Oolite Bulletins

Hi,

I am in G8 for a long while doing contracts. I noticed there are two planets named Inzaan. Is that intentional or a bug.

It’s intentional in the sense that Oolite accurately recreates Elite’s universe. You’d have to ask Ian Bell and/or David Braben whether they noticed.

Neither, nor. It's random.

All planet names are created through pseudo random. I guess, when checking the charts, B&B must have overlooked the doublet. I even think there are more doublets, possibly of planets in different galaxies.

Ahruman wrote:

It’s intentional in the sense that Oolite accurately recreates Elite’s universe. You’d have to ask Ian Bell and/or David Braben whether they noticed.

I dont think I can ask them

Inzaan
Anarchy, Poor Agri. Pop. 1.6 B, Prod. 1536 MCr. HC: 5, TL: 3, Insects.
Inzaan is most noted for the Inzaanian evil poet and Inzaanian Nu brandy.

Inzaan
Corporate State, Average Agri. Pop. 3.8 B, Prod. 13376 MCr. HC: 6, TL: 7, Insects.
The planet Inzaan is cursed by vicious killer beasts.

A potential hook for fiction and/or OXPs! Interesting that they're both inhabited by "Insects" ... also interesting that one planet is an Anarchy and the other a Corporate State.

Perhaps they are of the same origin, but developed radically different? Or the individuals who opposed the corporations were expelled from the home world, and subsequently founded a 'free state' on another world far away (the few nonconformists remaining on the home world were denounced as 'vicious killer beasts')?

Maybe the poet took his disciples off to form a utopian world.

"And so the poet Neknek-cleen said unto his brethren; "Take up your Brandies and follow to a world of plenty." And a forth of them rose up and in time founded their utopia."

It's all a bit Johnstown.

Or maybe it's one species – the male drones live on Inzaan (Anarchy), drinking and writing bad poetry, while the industrious female workers toil away in the Corporate State. Once every generation there's a mating flight. Perhaps the vicious killer beasts are the few males that always get left behind on the Corporate State and refuse to go home.

Also, it could depend on what "Inzaan" means in the local dialect. I mean, consider how many worlds are named something that translates into "dirt" or "earth" or something like that. You know how it was when explorers were making first contact with natives that hadn't achieved space awareness yet. They'd pat the surface and ask the natives what it was, meaning "what do you call this world" and the natives almost always say "earth" or "dirt" or "soil" or something like that. It just gets recorded and they move on.

For example, the natives of the legendary third planet of system Sol probably wouldn't have called it "earth" or "dirt" or whatever it was if they'd seen it from space even once before they named it. "Swirly Blue Ball" or "Beryl Mist" would have been cool names with how it's supposed to have looked before the disaster in the first century of the diaspora when it was lost or destroyed or whatever happened to it. Assuming it ever actually existed, that is.

At least it looks like a pretty place in the rather blurry photo on the "True Earth" cards. You know, those luck charm things they sell in most spaceports somewhere with an out-of-focus pic of some planet that looks to be mostly water and that have a pebble attached that is allegedly from the actual planet Earth in the lost Sol system.

I read in Snoopers a while back that scientists now theorise there never actually was a Sol system and that all intelligent life began on Rizala. But having had a few run-ins with the police vipers in that system, I'm not so sure about the "intelligent" part. Oh well, at least they have a good lethal brandy.

what a fantastic idea for a short story.