These books are set in near real time, I started writing these about 2009. We have the hardware now, it's more a matter of money. The technology is real. The AI is nearly real now. Conversational skills with Alexis or your smart phone, most conversation is somewhat predictable. The rest, we'll improvise and adlib!Why go to Mars? It's cold there, it's dusty, right? The adventure, the wide open spaces, it's all the best parts of the Wild West, before there were too many people!Talking to your robot assistant doesn't seem any stranger than talking to your pets, right? At least the robot can actually answer your questions! I can't wait to see what the robot says next!For you, dear reader, I hope you have fun. And no matter what life throws at you, I hope you don't die with your story stuck inside you. Once upon a time... I was pretty far into "Season 1" when I realized I hadn't really set the stage, for how I could have gotten there, so I started writing a quick introduction, that ended up being longer than I expected.Episode ZeroTurned into 3 books"Episode Zero" included recruitment and training."Episode 1 - Geeks Gone Wild!" was a camping trip the team got to go on."Episode 2 - Going To Mars!" takes us through the end of training, into orbit.Those were all the "introduction" part of how a regular guy could get the chance to go to space. What can I say, I was having fun writing, and didn't want to cut most of it out. "Season 1"Turned into 9 books...Book 1"Building Spaceships For Fun And Profit!"Part of our mission is to test new techniques, like building and launching small space pods. Book 2"Turtle and The Rescue Mission!"One of the pods we built in Book 1 stopped working. Guess we'll have to go find out what went wrong!Book 3"Building Pods ... So Many Pods"Still building pods. It's a great way to keep busy, it's about 200 days flight time between Earth and Mars.Book 4"Making Chips! Robots Building The Robot Army"We're starting to automate things. With only one human and one robot, things take too long, let's make more robots!Book 5"Building the New Airlock - Expanding Horizons"Launching pods is taking too long, we need to improve our systems, so we test building a bigger structure, outside. Book 6"Blue Moon, calling Mars Clipper..."Well, this is weird, why is there already someone on Mars?Book 7"Special Delivery - Resupply Drops for Blue Moon"Ok, turns out half of our cargo was supposed to be for the Mars mission, and we're not even landing!Book 8"Building The Mars Orbital Station"We're in the big leagues now, we have our own space station!Book 9"On The Road Again - Tinkering Tutorials and Jet Packs!"Time to leave Mars, and start the long 200 day trip back to Earth again. Be sure to check out the website!www.marsclipper.comMore of the road map...Season 2will be about mining and exploring the asteroid belt, beyond Mars.Season 3We go Privateer! I think some of the Dreadful 6 join up for this one.Season 4Space Pirates! Its inevitable, space is just full of tasty bootie!Season 5Space Zombies - Because, you know, reasons. Probably radiation. Season 6Return to Earth - Jump Start Humanity! Season 7 Retire to Mars, grow Mars Coffee, Finally build the Kayak Park with Dreads.
