface.

Here’s the intro for the series:

“Have you ever imagined what future life will be like on Mars… three or four generations from today?

That’s right. Your great grand kids may actually be born on Mars! While you may never get to meet them, you certainly can imagine what their phenomenal lives will be like. And we can help. 

Because at Mars City Design®, that’s what we do.

Imagining possibilities. Constantly.  But we’re also working to make them a reality; A future where humans can live and thrive on Mars!

To provide a glimpse of this future, we proudly present The Martian Dispatches – a podcast series that imagines this future works, told by actual Martians. Through these tales of life on the Red Planet, which soon will be published on the Space Channel, we hope to share with you our uplifting, beyond non-dystopian vision of the future!

You may also guess, which celebrities or space pioneers, are behind these voices. One hint: our Premier played the voice for Jenny the robot, on Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreak world tour.”

And here’s a teaser trailer. The segment comes from the episode Mangala Hotsprings, and is narrated by famed Canadian recording artist Esthero.