This is my primary non-fiction project, a full-length book on the design of fictional star systems and worlds for science-fiction projects. In that, it’s similar to the world-design systems I’ve written for the GURPS roleplaying game, The book is intended to lean toward “hard” SF applications, and therefore to be at least somewhat compatible with current developments in planetary science.

I’ve been working on this project since mid-2016. As of early 2024 the book has been completed, and it is in the process of being released through Ad Astra Games.

Here’s a link to the Ad Astra catalog page for the book. Pre-orders are under way!

Here’s a link to the first review the book received, from Amazing Stories (!).

This page is currently being remodeled to offer long-term support for the book: fielding questions and errata reports, collecting new research results that might be relevant, posting journal entries about additional world-building techniques, and so on. I tentatively plan to consider producing a second edition of the book sometime around 2030, and Ad Astra Games and I are discussing the possibility of some related products as well. For now, watch this space for further developments.

There’s also a side document which may be of interest to players of the tabletop RPG Traveller:

Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller (27 April 2021)

This document is only partially covered by my copyright, and I hereby grant permission to share or redistribute it freely as long as the attribution is not altered.