Epona

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Epona is a strikingly detailed fictional alien world. How detailed? Very. A Webster’s-sized dictionary might be enough to contain all the textual information amassed on Epona; and this grossly ignores the hundreds of Eponan art pieces detailing the world, from ink illustrations and paintings, to computer-generated renderings and animations, to sculptures. Quoting Larry Niven, who had a chance to view an Eponan interactive computer demo, “I have never seen a playground this size.”

The genesis of Epona came from a project created by members of Contact, a nonprofit educational organization with roots in science fiction (an article on Contact appears in the January 1992 issue of Analog). This experiment is called Cultures of the Imagination, or COTI. People participating in COTI are divided into two groups. One group creates an alien world with a sophont while isolated from the second group, which builds human history to the point of starflight. Development proceeds for three days during the annual Contact conference, and at the end, a first contact is simulated between the two isolated groups. Lots of fun.

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