Canopus Award for Interstellar Writing
"Storytelling is essential to communicating and concretizing a vision. A story well told - fictional or non-fictional - pushes us to consider how, where, who and why we advance, stagnate or regress," said Dr. Jemison. "The Canopus Award invites writers and journalists to join the adventure."
The 2024 100 Year Starship (100YSS) Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Writing will open for nominations and submissions in October/November 2024. The award recognizes the finest fiction and non-fiction works that expand our understanding of the challenges, opportunities, pitfalls, and rewards of interstellar space exploration.
This year’s theme, “Who Owns Space?” explores the future of humanity in space. For thousands of years, humans have looked up to the tapestry of stars, sun, moon, and lights in the sky—a compelling, if unreachable constant, connecting distant lands and cultures—an inheritance of all people. Space exploration, space-based technologies, and derivative capabilities, as well as its vision and magic, face a dilemma. Today, while more and more reachable, will the sky and space remain the inheritance for us all? Beyond the legal interpretation, today the very dream of space is being rewritten. Dr. Mae Jemison said, “Space isn’t just for rocket scientists and billionaires.” Yet, for many, the perception is that space is exclusive to only certain people and countries. Writers are invited to explore the possible paths ahead in space, to help identify how various actions, technology focuses, policies, individuals, and communities, and even the stories we tell over the next ten years may indelibly fix space exploration objectives, gatekeepers, and benefits for decades into the future.
About the Award:
The Canopus Award's namesake is the second-brightest star in the night sky. The star Canopus has occupied a central role in the human journey over millennia—from an auspicious herald of planting seasons to a major navigation star for civilizations from the Bedouins of Sinai to the Voyager probe.
The Canopus Award is a key program of 100YSS, an independent, long-term international initiative to ensure that the capabilities for human interstellar travel, beyond our solar system to another star, exist within the next 100 years. 100YSS led by former astronaut, engineer, physician, and entrepreneur, Dr. Mae Jemison, together with advocates, researchers, industry experts and everyday people from all walks of life is building a global community capable of realizing this audacious journey.
