Here’s an email I received this week from Cordwainer Smith artist Corby Waste, reprinted with his permission:

Well, well, well, here’s something REALLY amazing – it seems that the Hubble Space Telescope has taken it’s first picture of a planet orbiting another star. Out of all the stars in the universe it happened to photograph a planet orbiting the fairly well-known star called Fomalhaut.

Who among us already knew that such a planet existed around Fomalhaut? Raise your hand if you know the answer!

The first photos of any extrasolar planet are exciting in their own right.  But it’s mind-boggling if you recall that Cordwainer Smith wrote in “The Dead Lady of Clown Town” about a strange world he called Fomalhaut III.  And now Hubble’s newly discovered actual planet has been named “Fomalhaut b”, eerily similar!

Major Breakthrough: First Photos of Planets Around Other Stars (Space.com)
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/081113-hubble-exoplanet.html
For quick reference concerning Cordwainer’s Fomalhaut III, see:
The Dead Lady of Clown Town – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Lady_of_Clown_Town
I included Fomalhaut II on my 160th Century Worlds Tour weather advisory page, in the form of an animated GIF file:
Travel Advisories & Weather of the Worlds
http://www.fourth-millennium.net/cordwainer-vr/travel-advisories.html
The advisories change after an interval, and Fomalhaut II is one of them.
What are the odds of such a prediction coming true  when the number of stars in the universe in nearly infinite?

I’m only a humble space robot artist but I know a fantastic coincidence when I see one!