TheLaunchPad Astronomy Workshop has been held three times now, each sum­mer in Laramie, Wyoming. This project is the brain­child of Jim Verley and astronomer/SF writer Mike Brotherton. The goal of the work­shop is to help expand the audi­ence for sci­ence lit­er­ate fic­tion and other pop­u­lar endeav­ors. This year, we not only had sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers in atten­dance, but also come­di­ans and poets. Utlimately, I think it would be great to have some screen­writ­ers for film and tele­vi­sion attend­ing as well. Especially con­sid­er­ing how much we harp on Armageddon dur­ing the workshop.

The goal of the work­shop is not to turn you into an Analog–style hard SF writer. The goal is to make sure you under­stand some of the basics of astron­omy so that, even if you’re writ­ing fan­tasy, you can get those details right. So that maybe you will *want* to write a story about the phases of the moon or about orbital mechan­ics in some way. Each year, sev­eral straight-fantasy authors attend and get just as much out of it as the nerds like me who already have a decent amount of astron­omy sci­ence under our belts. I even had one major mis­con­cep­tion of mine cor­rected. About the Earth’s axial tilt.

It’s a week of intense class­work, tele­scope view­ing when the weather works, fun meals, a hike, and gen­er­ally just get­ting to social­ize with amaz­ing peo­ple (many who hap­pen to be writ­ers). It will feel like, to quote Gord Sellar, a “pig has shit galax­ies into your head.” Ultimately, it’s knowl­edge, and knowl­edge has a way of mak­ing you a bet­ter, richer writer.

When appli­ca­tions open up again next year, I will post about it here, and I expect all of you to flood Mike and Jim with appli­ca­tions. Heh heh.

Tagged as: Astronomy, My Writing, Science fiction, workshop