From Second Life to Mars: the evolution of virtual worlds?

[Jopsy Pendragon]

MarsColonia started as a hobby between a few people who love Mars.

Curious, and thanks for the rest of the details.

Back in, oh geez, 1989, I was in a bizarre one-off college class run through the Honors Department by two professors: one in anthropology, the other in computer science/engineering. We teamed up with a similar class at another university, and to foster communication, and simulate interaction, between the teams and campuses, I started an entirely text-based virtual space: a TinyMUD (MUD = multi-user domain, or dungeon, depending), built from a localized heavily modified version of Jim Aspnes’s codebase (one that I was already using for an obscure small community that hung out in magical alternate Arthurian-to-Victorian London space named DragonMUD that remained online for some 28 years!)

Our Mars Colony MUD It was named Solsys, an impressively unoriginal shortening of “Solar System Simulation,” and primarily featured our five colony settlements on Mars.

As a class, attended Contact, a symposium/conference involving scientists/researchers, academics, and some fairly notable science-fiction writers, where we were presented with challenges to overcome in real time.

The MUD persisted for something like nine years, hosting subsequent classes as well as alumni who stayed involved as advisers, coaches, and referees whenever the course was offered again.

I distinctly remember one year when I got to design the systemic colony failure the students had to diagnose and work around. One of the settlers had tampered with a sizable number of charcoal water-filtration modules, replacing the charcoal with cocoa powder, knowing he’d be able to trade it for a profit.

Unfortunately, his batch of filters was rotated into service early, and the smuggler became one of the first fatalities due to dysentery... Good times.

Afterward, I was pretty thoroughly burned out on the whole Mars thing and had come to appreciate just how unusually special, and pleasant, staying on Earth would be by comparison.

I’m still curious to see how they eventually solve the time-and-date problem for human Martians. Back then, there were two or three dozen competing ideas for what to do with the extra 39 minutes and 35 seconds in each Martian day. Honestly, with my particular sleep dysfunction, staying awake an extra 40 minutes and sleeping an extra 40 minutes might fit me perfectly.

Of course, actual human Martians may simply stick to a normal Earth-style 24-hour clock and calendar while living mostly underground, since Mars lacks a strong global magnetic field to protect surface dwellers from radiation.

But I’m rambling.