Terran Consortium
It’s been a long time since I’ve actively participated here at the Guild. Between work, family, and limited internet access, I haven’t had much in the way of time or means to actively work on any projects. While my internet access is still somewhat limited, I’ve started to have a bit of free time, and decided to be productive with it.
As of late, I’ve been in a Sci-Fi sort of mood and reading a lot of the classics (Heinlein, Asimov, LeGuin, Herbert, and so on), and that has inspired me to some degree. Not just in terms of mapping, but also in terms of story telling. I’ve a story in mind, and, like most every story, it needs a setting, an interstellar setting to be precise.
Now, the problem for me, particularly when looking at (or dealing with) interstellar maps (or maybe it’s better to say charts) is that we are, more often than not, using a 2 dimensional medium to represent a 3 dimensional space. Most folks work that out by plotting 2 of those coordinates within the 2 dimensional medium’s parameters and then tag the 3rd coordinate as a + or - to represent positions above or below the plane of our 2 dimensional medium. Inherently, there is nothing wrong with this method, it’s clean, easy to read, and functional. But I wanted something different.
As I envisioned it, the characters in the story, when they wanted to figure out where they were and where they wanted to go, could call up a holographic image that was rotatable in every direction. I’m sure I’ve seen something similar to this somewhere (perhaps on the web, in a movie, or both), and decided to have a go at it, myself. Admittedly, it is beyond my meager programing abilities to create a chart of this sort (the rotating sort that is), but I can, in essence, create a snap shot that, I hope, captures the effect I am looking for. Of course, I’m still working within the confines of a 2 dimensional medium, so there are some little subtleties I’ll have to work out, but I think I have a handle on them.
I’ve laid out the basics of the chart so far, and will probably be working on a key (or legend if you will) next. I’ve got about 120 star systems to put on this chart based on information gleaned from the Internet Stellar Database. It’s going to take a while to get all those systems placed, and it is quite possible, since some of that information is based on different epochs, that some of those systems will seem a bit out of place. I’m fine with that since I see this as a slightly different universe than our own. It’s also possible that I will “fudge” some of the individual systems’ data to allow for a larger number of habitable (or at least hospitable) systems for the characters to visit.
In any event, here’s what I have accomplished so far. Hope to be able to update this soon.
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