Baen Books appear to be conquering the universe...

[major_clanger]

Prompted by a post by daveon I found the list, as released by NASA after a Freedom of Information request, of books, films and TV programmes aboard the International Space Station (1.8MB PDF). Most of this stuff has accumulated by being brought up by individual astronauts, although I think some of the TV may have been uplinked.

Well, for one thing it's clear that there is at least one pretty serious Lois McMaster Bujold fan in the astronaut corps. Also an awful lot of David Weber, John Ringo (aaargh!) and Piers Anthony. Plus, about six months' run each of Analog and Asimov's, and a single Peter F Hamilton. (Mind you, given the cost-per-kilo to orbit, I'm surprised they managed to get even one of his up there.)

I remain disappointed that the list of DVDs aboard does not include Alien.

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I had a pleasant evening in the pub last night with John Ringo's Polish translator plus significant other.

(She's extremely embarrassed about it, but says she has to earn a living somehow ...)

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

howl!

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Ah. That's who they were.... Nice people.

[dan-golem.livejournal.com]

Information provided by JSC FOIA Public Liaison Officer, Stella Luna!?

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

At first this screamed made-up-name, but I did a bit of digging and apparently she's been working for JSC since the early 1970s. Perhaps it's a very spectacular case of nominative determinism!

[unlikely2.livejournal.com]

I preferred 'Aliens'.
People need to learn to be more wary of moving machinery.

[non-trivial.livejournal.com]

Presumably they have computers up there, so why not bring the Baen stuff up as ebooks? Or indeed OCR the books - I'd have thought it would be too much hassle to try and figure out the IP jurisdictional issues of the ISS...

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

This was daveon's point. I think the answer is that this is not a deliberately planned effort to have an entertainment library, rather astronauts have bought stuff up piecemeal. Arguable any future station, or any redevelopment of the accommodation in the ISS, should include a digital jukebox that new film and tv can readily be uploaded to.

(Another view: any such move might formalise the arrangement, and then NASA would have to vet and possibly veto content. That list includes Life of Brian, for instance - can you imagine the outcry if NASA officially uploaded that film to the ISS?)

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Actually Baen have caught on to this, and the ISS now has a webscription to the Baen Library!