Using Energy and Resources from Space to Raise Living Standards of Across Earth
While Expanding Free Independent Human Societies Throughout the Universe

Write a Show


“Use every letter you write, every conversation you have, every meeting you attend, to express your fundamental beliefs and dreams. Affirm to others the vision of the world you want.  You are a free, immensely powerful source of life and goodness. Affirm it, spread it, radiate it, think day and night about it, and you will see a miracle happen: the Greatness of Your Own Life.”
Dr. Robert Mueller, Former U.N. Assistant Secretary General 

Amazon Studios depends upon robust, passionate crowd-sourced feedback. We encourage scientists and engineers to co-write episodes.  Home is the most scientifically literate entertainment set in space - send us your thoughts! Let's make space familiar. Let's make humanity a multiplanetary species. Let's make humans spacefaring forever.

Do you work for Blue Origin, SpaceX, Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries, Inspiration Mars, or a similar company? Were you involved with JPL's Curiosity? Well...what's stopping you from writing with us?

"Congratulate yourselves if you have done something strange and extravagant 
and broken the monotony of a decorous age".
Ralph Waldo Emerson


"The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire."
Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch

Effective contributions are snippets of dialogue, specifically: workplace banter, inside jokes, professional observations, experiments, decisions, and so on - contextualized in actual real-word workplaces we can then graft into Home's world.

Contributors are also encouraged to consider reactions from Amazon Studios' forums, feedback from peers, and suggestions from Home's creators. We cannot guarantee financial compensation, but we will go out of our way to credit contributions.
“Reach low orbit and you’re halfway to anywhere in the Solar System.”  
Robert A. Heinlein

Home is M*A*S*H in a Research Station on Mars during the late 2020s, similar to sitcoms such as Friends, Seinfeld, The Office, Frasier, Cheers, Silicon Valley, and, dialogue driven dramas like The West Wing and House of Cards.

"During the run of the series, some joked that the Korean War itself lasted only a fraction of the time that M*A*S*H did, but the show wasn’t really about historical accuracy; it was about people making a new home far from where they’d rather be, and learning to live alongside each other, even if they were as different as Hawkeye and Hot Lips."

Rather than attempt to teach science 'facts' our objective is to foster an intellectual curiosity leading viewers to pursue their own studies and endeavors, in far more depth than a fun screenplay allows. We hope to foster esteem for scientific inquiry and causal reasoning which will engender deeper cultural perspectives than a dry list of Mars facts. We also want to contextualize research and human settlement in an uplifting, positive, joyful, loving world.

"Ultimately we don't really want 10,000 people on Mars......we want millions." 
Elon Musk

Home is not about Mars. It is a smart, character driven comedy which happens to be set on Mars rather than NYC or Korea. That's it. No big deal. People living on Mars. They're fun, hanging out, normal. Witty. You and your co-workers. Nearly a third of each show takes place on Earth - often among scientists, engineers, and businesspersons working at the very companies which will enable Mars settlement. Let's help scientists look cool, interesting, real...worth supporting. Invaluable. 

“The single individual completely changed something. 
That's the kind of thing people can do anywhere. 
They can do it in Seattle; they can do it in North Dakota.”
 Jeff Bezos

Anyone can write episodes. No need to be an exobiologist or rocket engineer. We only need witty characters written by contributors who are probably characters themselves. If you have a sense of humor, if you were known as the class clown at MIT or Cal Tech, well, this series is yours: we have set it up for your contributions.

"Don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go -
and he'll do plenty well when he gets there."
Wernher Von Braun, 1958

If you are insightful and funny but not an AeroAstro grad, relax, there's no need to know a thing about Mars - write normal fun genuine interactions between common cool 'stock' characters who are friends living together anywhere. Don't worry about science, don't think about Mars - we'll take care of that. Write fun scenes anywhere: New York, Seattle, Mars, Texas, Moscow, Korea. Some characters in Home happen to be on Mars - so what? : ) Let's make science commonplace, not fiction. 
Many episodes occur primarily on Earth at support facilities or in relatives' living rooms via Skype, or, on Asteroids or ISS - use your imagination. This allows a variety of characters who may not qualify for or be interested in Mars settlement. The worst episodes of MASH depicted Korea, the best were in the Swamp. Write characters from your Swamp. Do not worry about Mars. It's not a big deal. That's the point: Mars is accessible, familiar. Home is about people, not technology; human beings, not the planet they live on...

"In the long run, a single-planet species will not survive. One day, I don't know when, but one day,
there will be more humans living off the Earth than on it."
NASA director Mike Griffin

Researchers on Mars will be human. Write real people you know, doing normal things everyone can identify with, in typical situations that happen to take place on Mars - and are funny. If you can only write clever intelligent comedic dialogue, don't worry about "science". We'll work that in. It is much more difficult to sustain audience attention with genuine drama and comedy than it is to scroll through common facts about Mars, asteroid mining, and business plans...

