The Universe is full of worlds, big and small, hot and cold, wet and dry. Some might resemble our Earth, others will be strange beyond imagination. If we have the guts to go out into Space, we will only have embarked on the beginning of a long and wondrous quest, into a brilliant future. Some people might say today that we are at the end of history. Anybody who views the Galaxy spread out against the nightly skies knows history has hardly begun.

The world as we know it is not all there is. It’s part of something larger and it’s about time we go and see what it’s like out there. Not because we should not cherish our own planet, but because it can only benefit from our looking outward. And while reaching for the stars themselves will be a privilege of future generations, the planets, moons and asteroids of our own solar system are open for exploration now. Among those worlds Mars looks most like home. The Red Planet has many familiar elements that beckon us: wind blowing over the surface, clouds sailing across the sky, a soil drenched in water and iron, a day just over 24 hours long and here too summer follows spring. A place were life may once have flourished; a place where life may flourish once again.

For over a century science fiction writers have created works of fiction about humans visiting Mars and other worlds beyond our own, while scientists and engineers worked to turn those dreams into a fact. Science and technology have been a source of inspiration for many great novels and movies and at the same time those novels and movies have inspired young people to choose a career in science and technology. As a result of this synergy, one generation’s science fiction became the next generation’s news paper article and yet a later generation’s history book. Fiction became fact.

On 19-21 Octobre 2007 both realms, fiction and fact, meet in Delft at the Seventh European Mars Convention (EMC7), taking place at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of Delft University of Technology. Science fiction writers and their readers, as well as experts in fields like propulsion systems, planetary science, astrophysics, biology, medicine, gather together to discuss the next cycle of inspiration. The EMC7 welcomes everyone, both professional and layman, with an interest in a future in which man’s permanent presence in space, and on Mars, is no longer fiction but fact.