Contributions to the Lunar Codex

The Lunar Codex is a digitized (or miniaturized) collection of contemporary art, poetry, magazines, music, film, podcasts and books by 30,000 artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers in 157 countries. It’s the brainchild of Samuel Peralta, a semiretired physicist and author in Canada with a love of the arts and sciences. - The New York Times

Every so often, I end up involved in something that makes me wonder “how the hell did I get this far?”

So it is with the Lunar Codex. The New York Times article does a good job of explaining it. But in a nutshell, Samuel Peralta has been collecting works by 30,000 artists, writers, filmmakers and so on: a massive archive destined to launch aboard NASA partners to the Moon. It is, as a he says, a message-in-a-bottle to the future.

Works may be identified by their NASA mission, launch date, and Lunar Codex designation as follows: [1] Orion / AM1 - Artemis 1 Mission (Nov 16-Dec 11, 2022); [2] Peregrine / PM1 - NASA CLPS-TO-2AB / Astrobotic Peregrine Mission 1 (Jan 8-18, 2024); [3] Nova / XM1 - NASA CLPS-TO2-IM / Intuitive Machines Nova-C Mission IM-1 (Feb 2024); [4] Serenity / FM1 - NASA CLPS-TO-19D Mission 1 (3Q24); OM1 / Freya - NASA CLPS-TO-PRIME-1 / Intuitive Machines Nova-C Mission IM-2 / AF B2O Mission (3Q24); and [5] Polaris / GM1 - NASA CLPS-TO-20A (VIPER) / Astrobotic Griffin Mission 1 (Nov 2024).

Neil Armstrong’s footprint, it is said, will last at least a few million years [1]. Concievably a digital archive of works will last a longer, so eventually, when everything we have said and done are dust and ashes, someone will open it up. Maybe it’ll be a new species of human; or a machine; or an alien. Whatever it is, among those works will be a few of mine.

Included are [2][3]:

-Megastructures - the anthology that I edited and published -An early propotype of Claws and Effect, in the form of a short story that covers the first chapter, published as part of the Hellcats anthologies by Magpie Lane -A short story in Samuel Peralta’s “Chronicle Worlds: Crime and Punishment”, expanding on the world of the Writing Contest and Beatnik

[1] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2233/will-the-foot-print-of-neil-armstrong-erode [2] https://www.lunarcodex.com/stories [3] https://www.lunarcodex.com/anthologies-more