By Paul Gessell

Terry Fallis was supposed to be an engineer but ended up being a Parliament Hill backroom boy for the Liberals. Then he joined the world of international public relations and, along the way, self-published a political satire (The Best Laid Plans) in 2007. It was a smash hit.

These days, Fallis is both a much-in-demand PR man – his firm, Thornley-Fallis, is deep into F-35 fighter jets these days – and a much-in-demand author who continues to write humourous books, but books handled by a real publisher, McClelland and Stewart.

Fallis’s newest book is Up and Down, a hilarious look at the world of PR, in which an American company and its cannier Canadian branch plant are hired to renew public interest in the space program. The hero of the plot, a PR man not unlike Fallis, decides a lottery should be held, with two winners gaining the right to join real astronauts on a space flight. Every thing goes according to plan until one of the winners is revealed to be more than NASA ever bargained for. (more…)