We Demand Stories about Space With a Purpose

Welcome to We Demand Stories about Space With a Purpose!

Date: 6/28/2025

Time: 3:00-5:45

Location: 314 Dean St

Event guidelines:

• Tickets are limited to restrict capacity
• Copies of the panelist's books will be available for purchase at the event
• A signing will follow the panel
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise
• The event will not be livestreamed, but it will be recorded
• As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact YnNmd3JpdGVycyB8IGdtYWlsICEgY29t.

Schedule:

3:00-3:30- Doors open, mingle with guests.

3:40-5:00- Panel Conversation, followed by Q&A

5:15-5:45- Mingle and Book Signing

6:00- Dinner with guests at Three's Brewing

We Demand Stories about Space With a Purpose

Space. What is it for? We all love a swashbuckling tale of exploration and discovery, but the practical realities of space travel paint a very different picture. Right now, billionaires want to go to space for a variety of reasons, leading to the commodification of space. Space tourism, material acquisition, contested territory. What is the purpose of space and is it a responsible use of resources? What is humanity's future in space? We demand realistic stories of space exploration, why we go, who gets to go, and what we might find there.

David Mack is the award-winning and The New York Times bestselling author of 39 novels and numerous short works of science-fiction, fantasy, and adventure, including the Star Trek Destiny and Cold Equations trilogies.

Mack’s writing credits span television (for episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), audio drama, and comic books. He also has worked as a consultant on the animated television series Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Prodigy. In June of 2022, the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers honored him as a Grandmaster with its Faust Award.

His most recent publications include several new works of original short fiction and the Star Trek: Picard novel Firewall. Coming in 2025 will be his Star Trek: Strange New Worlds novel Ring of Fire and the audio drama Star Trek: Khan, written with Kirsten Beyer.

Mack resides in New York City with his wife, Kara.

Marco Palmieri MARCO PALMIERI is an independent developmental editor of books, fiction podcasts, narrative games, screenplays and graphic novels. His career spans nearly thirty years and hundreds of titles, including award winners and bestsellers. He's been a senior editor for two leading U.S. book publishers, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan, and a creative producer for the fiction podcast studio, Realm.

Marco's specialties are science fiction, fantasy, and horror, but he also loves thrillers, noir, and psychological suspense. He has a diverse portfolio with everything from media tie-ins to literary fiction, standalones to serials, secret histories to epic futures, family dramas to societal upheavals, BIPOC and LGBTQ+ heroes.

Notable works include THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT by Seth Dickinson and THREE PARTS DEAD by Max Gladstone (novels); THE ONLY HARMLESS GREAT THING by Brooke Bolander and HIS FOOTSTEPS, THROUGH DARKNESS AND LIGHT by Mimi Mondal (novelettes); Harlan Ellison's THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS (anthology); and STEAL THE STARS by Mac Rogers (audio drama).

Early in his editorial career Marco specialized in fiction based on world-renowned third-party intellectual properties like Star Trek, World of WarCraft, Resident Evil, and the DC and Marvel comics universes.

Learn more about Marco at mxpalmieri.com

Charles Baroush has five stories in a cultural time capsule on the Moon. He also has stories available on Earth at hdwp.com. He’s been published in SF (Adjacent Fields, Tiago and the Masterless), Horror (Endless Feast, The Sunken Ones), Westerns (Marshal Theo Starr), and more genres, by CEP, Canyons of the Damned, Dusty Saddle, Shebat Legion, Fantastic Books, and other. Find his podcasts at horrorwords.com. Join him on bluesky @hdwp.com

Susana Martinez-Conde is an award-winning neuroscientist, author, and professor at the State University of New York. She is the founder and Executive Director of the annual Best Illusion of the Year Contest, which inspired her book "Champions of Illusion," published by Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. Her previous book, the international bestseller "Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions," was published by Holt and won the Prisma Prize for Best Science Book of the Year. Martinez-Conde is one of the premier science communicators in the United States and has made television appearances on National Geographic Channel’s Redesign My Brain, Discovery Channel’s Head Games, The Daily Planet, PBS’s NOVA:scienceNow, StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson, CBS Sunday Morning, and The World According to Jeff Goldblum. She is a frequent writer for publications such as Scientific American, New Scientist, American Scientist, Mental Floss, and How It Works. Her research and scientific communication activities have been featured in print in the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, among hundreds of media stories worldwide. She has published over a hundred academic articles in the most prestigious scientific journals, including Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This panel will be moderated by Brad Parks, who writes under the pen name Bradley Robert Parks. Brad lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY, where he founded the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers (BSFWriters.com). He found his passion for writing while growing up in a family of genre readers. While he's been pursuing writing for a while, the crazy energy of New York City and the incredible talent attracted by BSFW have given him the focus and motivation to finally get published. His fiction has appeared on BuzzyMag.com, in the Queer Sci-Fi flash fiction anthologies Ink and Impact, and in the Kaleidocast podcast, where he is also (full disclosure) a host and editor. Along with these achievements, he's obtained one husband, Michael, and two cats, Mr. Darcy and Miss Georgie. Keep up with his exploits at BradleyRobertParks.com.

Books will be available for sale from Greenlight Books.

Admission is free, but please consider donating to BSFW or the , an organization that fosters spaces of imagination and exploration for Brooklyn teens.

We are a Fractured Atlas Sponsored critique group for writers of speculative fiction, dedicated to raising the work of our members to a publishable, professional level. Even though the group is based in Brooklyn, many of our writers come from the other boroughs of the greater New York City metropolitan area, New Jersey, and even Massachusetts.

Also check out other Arts events in Brooklyn, Literary Art events in Brooklyn, Trips & Adventurous Activities in Brooklyn.