Resources Useful for World-Building

Background on Tenalpon, Group Guidelines, and Group Discussion Forums

Contact: Cultures of the Imagination: Web page for a group of simulation activities stemming originally from a 1983 interdisciplinary conference involving anthropologists, science fiction writers, and artists. The conference has been held annually since 1983. See especially founder Jim Funaro's History of the conference for detailed descriptions of the world-building and first-contact activities, and the COTI (Cultures of the Imagination) page, for detailed descriptions of some of the alien worlds and ecologies.
World Builders Home Page: Extensive class project page for a distance-ed. course at California State University/ Los Angeles. Gives step-by-step guidelines for interdisciplinary world-building and is rich in resources. Includes science background, lesson plans, scoring rubrics, sample worlds, etc. (Elizabeth Anne Viau)
NAU Solar System Simulation: Collaborative world-building project, which originated at the 1987 Contact conference and was developed into an intercollegiate curriculum by Reed Riner at Northern Arizona University. Involves Mars colonies, L5 colonies, and more. (Only the Mars colony has extensive documentation online as of 8/12/03.)
Life on the Planet Furaha: Beautifully elaborated page from the "Institute of Furahan Biology" at the University of Leiden (Gert van Dijk). Includes a rich array of images, descriptions of life-forms and ecosystems, etc., for Furaha, the fourth planet of Alpha Phoenicis. Has a whole "future history" of exploration and study, with books and reviews, a space travel agency, etc.
Epona: The most famous imagined planet, and probably the most fully elaborated. Unfortunately, the web site appears to include only a fraction of the material from the original project. Still well worth looking at. Developed out of the Contact conference's Cultures of the Imagination activities.
Map of the planet Tenalpon: A basic map of the planet that was designed in class. The planet's provisional name is Tenalpon, but this may be changed by the project participants.
Orbital Survey Images from First Satellite Contact with Tenalpon
- Satellite Image of Major Land Mass, Showing Continental Shelf
- Satellite Image of Western Hemisphere, Showing Cloud Cover and Major Storm Activity

Frontiers course Resource Pages: The following sections may also be of use for background information::