[X] My Assistant

[ljk4-1]

Jim Bell is coming out with a new book this November titled Postcards from Mars.

The details are here:

http://www.postcardsfrommarsbook.com

The book's subtitle, "The First Photographer on the Red Planet", has me wondering
how that will make all the previous Mars probes feel. Except maybe Mars 3 - there's
just nothing you can do with that image.

[elakdawalla]

I've been chatting with Jim Bell about various stuff and I pointed him to this link. He had the following to say (in a nutshell, Doug's right):

The issue about the subtitle is a valid one, and is one that I went round and round with the publisher about. My original subtitle was "The First Photographers on the Red Planet", because my point was exactly what Doug deduced from the excerpt: we--the team, the rovers, all of us--have the luxury of routinely thinking about photographic, artistic issues in the imaging for the first time in the history of Mars exploration. My editor, the publisher, and the marketing department all wanted me to take out the "s" on "Photographers", to make it seem like a more personal journey. I said, "that's going to piss off my colleagues who have been involved in previous Mars missions." They said "so what." I held my ground and we were at a standoff for some time. But they are more clever than I am. They then decided that they didn't like my main title either, and wanted something different because "Postcards" sounded too trifling to them (silly little pieces of heavy paper...). Ultimately, I had to trade losing the "s" in the subtitle for keeping "Postcards." I am not too happy about it, and expect to take significant flack from some of my colleagues, none of whom I was trying to disrespect. Hopefully if they actually read the words in the book, they will arrive at the same (correct) interpretation of what I meant that Doug did.