Joalda Morancy is an IFK alumni who took our course Explorations of Mars with Dr. Jordan Bimm in Spring 2021. In this interview they reconnect to discuss Morancy’s new book about space exploration. 

Interview by Jordan Bimm

Do aliens exist? From ancient debates to our modern scientific search, humans have pondered this big question for millennia. We haven’t found evidence yet, but with new tools like NASA’s recently commissioned James Webb Space Telescope things could change dramatically in the coming years.  

This is what makes UChicago and IFK alumni Joalda Morancy’s (’22) new book, Aliens: Join the Scientists Searching Space for Extraterrestrial Life (Neon Squid/Macmillan), so timely and exciting. Writing for young readers ages eight to ten, Morancy surveys the fascinating and thought-provoking aspects of space science and popular culture focused on the possibility of life beyond the Earth.  

In fun and approachable bite-sized bits, Morancy, an Astrophysics major in The College who graduated earlier this year, explains different aspects of the search like the Drake Equation, Mars rovers, the habitable zone, mysterious Moons like Saturn’s Enceladus, the Fermi Paradox, and exoplanets (among many others). Each of the book’s 80 pages is adorned with vibrant and playful illustrations by artist Amy Grimes to further stoke the imagination. 

On the eve of the book’s North American release (October 18), Morancy took time from their busy schedule in their new job as an aerospace engineer at commercial spaceflight company Blue Origin to reflect on their work creating this wonderful project. 

 

Bimm: First off, can you tell us more about your new job at Blue Origin? It sounds really exciting!  

Morancy: Yes, it’s been a whirlwind of emotions since I got the job three months ago. I do avionics integration and testing for the lunar lander program. There’s a lot of time spent in meetings hearing about what other members of the team are working on, and a lot of time in the lab doing functional performances tests to see if our instruments are working together as they should. I also have to make sure I know enough about each subsystem to tell if they’re all working together as an integrated product.   

Bimm: Do you remember the moment when you first became interested in space exploration? 

Morancy: I first got really interested in space the summer before my sophomore year of high school. I was watching YouTube and I saw a video on my recommended feed of astronaut Chris Hadfield making a sandwich on the International Space Station. Not only did I think it was super funny—like what even is this?—I also thought it was super interesting, and that led me to do a deep dive into more videos about the International Space Station and more research into NASA, and that blossomed into my current passion.  

Bimm: You wrote Aliens while you were at UChicago as an Astrophysics major, how did that opportunity come about? 

Morancy: In 2020 there was a pandemic, so I was at home a lot, and I thought since I have a lot of free time I might as well learn more about topics I’m really interested in. I was learning a lot and wanted a way to catalog or keep track of everything. First, I decided to keep all my notes as Google Docs but then I had the thought to turn them into Twitter threads, because other people on Twitter might like to know what I was learning about as well. I did Twitter threads about volcanic activity on Mars, sunsets on Mars, but my most popular thread was about terraforming Mars, which is how my popularity blew up. That’s how I gained my following and threads after that focused on O’Neill cylinders, time travel, interstellar travel, and space farming. I put these out on a weekly basis, but it was a lot of work in addition to keeping up with school and a job.   

Bimm: How did you go from being a science communicator on Twitter to a book contract with Neon Squid/Macmillan? 

Morancy: Fast forward to February 2021. That’s when my current editor reached out to me in an email and said they’re thinking about a book for children eight to ten years old. They wanted to show children that aliens aren’t these mystical creatures—“little green men”—but instead capture the science that’s going on behind the search for extraterrestrial life. He mentioned he saw my terraforming Mars thread on Twitter and said he thought I did a good job communicating about science. Then he asked if I would be interested in writing this book. I thought it was insane jumping from just a Twitter thread to entire book, but I wasn’t going to question it! I responded almost immediately: of course I’m interested!  

 

Morancy explained the inner workings of the writing and editorial process at the press. It began with creating a list of all the different aspects of the search for alien life they wanted to see in the book—a rough draft of what became the table of contents. “It was difficult to choose what to focus on because the field of astrobiology is so broad,” they said. After their editor approved these choices Morancy set to work planning each two-page spread, what the theme for each would be, what information should be included, and importantly directions for artist Amy Grimes who would be creating the accompanying illustrations. After this, the editor assigned Morancy word counts and deadlines for batches of the spreads. At some point during this process Morancy got a sneak peek at some of Grimes’s illustrations and was very impressed. “They looked amazing, and they weren’t even the finished versions yet. She is so talented!”  

 

Bimm: As an Astrophysics major and a science communicator on Twitter, how did you approach writing for a younger audience?  

Morancy: The average ten-year-old is smarter than most people realize. So, I decided to just put in all the complex information at first and then decide later what needed to come out. For example, I initially went too big on the page about the Viking Landers [robotic spacecraft NASA sent to Mars in the 1970s to conduct life detection experiments], I was trying to describe each of the different experiments in detail, but it was too much scientific jargon. But overall, I incorporated a lot of knowledge from courses I’d taken and looked at a lot of my lecture notes as a starting point. My editor gave me some tips about how to construct metaphors for kids. Like if I’m describing the height of something I should say it’s as tall as two dinosaurs, things kids can relate to instead of just a number. Being a science communicator taught me how to write in a way that’s informative and also fun to read.  

Bimm: In Spring quarter 2021 you were a student in our course Explorations of Mars. How did the course with its focus on the history, science, and culture of space exploration help with the book? 

Morancy: There’s a good chunk of information from that course that I didn’t previously know about Mars that ended up in the book. But the Mars Jars [small environmental simulators scientists use to model life on Mars] were the biggest thing that translated from the class to a spread in the book. I remember when we were learning about those and I was like, wait this is a perfect subject to include and something I had no idea existed. The class made me remember why I loved spaceflight in the first place and the idea of going to other planets. For example, for my final project I wrote a science fiction story about the ethics of humans exploring Mars and whether to proceed if it harmed existing life there. My advice to other students is to take classes that teach the ethics of science and exploration. There are times when I’m in the weeds with my major and my job when I wonder why am I doing this? But Explorations of Mars reminded me why I love working on space even though it is tough sometimes.  

Bimm: What do you hope young readers of Aliens come away thinking about? And what is next for you in terms of writing? 

Morancy: I hope readers not only learn a lot of cool tidbits about the field of astrobiology but realize that it’s an active and ongoing search. They could be one of the first scientists to discover life on another planet if they choose to be, which I think is super exciting! There’s a chance someone might read this book and be inspired to become an astrobiologist. That’s the most exciting thing for me. I really hope my writing doesn’t stop here. I’m working on a science fiction novel about dark matter that is also alien focused. The working title is Read Between the Light.  

 

You can find Joalda Morancy on Twitter at @solarrsystem and online at www.joalda.space