Terraforming in popular culture

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Terraforming has been well-represented in popular culture, usually in the form of science fiction.^[1] Author Jack Williamson is credited with inventing and popularizing the term "terraform". In July 1942, under the pseudonym Will Stewart, Williamson published a science fiction novella entitled "Collision Orbit" in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine. The series was later published as two novels, Seetee Shock (1949) and Seeetee Ship (1951).^[2] American geographer Richard Cathcart successfully lobbied for formal recognition of the verb "to terraform", and it was first included in the fourth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary in 1993.^[3]

Contents 1 Literature 1.1 Terraforming of fictional planets in literature 2 Television and film 3 Games 4 Notes 5 References

[edit] Literature

Date	Title	Author	Planet	Notes
1927	The Last Judgment"	J. B. S. Haldane	Venus	An essay that proposes how life on Earth might end and speculates on the evolution of humanity, space exploration and colonization, and adaptation to new environments. Venus is proposed as a new home.[4]
1930	Last and First Men	Olaf Stapledon	Venus	Following up where Haldane left off, Stapledon's future history provides the first example in fiction in which Venus is modified, after a long and destructive war with the original inhabitants.[5] Early fictional accounts of the process are frequently handicapped by the inaccurate contemporary knowledge of the actual conditions, as in Stapledon's example, which has Venus covered in oceans.
1950	Farmer in the Sky	Robert A. Heinlein	Ganymede	A family emigrates from Earth to the Jovian moon Ganymede, which is being terraformed. Farmer in the Sky is a historically significant novel in relation to terraforming in popular culture, as it was one of the first to take the subject more seriously than simple fantasy, portraying terraforming with scientific and mathematical considerations.[6]
1951	The Sands of Mars	Arthur C. Clarke	Mars	First instance of Martian terraforming. However, Clarke uses questionable methods for terraforming the planet, such as generating heat by igniting Phobos into a second sun, and growing plants that break down the Martian sands in order to release oxygen.[7]
1952	The Martian Way	Isaac Asimov	Mars	Terraforming of Mars using ice from Saturn's rings.[8]
1954	The Big Rain	Poul Anderson	Venus	Terraforming Venus. Anderson considers the great time scale inherent in planetary engineering and its effects upon society. Later, the title ("big rain") became associated with scientific terraforming models. [7]
1958	The Snows of Ganymede	Poul Anderson	Ganymede	Terraforming of Ganymede[8]
1969	Isle of the Dead	Roger Zelazny	Illyria	Francis Sandow is the last surviving human born in the 20th century who becomes a "worldscaper" - a terraformer with godlike powers.[8]
1984	Greening of Mars	James Lovelock Michael Allaby	Mars	One of the most influential science fiction novels on the actual science of terraforming. The novel explores the formation and evolution of planets, the origin of life, and Earth's biosphere. Spacecraft are illustrated in a realistic manner, and terraforming models in the book foreshadowed future debates regarding the goals of terraforming.[9]
1986-1988	Venus of Dreams Venus of Shadows	Pamela Sargent	Venus	Terraforming of Venus.[8]
1992-1999	Mars Trilogy	Kim Stanley Robinson	Mars	Three novels (plus one collection of short stories) provide a lengthy description of terraforming Mars spanning centuries. The novels represent contemporary scientific and philosophical developments in the field.[7]

[edit] Terraforming of fictional planets in literature

• H. G. Wells alludes to what today might be called xeno-terraforming - alien life altering Earth for their own benefit - in his 1898 novel The War of the Worlds. When the Martians arrive they bring with them a red weed that spreads and (temporarily) overpowers terrestrial vegetation.

• Terraforming is one of the basic concepts around which Frank Herbert's Dune novels are based: the Fremen's obsession with converting the desert-world Arrakis to earthlike conditions supplies the fugitive Paul Atreides with a ready-made army of followers (In later books, the focus shifts to those trying to "arrakisform" earthlike planets to support the giant sandworms and produce their desired 'spice' secretion). The Imperium's capital world Kaitain has all its weather controlled by satellites. Pardot Kynes, the Planetary Ecologist from Arrakis visited the world, and commented that the nature of the control meant it would eventually bring about disaster, which is why Arrakis should be terraformed through more natural processes.

• Liz Williams' novel The Ghost Sister offers a critique of terraforming. The ruling elite of Irie St Syre, the Gaian priestesses, believe that humanity has a right to adapt the climate and biosphere of planets to its own needs. They send out emissaries to a lost colony, Monde d'Isle, who have adapted humanity to their planet, not the other way around.

