Why Sonsorol? And what is it?
Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego Sonsorol?
Sonsorol is a small island in the Pacific, part of the Palau islands in Micronesia. It lies about 700km north of West Papua, a similar distance east-southeast of the Philippines (or 2000km north of the north of Australia and 3000km south of the southern tip of Japan) - specifically, at 5° 19′ 28″ N, 132° 13′ 16″ E
It's hard to get to - the usual method involves a 24 trip on a boat from Palau island (which is fairly involved to reach in the first place)
So why's it your domain name?
I first encountered Sonsorol in a strange piece of utopian fiction called "Visit Port Watson!" way back when I was a teenager. The combination of utopian freedom and Pacific island isolation stuck in my mind so that, when I needed a name for my web presence, that was the name that came to me. A combination of a nice idea (that's probably impractical) and something weirdly separated from day-to-day life? Seems totally apropriate!
Visit Port Watson is not my text: I read it in a collection called Semiotest(e) SF (1989, ISBN 1-873176-81-3) and even they seemed vague about its origin. I guess they own the copyright: I reproduce it here only for reference (as the Semiotext(e) SF book seems very out of print)
Page by: Niall H, 2023