"Be kind, everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
Plato

Please recognize the most defining shared event in the lives of all viewers for decades may be the Great Recession. Do not write characters who think they are "entitled to Mars in their lifetime". Depict hard working responsible down-to-Earth persons enthusiastic about settling Mars and developing the rest of our solar system for human benefit, with constant risk and labor...do not depict privileged slackers hanging out in coffee shops or sarcastic yuppies yapping nonsense. This is important: the only point of making Home is to promote spacefaring - a portion of which will be funded by taxpayers sitting around kitchen tables wondering how to pay grocery bills with food stamps. Let's show why Mars settlement and near-Earth telerobotic businesses are an investment in everyone's day-to-day lives, at our Home here, on Earth.

"The best writing advice I’ve ever heard: Don't write like you went to college." 
Alice Kahn 


Home is not science fiction. Dialogue should not include: "Houston we have a problem", "ready for EVA" (vs "let's go..."), "you have no authority to do that", "let's light this candle", "in situ" ("on site"...OSRU if you must please), "factor of", "sol", "astronauts", ("people ", "folks" please), "spatial" ("space"), "temporal" ("time"), "nominal" ("normal"), "mission", "colony", "colonialists" ("settlers" please), "that was a direct order", "look at this lifeform", "the dust storm approacheth", "oh no my suit's leaking", "make it so", "did you hear that", "so-and-so hasn't reported in", "crew", "individual" ("people" please), "Sir", "Mam", "Captain", "commander," etc.

"The prospective colonization of space responds, not to the particular problems of the American nation, or of any other nation, but to those of mankind as a whole. In an ideal view, such an undertaking by mankind as a whole would tend to divert it from its present preoccupation with international conflict, would tend to channel its energies into the pursuit of a great common purpose."
Louis J. Halle

There are no special spaceships, lasers, captains, warp drives, gravity simulators, test pilots, secret military nonsense or 25th century technologies; nearly every item used at the settlement is off-the-shelf hardware purchasable at your local Home Depot, Radio Shack, or IKEA. Really. If you like Star Trek, we will have issues. Seriously, if you think Star Trek is representative of anything at any time, do the world a favor and rethink that before you write anything space-related. Babylon 5 likewise. Home is the most informed scientifically-literate near-term fiction set in space thus far created. A Landmark. Everything you have seen prior will seem dated, from Odyssey 2001 to Avatar. "Useless misleading evil garbage."

"Beyond all rationales, space flight is a spiritual quest in the broadest sense, one promising a revitalization of humanity and a rebirth of hope no less profound than the great opening out of mind and spirit at the dawn of our modern age."
Buzz Aldrin

Keep in mind a one-way communication delay between Earth and Mars ranges from 3 minutes to 22 minutes. There is no real-time communication with Earth - but, continuous "live" streaming video feeds (delayed by distance only) occur between Skype cameras from locations across Earth, such as: extended family living rooms, offices, international classrooms, corporate boardrooms, etc. The general outlook of Home is libertarian, entrepreneurial and democratic. Please do not write episodes about your future religion, world vision, or utopian nudist system. No, truly. Be merciful, someone will read some of it.

"Remember this: once the human race is established on more than one planet and especially, 
in more than one solar system, there is no way now imaginable to kill off the human race."
Robert Heinlein


“The more laws and restrictions there are,
The poorer people become.
The sharper men’s weapons,
The more trouble in the land.
The more ingenious and clever men are,
The more strange things happen.
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers.”
Tao Te Ching # 57
(written 2,500 years ago)

Think: normal people, normal things, on Mars. Fun. Interesting. Curious. Show human beings living on Mars with joy and purpose, in a manner which will encourage real world exploration and settlement soon.  Let's break from 1950s sci-fi nonsense - let's get humans to Mars. Now. In the real world. We can do this. In two decades. We are Generation Mars.

"The most important fact of this century is not that Earth is threatened in many ways, It is that for the first time in all of its history a decisive means of protecting the home planet exists. It is by using space."
William E. Burrows, The Survival Imperative, 2006

There are a few parameters essential to this goal:

1) No one dies. Mars is a fun beautiful exciting Home. It is assumed humans can live in 1/3 g without health issues. Mars is not a problem. It is beloved. We will solve its challenges with intelligence, grit, and a confidence in our positive human competence. This series encourages near-term settlement. Your storyline must rely upon common everyday human interaction - not the staple of what has become dystopian "science" fiction; do not write about: aliens, viruses, hierarchical conflict, conspiracies, equipment failure, rogue computers, or other ridiculous, negative, risk-averse, fear-mongering nonsense. Mars is fun. Think Seinfeld, Friends, Cheers.

