Jastrow ‘Mystery’ Launch

“The mysteries of the cosmos” (and attempts to communicate with intelligence elsewhere in the universe) are the subject of a new, still untitled book forthcoming from astrophysicist Robert Jastrow. The 1988 publication date from Bantam Books Hardcover is scheduled to coincide with the anticipated resumption of space shuttle trips. Jastrow, founder of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and a pioneer at NASA in the 1950s, is known both as a popularizer of science and space travel--his “Red Giants, White Dwarfs” sold more than half a million copies--and as a fierce defender of SDI, or Star Wars. His Washington-based George Marshall Foundation is composed of scientists who share the support for the President’s space defense program that he expressed in his earlier (widely panned) “How to Make Nuclear Weapons Obsolete” (Little, Brown).

BULWER-LYTTON’S REVENGE: First there was “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night.” Then “Son of It Was a Dark and Stormy Night.” Now San Jose State University professor of English, Scott Rice, and Penguin will publish yet another volume of entries from his annual worst-opening-line-in-history contest. The latest effort, due out next year, will be called “Bride of It Was a Dark and Stormy Night.”

IS THERE LIFE AFTER INGRID BERGMAN? Transplanted from Washington to Santa Monica, author Laurence Leamer was thrashing about, searching for the perfect project to follow “As Time Goes By,” his biography of Bergman for Harper & Row. While debating whether to brave the brutal beach-town winter and head on out for his daily jog, Leamer reported that he has settled on none other than Johnny Carson as the subject of his next literary endeavor. “People have been talking, quite regularly,” Leamer said of Carson’s personal and professional entourage. Still untitled, the Carson bio is due out from Morrow “sometime in the future.”

WRITING TIME: Dorothy Redford, organizer of a reunion of descendants of North Carolina slaves last summer and author of a forthcoming book about the project, will be the guest lecturer July 31-Aug. 7 at the annual summer conference of the International Women’s Writing Guild. Information about the conference and its 30 workshops is available from Hannelore Hahn, IWWG, P.O. Box 810, Gracie Station, New York, N.Y. 10028 (telephone: (212) 737-7536).