shared science fiction
why visit?
Humanity has scattered among the stars in small ships. The crews' logs and messages form one collaborative story.
a small doorway. a whole other internet.
Follow the paths. Find something wonderful.
THE FOUR-WORLD BROWSER / GEMINI · GOPHER · SPARTAN · NEX
. * . . / + . . : / . . : . / ( o )-' `-' /\.___/ \
locating your corner of the world...
reading the sky...
calculating the moon...
Approximate IP region: IPWHOIS.io. Canadian observations/hourly forecasts: Environment and Climate Change Canada. Worldwide nearby observations: NOAA Aviation Weather Center. Global hourly model fallback: Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0). Weather providers receive rounded coordinates, not your IP. Nearby station conditions can differ from your window; forecasts are estimates. Nearby weather stations may differ from your street. Automated clear-sky reports can miss high clouds. Regional scenery uses reviewed city silhouettes or nearby mapped features from OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via VK Maps, using coordinates rounded to two decimal places. A compact NASA MODIS land-cover map provides worldwide scenery when local maps are unavailable. This 2024 map is sampled at about 11 km, so it depicts the broader region, not your street. The shape of the horizon — which way the view faces, where the ranges stand, how far off they are and where the snow line falls — is measured from NOAA’s ETOPO1 global relief model (Amante & Eakins, 2009), bundled with the site and sampled every tenth of a degree. Nothing is sent anywhere to draw it. Heights are drawn on a compressed vertical scale: a real range a hundred kilometres away stands less than a degree above the horizon, which is one line of type, so the shape of the skyline is true while its height is turned up until you can see it. Water is drawn only where open water was measured nearby, and a river is drawn as a river. Successful local map details are cached across restarts for up to 90 days. A country name uses a labelled representative capital from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); choose a city for local conditions. Holiday miniatures follow the selected region and local date, including nearby festive days. Their colors and motifs are decorations, not weather or statements about a visitor’s beliefs. Dates use the Hong Kong Observatory, Hebcal (CC BY 4.0), published country calendars and identified calendar estimates; local observances may vary. Choose Around the world to explore more traditions, or Off. Movable calendar dates currently cover 2026–2035. Each local day brings a new landscape composition. Step inside for a larger animated viewpoint; its details are illustrations, not live sightings. Weather and sky lighting continue to update during the day. Use refresh sky to check the latest available weather and draw a new rendition; reloading the page keeps that rendition. Weather refreshes share provider data for up to a minute. VPNs can change the region; choose a city and country to correct it. The lunar phase is calculated from the current time; its tilt follows your approximate region. The small moon uses dim crater texture for its shadow and a bright rim for thin crescents; lit characters can represent partial illumination. It appears in the nighttime scene, including when below the horizon. This is a stylized sky, not an exact view from your window. Sunset colors follow the calculated sun, not observed cloud colors. Birds, occasional aircraft and night visitors are playful details, not live sightings.
Checking regional feeds...
These feeds cannot confirm that an area is safe. Follow local authorities; nearby reports do not establish local impact.
[ sources / regional notices ]Futility Closet gathers unusual stories, puzzles and curiosities. Its small entries make inviting stepping stones: start with one unexpected idea, then see where the surrounding links lead.
Futility Closet →unexpected footnotes / a fresh find each visit
Three hand-picked capsules a day, never the same three until all have had a turn, plus a fresh find from the crawler.
shared science fiction
Humanity has scattered among the stars in small ships. The crews' logs and messages form one collaborative story.
philosophy and film
Writings on philosophy, life, film and technology, with reference notes, games and a random quote.
games and gadgets
A workshop of Gemini tools and games. Several of them, Minesweeper included, play right here in the browser.
Take a side path. These smaller indexes grow as our patient scouts explore.
Follow hand-built menus into phlogs, old computer lore and deep personal archives. The pre-web underground is still alive.
Counting the paths…
A tiny hobbyist protocol with familiar gemtext and a make-something-yourself spirit. Small, direct and experimental.
Counting the paths…
Plain-text stations connected by links. Ride between writers, neighbourhoods and ASCII-lit corners of the small internet.
Counting the paths…
Gopher, Spartan and Nex use plaintext between our relay and the remote host. Your connection here stays HTTPS. Never send secrets through these worlds. Field notes & crawl policy →