Mars is beautiful, hospitable, inhabitable, joyful, adventurous, playful, gorgeous, challenging: Home. Mars is not virus laden, alien supervised, deluged by meteorites, shredded by dust-storms, or already inhabited by humans and/or other intelligent lifeforms. Not even a little bit. Please. Be original. What you create has effect. You can inspire teenagers to study science. You can foster the next generation of engineers capable of solving issues unrelated to either Mars or space.

2) Most settlers are married hard-working young couples of various genders who intend to remain in passionate loving relationships with their partners for the rest of their lives - on Mars. Home is neither a utopian commune nor a joyless sterile laboratory. We need traditional, mainstream, religious Americans to admire and respect most characters. Hardworking taxpayers will not fund debauched dilettantes obsessed with seducing each other. Most characters love their spouses, of whatever gender. 

For reference, professions currently with the lowest divorce rate on Earth are optometrists, at four percent and nuclear engineers, at seven percent. Monogamy is possible; divorce rates decline dramatically for persons marrying in their thirties, with common interests and higher education. Contemporary conservative politicians on Earth must speak with enthusiasm about funding research settlements, "like that show Home." That is just a political reality we need to write for...

4) Corporate sponsorship will pay for a portion of exploration and settlement. It is important voters, marketers, and consumers become accustomed to advertising-funded space exploration. In your dialogue and scene descriptions please include spoken and visual references to potential sponsors, think: NASCAR, the Olympics, major sporting events.

Remember, Home is a family show...respect our sponsors. Their brands are enhanced through association with our hip, smart, socially aware, scientifically literate, compassionate, entertaining and fun portrayal of positive human progress.

Jeff Bezos: "Our most important piece of intellectual property is our brand name. Brands for companies are like reputations for people. And reputations are hard-earned and easily lost. So the most important intellectual property that a company can have - for us, it's Amazon - its that "name" but, what it stands for…we've worked to earn trust. You can't ask for trust, you just have to do it the hard way, one step at a time. You make a promise then fulfill the promise. You say, "We'll deliver this tomorrow - then we'll actually deliver it tomorrow." And if you do that over and over again, then you can instill your company's name, with a reputation. Sometimes people talk about brands in this very amorphous way, but, for me, I like to think of it as a person, and what kind of reputation that person has, and what have they done to earn that reputation."

5) Expensive exotic spaceships are absurd. We only need to move people from the surface of Earth to the surface of Mars. They do not do this quickly, with gravity, or in comfort. They do not need lasers or warp drives to fend off Klingons either, unfortunately (that would be the fun part). Most hardware settlers will need can now be purchased from off-the-shelf commercial vendors. Its use will require that only a few team-members have the engineering competency of average building superintendents; your characters do not need to be the most recognized academics in their fields, they only need to Skype with such persons who will pay for the privilege.

6) Earth and Mars are not different shows. Episodes transition between Mars and Earth with ease. Think of Earth and Mars as offices in the same building. Rather than characters walking down the hall to talk to someone on a different planet, they turn on a Kindle to transmit a recorded (time-delayed) message. No big deal. Most characters know each other, from barista Lola to Julia and Jack to the nightwatchman Wayne.

7) Write attitude. Push censors. Hit back. Have opinions. Give Muses traction. Make statements, come out swinging. Home is cool. We don't want to reenforce boring academic sterile stereotypes of risk-adverse cowards and "chronically monogamous optometrists". Scientific literacy adds character. Science makes life interesting. The more we know about our world the more beautiful and mysterious it becomes. Write about persons you know who intrigue you. Write the way people you enjoy listening to talk. Acquaint yourself with comedians listed at the bottom of this page. Remember, Home is cool, through and through, the coolest hardcore most scientifically-literate show in any medium. Don't bother writing if you aren't. Really. Don't.


Arkangel Shakespeare audio books -- a multimillion dollar production five years in the making using 350+ actors.  Eventually the copyright for this project will be released - in the meantime check your public library.

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. 
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
William Hutchinson Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition



"The script is everything. You can ruin it, but no amount of great acting, 
clever camera work or editing will make it better than the script."

Script archive for home:

Subreddit (ranked feedback & suggestions): 

IT'S IMPORTANT MARS HAVE MANY STORYTELLERS 
HAVE FUN AND GOOD LUCK!

"Astronauts with Personality -- Please!! ...Following the Mars Society Convention 2010: STURGISSSSS!!" 

"What the Hell Happened to Our Space Program?? Can You Imagine the Right Stuff Generating These Headlines??"

"Come on, Get Happy!! (How to Portray Martian Settlement)"

"THIS CLUELESS STEREOTYPE IS NOT BOB ZUBRIN..."