Pandora Taken
Icarus Cliché
Ogygia Greek stuff is overdone
Oceanic 815 That ending sucked
Grain of sand I need to get off this beach
I suppose I have as much a right as anyone to name this planet. I’m almost certainly the first sentient creature to find it, and it’s drifted through space for billions of years before, unnamed and uncaring. No pressure on me, right?
I thought I could sit here on the sand for a while and try to think of something. This one segment of beach is such a small part of the surface, but bigger things have been named from much smaller perspectives.
Balboa crossed over Panama and saw an ocean to the south. He gave it the uninspired name the “Southern Sea”, despite the fact that it covered half the planet from north to south. Magellan gave it a better name when he sailed through it years later. Mar Pacífico, the Peaceful Sea.
Peaceful World Let’s not get ahead of ourselves
I have a complicated relationship with explorers. If you’re a human, especially an American, you should take a look at Hernando de Soto. Not because he was a great explorer. He raided and pillaged through what would become the American South, and left a mess of destruction behind. Then he died at the Mississippi, and the survivors of his Expedition left with their tails between their legs.
Even if it’s just the Wikipedia summary. It’s not a glorious tale of heroism and conquest, but it’s an adventure, everyone loves an adventure.
There were many adventures on our world, human explorers meeting us, trading with us. Sometimes they started the fight, sometimes we did. Someday they’ll simply be adventure tales like De Soto.
What will I be?
I won’t be De Soto, even if I die on this beach and that clam-rock below drags my body into the water. I think I’ll be Salomon Andrée. A big-headed inventor who finds himself stranded in the middle of nowhere thanks to his own shoddy craftsmanship. One who keeps track of his struggles and obstacles in a journal along the way. Then, when it all becomes too much, sit down on a rock let the environment take me away.
His skeleton sat in the sun and snow for thirty years before another expedition found him. His journal was there too, wrapped in a scarf because he wanted the world to know what happened.
You know what? Screw De Soto, Andrée’s a better use of your Wikipedia coffee-break.
Andrée
Frænkel
Strindberg
I don’t want to name this planet after something that makes me think of failure. I’ll workshop it some more.