Paper Planes to the Moon

"Can you read this?
Then paper planes is for you ..."

So says the back cover for Sandcastles on the Moon.

And what an amazingly simple idea Paper Planes is. The mission statement from its creator is found on the inside of each book:

"Paper Planes is for anyone who wants to read a good story.

Our objective is to offer a new style of book: modern English Literature for an international audience.

When you read this story, it is not important that you understand every word. Relax, continue reading, and let the author take you on a voyage.

We hope you enjoy the flight.

- Rupert Morgan"


Last year, Rupert approached me to write a science fiction novella for Paper Planes, part of Editions Didier (which is part of Hachette Livre). No arm twisting was required to accept the commission. The money was good, sure. Hell, any money is good when you're a fledgling writer, but that wasn't it at all.

It's this, I guess, summed up by my own experiences:

When I was about ten years old, I picked up my parents' copy of Frank Herbert's Dune, a doorstop of a book that would be intimidating to adult readers let alone a child. What drew me to the book in the first place was the elegant cover by Bruce Pennington, but also the blurb, a story about battles and adventures on a far away planet. The perfect adventure story for a boy fed on a diet of Star Wars and Star Trek, and Flash Gordon. I turned the first page and started out on what was an incredible adventure, perhaps the first adult adventure of my young life.

It took me months to read it. Much longer than it took my friends to read the Hobbit, but then this wasn't a race, or even a marathon. It was an adventure. And the best adventures tend to be like wines, they take time to mature, and then to savour. In my case, I had to concentrate on every word, because there was much I did not understand. For a nine year old there is much about Dune that feels like it is written in a foreign language. The names for example (Muad'Dib, Thufir Hawat, the Bene Gesserit), were completely alien and unlike anything else I had read or heard of. The religions, philosophies, reference to other worlds and the language spoken, was confusing; but far from bewildering me, I was awed, believing I was somehow learning something important, albeit fictional. For the year or so I read Dune, I was being educated again, but lovingly so.

From Dune, I read Brian Stableford, Michael Moorcock, Stephen King and on and on. I graduated with Frank Herbert's book and never did I let those fancy words (pretentious or author-created) stop me from enjoying a book or even intimidating me. The language of story-telling is universal, and that's why Paper Planes appeals to me. Yes, being able to read English is required, but having a fluent grasp of the written word is not a pre-requisite to enjoying the books Editions Didier publishes. You can get by with not knowing every word. In fact, you might even enjoy it more, revelling in the exotic sentences, the nuance of alien words, even looking up those that are not familiar but somehow appeal so that you might use them yourself someday. It all comes down to the story though, and that's what Paper Planes is: the story stripped down to story-telling.

Even though this is aimed at an international audience, I realised recently that it isn't just about a French student learning English, or a German student or Spanish student. Its about anyone learning about stories regardless of how they come upon them or how they are written. Like me, reading Dune, or even the pages of Metal Hurlant (French original version of Heavy Metal), the words are there to be looked up, absorbed, even by English students.

My own novella, Sandcastles on the Moon, is written for people who like stories. It is written for people who will at nine years old or even thirty years old or sixty, will pick up a copy of Dune for the first time, because they like the blurb, they like the cover and they believe they will have an adventure, and it doesn't matter who they are or where the come from.

And if you still want persuading, here's the blurb to the Sandcastles on the Moon:
"The moon of Prollyx is lifeless, but rich in mineral deposits. Hemmingway Goode and his family join a group of pioneers, hoping to make their fortune there. But the moon is no place for humans.
The prospectors have made a terrible mistake.The question now is how many will survive?

From the imagination of science-fiction author Matt Curran comes a story rich in tension, poetry and horror..."

And there are plenty of other books to choose from too, if science fiction is not your bag. So then, what do you have to lose?

"Can you read this?
Then Paper Planes is for you ...!"

Damn right.

(Sandcastles on the Moon is released through Paper Planes, Didier Editions in paperback+MP3 audio download, 22nd May).