• Building Harlequin's Moon, by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper, shows the creation of a substantial moon by smashing several smaller moons together, and the very lengthy process of terraforming it over 60,000 years.

[edit] Television and film

Date	Title	Country	Notes	IMDB
1982	Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan	USA	Project Genesis, a device for rapidly terraforming worlds to make them suitable for settlement and food production is introduced. At the end of the film, a Genesis Device is detonated in the Mutara nebula. This results in the creation of a main sequence star and a habitable planet known as the Genesis Planet.	[1]
1984	Star Trek III: The Search for Spock	USA	Spock's body has been resurrected by the terraforming device on the Genesis Planet, created at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Due to unstable "proto-matter" used in the terraforming process, the planet's evolution is accelerated, leading to the eventual premature destruction of the Genesis Planet. The nine-disc Star Trek: The Motion Picture Collection contains a director's cut of Star Trek III which has an extra featurette on the "real-science applications of terraforming".[10]	[2]
1988	Star Trek: The Next Generation: Home Soil	USA	USS Enterprise is instructed by the Federation to check on the terraforming colony on Velara III. However, the "lifeless" planet already has an inorganic, yet intelligent alien life living below the surface.	[3]
1990	Total Recall	USA	Aliens have built a terraforming device on Mars, which when turned on, fills the atmosphere with oxygen, allowing humans to live on the surface.[8] Total Recall was one of the first films to portray terraforming on Mars, however it was criticized for its scientific inaccuracy.[11]	[4]
1990	The Arrival (film)	USA	Aliens have built multiple terraforming facilities on Earth, disguised as power plants, causing global warming by pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. They plan to alter the Earth to match their own ecological needs.	[5]
2000	Stargate SG-1: Scorched Earth	USA, Canada	Episode centers around an attempt by an extinct alien culture to repopulate an already inhabited planet using terraforming techniques.	[6]
2002–03 and 2005	Firefly (TV series) and film sequel Serenity	various	The original planet Earth (known in the series as "Earth-That-Was") "got used up," forcing most or all of humanity to find a new star system. In the new system, they terraformed - and apparently are still terraforming - many planets and moons. Each one has been terraformed with varying degrees of success; the inner planets boast a lush climate while the outer edges of the large solar system are populated by desolate, dry moons reminiscent of the Wild West, or can be, as in the case of St. Alban's (featured in the episode The Message), bitterly cold. The movie goes one step further by actually showing what terraforming might look like, as well as stating that the process took decades. The series takes place in the early 26th century. Possibly of note is a mention in an early Firefly episode ("The Train Job") of "each [terraformed moon or planet] ha[ving] its... quirks," including environmentally-triggered diseases such as Bodin's Malady.	[7]]
1998-1999	Cowboy Bebop	Japan, USA, Canada, Europe, United Kingdom	Many episodes take place on numerous terraformed worlds including Venus, Mars, Ganymede, Io, Callisto, and Titan. While terraforming is ubiquitous, it is depicted as having varying scales, effects, and degrees of success on a case by case basis, sometimes spectacularly so in the case of Ganymede and Venus.	[8]

[edit] Games

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• in Master of Orion 2 a terraforming process can be performed on a planet a number of times until it has become gaia, increases the food production of farmers on the planet each time.

• In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, one can terraform the terrain to suit one's resource gathering and movement-enhancing needs. Alpha Centauri offers the player the choice to treat the planet's native life as allies or enemies.

• The Combine Empire in the popular PC game Half-Life 2 seems to be terraforming the Earth for new inhabitants. Examples of this include the draining of the oceans (evidence of a receding shoreline can be seen near the coast) and depletion of natural resources. In addition, the combine creates a "Suppression Field" which prevents humans from reproducing.

• In the X Computer Game Series, Earth builds a race of Terraformer ships which start to build colonies on uninhabited planets throughout the X Universe. These robotic machines then turn on their owners due to a programming error and wage a war against them, destroying the Terran colonies and attacking Earth itself. They now exist as the Xenon.

• In the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game, a card known as 'Terraforming' exists, which allows a player to search his deck for a Field Spell Card and place it in his or her hand.

• In Spore, one of the later aspects to the game is the ability to terraform alien planets

• In Crysis, the aliens that land on the Earth by a meteor, which is actually an alien ship, begin forming an ice sphere around the island they landed on, affecting weather patterns and ultimately making Earth more habitable for them.

• In the game Resistance: Fall of Man, the Chimera alter the Earth's weather, making it snow in London in July, because they thrive in cold weather.

• In Doom 3 the player can watch a company demonstration on a TV explaining how the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) is researching and planning to terraform Mars.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References