Resources : World Dream Bank

World Dream Bank is a website by a certain Chris Wayan (not yet on AH.com). It contains many texts and images about various topics, like mythical creatures, sexuality and also political issues. All of them come from dreams, hence the name of the site.

Some AH.com-friendly blank versions of Wayan's maps (converted by Thande) can be found here: World Dream Bank Maps

The most interesting thing on this website (at least for the AH.commers frequenting it) is the Planetocopia, a collection of alternate earths and other planets. The author has clearly put a lot of thought and work in it - geology and meteorology were definitely considered before making these worlds. Most of these worlds have also been populated by some 'interesting' example flora and fauna.

This is Earth, if its axis were tilted in various alternate configurations. There are four of them:

• Seapole - a world in which both poles are in the sea (south Atlantic and west Pacific). Since there is no water locked up in thick ice, as in OTL's Antarctica, sea levels are 90 meters higher. Europe, Scandinavia and Central America are islands, the coastline is very ragged, and the world is generally warmer and wetter than OTL. The biomass may be higher than on Earth.
• Shiveria - a world in which both poles are on a continent (South America and East Asia), so that even more water is locked up in thick ice. Afro-Eurasia and America form a megacontinent, and the Mediterranean is a bizarre place, many kilometers below sea level (like OTL's Dead Sea, but much bigger), with a thick atmosphere. The whole world is colder (as the name says - it's essentially a permanent ice age) and drier, lots of it is ice or desert, and the fertile places are far away from each other. This may lead however to the development of several intelligent lifeforms in the long run…
• Turnovia - a world exactly like Earth, just turned on its head, with the poles flipped. So, the ocean currents, winds and rainfall patterns are practically backwards. This creates some differences to OTL, albeit smaller than in the other Tilt! planets. There's a bit more thick ice on land (all of Scandinavia), hence sea levels are ten to fifteen meters lower. Most of continental USA, China and the Parana area are deserts, and Europe is very cool, but OTL's deserts in the Sahara and Australia are fertile here, and Canada and Siberia are somewhat warmer.
• Jaredia - as you know, Jared Diamond wrote in “Guns, Germs and Steel” about the theory that continents with a big west-east extension are especially favored in the competition for world domination (pigs and wheat do well in both France and China, but Mexican corn took centuries to adapt to Ohio). Jaredia features a wide tropical zone from Java-Sumatra via East Asia and East Siberia to the Americas, so development of civilization should go way faster than IOTL. Jaredia's north pole is in Africa, the south pole in the Pacific, and the sea level is 40 meters lower, so the Bering Strait is a land bridge. Europe's very cool, but there are generally few deserts on this world. Max Sinister started a timeline set there.

Three of the planets in our Solar System, a thousand years in the future:

• Dubia (named in the doubtable honor of George W. Bush) is Earth in the future, with doubled CO2 levels. Almost all of the ice has melted, sea levels are about 110 meters higher, higher than most estimates due to the factoring of continental sag. Europe, Scandinavia, and Iberia have become islands; Britain is an archipelago; there are big inland seas in Amazonia, West Siberia and China. Many of the deserts have shrunk, agriculture has moved north and Antarctica and Greenland are largely ice-free.
• Mars has been terraformed, a “green Mars” scenario. Much of the northern hemisphere's Acidalia basin and the Hellas and Argyre impact craters in the southern hemisphere are now oceans, surrounded by green coasts, while the uplands are rust-coloured deserts. Fossil river and sea basins are refilled. The north and south poles still have their icecaps.
• Venus has also been terraformed resulting in a mixture of shallow oceans and small-to-medium-sized continents with only a few small deserts and no polar icecaps. Unlike Mars, there's no remnant of OTL Venus.

• Serrana is a cross between Earth and Mars. This planet's diameter is 50% bigger than Mars', half of it is covered by sea. Almost all the land masses are connected, there is one big ocean and five smaller seas. Most of the land is desert, though.
• Lyr is a big planet (five times Earth's surface), but 95% of the surface is sea - still, the combined land masses are almost as big as Earth's. They're split into many archipelagos, which would allow for many different intelligent species. The atmosphere is very dense. The planet has six moons, one of which is Oisin.
• Pegasia is an almost Earth-sized moon of a big gas giant named Zeus. One third of it is covered by land, which is divided into nine continents, with a very jagged coastline.
• Tharn is another moon of Zeus. It's a bit bigger than Mars, has a breathable atmosphere, but only 6% of the world is covered by water. It is an illustration of how little water is necessary to create a living world. Biodiversity would be very high due to the isolated nature of the seas and the radical differences in temperature and atmospheric pressure across Tharn's relief.
• Oisin, as said, is a moon of Lyr. It's about as big as Mercury or Titan, and mostly covered by ice, as the Jovian moon Europa. It is warmer than Europa, resulting in thinner ice and more photosynthesis. One sixth of the surface is barren, nearly lifeless land, creating coastal coral reefs and mineral oases that wouldn't be present in a shoreless sea.

• Xanadu is based on Saturn's moon Titan, with hydrocarbon seas, rivers and lakes and a biosphere using Ethane as a solvent.
• Capsica is a world in which average temperatures are 50ºC-75ºC (122ºF-167ºF) higher than Earth's, on the hotter end of the “Goldilocks Zone”.
• Libratia is a tidelocked world with an eccentric orbit, thus diurnal cycles across much of the world and abundant life. It is a refutation of the idea that planets in Red Dwarf systems would follow the “Fire and Ice” cliché.

Earth with some “tiny” changes.

• Siphonia is Earth if you removed 90% of the water in the oceans. Only one third of Earth would be covered by a dozen shallow seas. There'd be more ice caps and deserts than IOTL, but still, a lot of biomass would be possible, even several intelligent species.
• Inversia is Earth, if you turned every height on Earth inside-out - continents become oceans, oceans become land. Well, mostly. Considering that tiny islands turning into deep craters with tiny lakes at the bottom wouldn't make meteorological sense, rain has been allowed to create vast inland seas in the former Ocean basins which otherwise would be wide, unbroken deserts. Even so, there's much more desert than IOTL.
• Abyssia is like Inversia, but with the same amount of water as on Earth. As a result, only one eighth of the surface would be covered by flat, low lying land.

Useful Resources Main Directory