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My prompt involves finding and settling an unknown world. As one might expect, this will be a scifi story set some relatively short time in the future (20-100 years). I have sourced the various planets that you can choose to explore based on the real world catalogue of potentially superhabitable worlds. Because of where we are with study in that field, all of the potentially superhabitable worlds that we know of come from one of two Kepler Telescope field studies. This leads to most of my potential worlds having names in the format of KOI-8000.01.

My abstract thought was that using by using real celestial objects, the reader may be interested enough to do some small amount of research about them outside of the game. Is this an unrealistic expectation?

Would it add more character and verisimilitude to the story to vary that naming convention up to show that some were found by projects like TESS or CHEOPS?

No one will know but you.

I like you Ogre, but that does not actually address either of my questions.

I like Ogre

I like Ogre

I also like Ogre.

Nobody will know (that your planets are real objects) but you. Is a good reason to give them names that people can relate to.

My personal suggestion is to add a few fictional worlds that have fictional names alongside the real ones.

Make sure to include a Planet McPlanetface.

I was playing around with the idea of having whichever planet you select being called that based on a public vote to name the new colony world.

I would prefer realistic names (unless the story is fantasy; also, if there is undiscovered intelligent life on these planets, I'm assuming they'll have their own name for their planets). Also don't forget unless you're a bazillion years in the future, you have certain physics constraints. For example if you intend to travel many light years away, there will be differential aging between you and the place you came from when you return; you can't have instant communication with people far away; etc.


But, in terms of your lore in the world, there's no reason not to include optional background pages. End does it quote successfully in some of his storygames to enrich lore. So you could do it here and be fine, I imagine.

EDIT: You are free to disregard reality in your story, obviously. This is just a preference. But if your society found some fictional ToE that allows for the things we think are impossible, go for it.

The story is a mix of real world science and scifi superscience. I am handwaving some of the physics to allow probes and the colony ship to move at an average of 3x light speed, so within the timeline of the game (basically the first half) you get a total of 500-750 years to launch some probes and the colony ship prior the likely destruction of earth. Quantum communications offer the ability to get data from the probes when they arrive, so no need to wait for a return trip.

I realize I could just fully make up everything, but I like the idea of using currently identified planets as possible targets. I guess the real core of my question is, does including references to multiple real world projects add more to the story than just using a single projects output. Is it better to see a list of items that are like:

• KOI-7621
• KOI-5554
• KOI-5389
• KOI-5176
• KOI-8047

or Alternately something like:

• KOI-7621
• KOI-5554
• HD 191939
• K2OI-1023
• JWST-123

I recognize that this is a fairly minor detail, but reviewing these lists and determining the ones you want to get more info on is a pretty big aspect of the early game, so I feel it is kind of important.

A little variation wouldn't hurt, the numbers aren't going to stick on their own.

I've been pondering some similar things about naming conventions because my story also involves planets, but uses portals (due to a prompt) and leans toward fiction. While the few planets in my story are technically not real (outside of Earth), I worked on an ID system that could archive the universe to help ground it a bit.

The tentative format I'm using is Galaxy-Sector-System-SystemBodies, then breaking down the system bodies into specific ID ranges to make the indexing more consistent from an archival standpoint. I'm also using Crockford's Base32, which uses 0-9 and A-Z minus ILOU, because when you have something like K2OI-1023, the I and 1 can look similar to the reader. The end result is long still (e.g. 4M8T92R7K-3X2T-9A6K-03B), but it makes it more theoretically possible to index things on a universal scale.

Anyway, by grounding your story in established names, the average reader might struggle to remember the difference between something like KOI-5389 and KOI-5554. So if you want to give yourself a little bit of plot leeway, especially since humanity can do space colonization, it would be fair to allow everything to have a more “normal” name too.

What I plan to do, and what you can consider, is to blend the two. Treat the "old" names as ID labels, and then attach to each of them a unique name. You can mention one or both where it makes sense contextually, but the goal would be to give each name enough identity that the reader can easily differentiate between them.

As far as your other questions go, if you're already going the more scientific route, including names that were found by other projects (like TESS or CHEOPS) is a good idea, especially if this leans towards the 100-year range. I think that adds more flavor and implies some competition between the scientific community, while still aligning it with the KOI- and other names.

Even if the names are grounded in reality, I don't think you should plan or expect people to search for them outside of the story. Assume the vast majority of readers will want everything self-contained within it. And if they do decide to look it up, think of it as a small bonus for them to better appreciate your work.

I'll say if they're commonly known enough—and especially if they're inhabited—they'd realistically have proper names, as well as nicknames (like "The Diamond Planet," aka "Jannsen," aka 55 Cancri e, for the rich amount of carbon that probably creates a layer of diamond underneath what's probably a graphite crust).

EDIT: Apparently some think it's sapphires, not diamond, but whatever. I don't really follow that stuff. The point is, have names if people live there or many people know of these planets. Otherwise it will be kind of unrealistic.

If the idea is to colonize a planet though, there's a good chance no one else is living in that system.

There's still plenty of ways to explain proper names of course, considering people can pay a few bucks even now to name a star.

I wonder how much it would cost to have one named "lol fag."