An Advertisement for Celestia

I am spending the evening, as every good science fiction writer should, creating and destroying planets. In my imaginary future history, from AD 11000 to roughly AD 65500, five great Diasporas are inflicted upon the earth, and the eleven or so artificial subspecies of man, biological or mechanical or both, are carried to all the worthless planet-bearing stars withing 100 lightyears of Sol.

Now, I am always vastly disappointed in authors who, in their imaginary histories of the future, do not tell us where their stars really are, and delighted with the authors who do.

For example, I rejoice that Larry Niven selected a real star,  61 Ursae Majoris, to be the home sun of the Kzinti Patriarchy, or that Frank Herbert selected a real star, Gamma Piscium, to be the thronestar of the imperial world of Salusa Secundus (albeit he cleverly calls it by its Chinese name of Wai Ping) and likewise placed planet Caladan around the star Delta Pavonis, the same star used by John Maddox Roberts and Eric Kotani as the setting for their diamond-hard SF novel of the same name.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.