It was back to the Homestead region of Natthimmel, held by Saskia Rieko to witness the latest design by her SL partner Konrad (Kaiju Kohime) after seeing a tweet by Laskya Claren (who also assisted with the notecard introduction to the build). To be honest, it’s a setting that would have attracted my interest, but Laskya’s tweet helped me to note it sooner rather than later, given it is by Konrad and Saskia – who are establishing a solid reputation for region designs representative of physical world locations (for example, see: A Night Sky with a touch of history in Second Life) – and the fact that for this particular build they mix three of my non-SL interests: astronomy, theoretical space science and science-fiction as the springboard for the imagination. However, Laskya’s tweet was timely in that it pushed me towards visiting sooner rather than later.
The astronomy comes from the use of the Gliese 581 system as a inspiration for the build and its associated story. This is a dwarf star (M spectral type) located some 20.5 light-years from our own solar system, and which in 2005 was discovered to have one of the smallest extrasolar planets ever found orbiting it. Called Gliese 581b (the “b” indicating it to be the first planet known to be orbiting the star, whilst “Gliese” referencing the 1957 catalogue in which the star was record – even though it has been observed well before that year). It is actually one of three planets currently known to be orbiting the tiny star, with three other potential planets – Gliese 581d, Gliese 581f and Gliese 581g – thought to have been discovered later proving to be the result of stellar upsets within the star affecting the instruments on Earth attempting to locate exoplanets around it.
From these fact, the region spins off a story of the future discovery of artefacts on the outermost of the three Gliese 581 planets, Gliese 581e (as all the planets in the system are tidally locked with their parent star, always keep the same face towards it, the observed artefacts could not be surface features moving as a result of Gliese 581e’s axial rotation). This discovery leads to a crewed mission to the system aboard the UESS Rocinante, thus bringing in the first sci-fi reference, the Rocinante being the hero ship from The Expanse series of novels and stories by “James S. A. Corey” and the associated TV series (as well as also being a classic literary reference to adventures, Rocinante also being the name of Don Quixote’s horse).
A second sci-fi reference also lies in the text with the reference to ansible communications – a term first coined (and subsequently built upon) by Ursula le Guin, and used by many sci-fi authors, including Orson Scott Card. It is also in the notecard that the reference to theoretical space science appears, the Rocinante using an Alcubierre Drive for interstellar propulsion.
This introductory notecard actually serves as a mini short story in is own right, rather than just and introduction to the setting. In doing so, it sets up the imagination, offering a framework by which we might – if we so choose – explore the setting: what actually happened aboard the Rocinante? Were the note affects on the crew the result of the indicated damage to the drive system or something else? What caused the vessel to crash on the planet? Systems failure? Human error? Deliberate malfeasance by a member of the crew? Were the logged reports of alien creatures the result of genuine sightings or further hallucinations?
Thus, visitors can opt to put themselves in the role of the recommended salvage / rescue mission; or, if preferred, as members of the Rocinante’s crew encountering this strange world on which they have been cast – be it Gliese 581e or somewhere deep within a rip in the fabric of space/time brought about by the failure in their drive system. Or, if preferred, visitors can simply use the eerie, other-worldly environment for photography; there are no rules here in that respect. However, one thing I would recommend is to visit using the local environment settings (World → Environment → Use Shared Environment) and with the viewer’s Advanced Lighting Model enabled (Preferences → Graphics → make sure Advanced Lighting Model is checked – no need to enable shadows).
A different but engaging location which, whilst entirely imaginary, nevertheless folds into it some nice touches of science fact and theory wrapped into an engaging visit.
SLurl Details
- Natthimmel (NewMoon, rated Moderate)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 