Aeros Book Cover (2024)

I’ve had a long journey with this one. So back in December of 2021, I was browsing my local library for a copy of “The Martian” by Andy Weir, since everyone was whooping and hollering about how good it was, but all I could find was a copy of his book “Artemis” so I read that, thinking it would be just as good. And wow, I hated it :). I mean, go read it and form your own opinion, but it infuriated me to such a degree I decided to write an entire alternative short story about living on the moon out of spite.

After multiple rewrites and rounds of revision, I published “Aeros” in Meredith College’s literary art magazine, which then went on to win first place in prose for their 2023 edition, so I guess spite goes a long way! And after some encouragement from my creative writing professors, I have decided to adapt Aeros into a published novel, which I will be working on throughout this year. Just for my own amusement and conceptualization, I decided to work on a hypothetical book cover based on the story’s most poignant imagery, the iconic Earthrise, as seen in the iconic photograph from NASA’s Apollo 8 mission.

I have two versions posted below, one with a dreamlike concept and one with a brutalist concept, both focusing on the inhospitable nature of the moon in comparison to the eternal beauty of our planet, and how we don’t appreciate it while we’re still here. I have plans to eventually flesh this out into a longer novel, but until then, you can read my full story on Medium.com or Wattpad. Let me know which cover you prefer!