In real life, Tau Ceti is the name of a star, approximately 12 light years away from Earth. It was first catalogued in 1603 by Johann Bayer, and as of this writing, astronomers estimate it has four exoplanets: e, f, g, and h. But if you’re a sci-fi nerd, you’ve probably already got a good look at Tau Ceti in recent months.
Project Hail Mary — the 2021 Andy Weir book and 2026 film starring Ryan Gosling — is all about humanity’s trek to Tau Ceti in an effort to save the future of Earth. Bungie’s Marathon, the reboot of its 1994 FPS, takes place on Tau Ceti IV as players scavenge the ruins of a human colony. And Directive 8020, the latest Dark Pictures Anthology horror from Supermassive Games, is all about a colony ship scouting Tau Ceti f to see if it’s a suitable planet for the future of humanity.
Those are three of the most famous examples in recent sci-fi, but as evidenced by the original Marathon (where much like the Cassiopeia in Directive 8020, the UESC Marathon ship was sent to colonize Tau Ceti IV), Tau Ceti has been a popular destination for a lot longer. 1999’s genre-defining System Shock 2 saw the Von Braun ship respond to a distress signal from Tau Ceti V. In 1985, the video game Tau Ceti saw the player travel between cities on Tau Ceti III, fighting against robot defenses. The Dispossessed, the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula award-winning Ursula K. Le Guin novel from 1974, is set on twin inhabited worlds, Anarres and Urras, within Tau Ceti.
Tau Ceti can also be found in other sci-fi games, where it doesn’t act as a plot point, but can still be visited. Starfield is one example: the star is surrounded by a whopping nine exoplanets, plenty of which have explorable moons too. So Bethesda is flexing its creative muscles and stretching the definition of what we know about Tau Ceti considerably, and even though it isn’t as noteworthy because plenty of systems in the space RPG have habitable exoplanets, it’s another interpretation worth considering.
So it’s safe to say that despite its recent prominence, Tau Ceti has been a popular sci-fi setting for decades. But why?
It’s actually quite simple: the Tau Ceti system is one of the most promising, potentially habitable candidates known to humanity. Better yet, it’s relatively close to us (well, in context of the vastness of space). The Tau Ceti star shares numerous qualities of our own sun, and its four exoplanets have conditions that could feasibly sustain life. Will Doyle, creative director on Directive 8020, explained to Polygon via email that since Tau Ceti f is scientifically considered to be one of the leading candidates within sun-like star systems, “it felt like a realistic setting for the story.”
Jonathan Goff, the narrative lead on Marathon, shed some more light via email on exactly why the Tau Ceti system works: “It’s tailor-made for the development of a fictional interstellar narrative. The system’s real-world characteristics provide a scientifically-informed foundation for examinations of the complexities of space travel and the requirements, dangers, and wonder of extra-solar exploration and colonization.”
Alpha Centauri remains the king of star systems in sci-fi, but why does Tau Ceti appear to be the current go-to? There are plenty of other choices, including the Trappist, Proxima Centauri, and Kepler systems, all of which include exoplanets that, according to scientific journals, may be even more promising for colonization or extraterrestrial life.
Most of it can be explained by the fact that Tau Ceti was discovered so early compared to the others. We knew of its existence long before we found it may have exoplanets, and since it had a simple, understandable name, it worked well for storytelling purposes. Despite having been explored countless times through various media, we still don’t know very much about Tau Ceti at all, which means it’s still ripe for speculation. And finally, since it’s only 12 light-years away (just an afternoon stroll, really), it’s close enough that it feels tangible, yet far enough away that we can let our imaginations run wild.
Goff explained more about why that distance sweet-spot works for Marathon, and his answer is so thorough that we’re simply sharing it in full below:
It was important to establish a realistic, if far-future, reality from which to launch into the fantastic. For the original trilogy of games, players are met swiftly with the incredible challenge of combating an advanced alien race within the strange hallways of the titular colony ship, the UESC Marathon.
As players explored, survived, and repelled their attackers, they also uncovered details that painted a broader, strange, more complex picture of their existence — the origins and purpose of their location aboard the Marathon ship (a repurposed Deimos, a moon stolen from Mars), the technologies and intelligence that supported or challenged their progress (AI evolving toward madness), the stakes of their central mission (the colonization of Tau Ceti IV), and the threat of failure (lose the fight and the colony is lost).
The planetary focus of the original Marathon’s narrative, Tau Ceti IV, has become the driving focus of modern Marathon. Where the original trilogy teased an Earth-like existence on an alien world, currently players are scavenging the ruins of that colony. Tau Ceti as the setting allows the spaces players explore to be relatable, but strange — an understandable reality on an alien world just removed from our own.
It is the fact Tau Ceti exists and can be researched, considered, and understood as beyond our modern grasp but dreamt of as a distant future’s destination that makes it so perfectly suited as the home for experiences beyond reality.
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