The latest issue of the ISEC Newsletter (May 2025) has just been published—and as always, it’s packed with good stuff. Here are a few highlights that stood out to me:
- First Ascent, the first book in Douglas Phillips’ “The Ascending Carbon Series” is now available on Amazon. I’m always on the lookout for new authors, and finding one who’s writing about a space elevator? That’s a win-win in my book.
- Further to the theme of space elevators in literature, in this month’s History Corner, David Raitt explores how space elevators have appeared in science fiction by diving into the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). He highlights sixteen titles tagged with “space elevator” — from Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise to Tchaikovsky’s Firewalkers — and shares how the ISFDB and Wikipedia offer rich resources for discovering how this concept has inspired storytellers for decades.
- The newsletter also notes that Dr. Peter Swan was awarded the International Astronautical Federation’s Distinguished Service Award to “honor his lifetime commitment to Engineering and Technology, HIS VISION AND LEADERSHIP, as the founder of the IAC D4 IAA Far Future/Space Elevator Symposia”. Congratulations Pete – well deserved!
There’s much more to explore in this issue.
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Happy reading!