Dyson spheres in popular culture

This is a listing of the use of the Dyson sphere concept in popular fiction. For a discussion of the general concept and its history, see the main article.

In science fiction some additional fictional technologies are described to enhance convenience and possibilities. One of them is the use of "gravity generators" to bind an atmosphere to the interior surface of the sphere.

Variants in sizes are common, ranging from planetary spheres to galactic spheres.

Most fictional works depict the Dyson shell variant. Unless otherwise noted, that is the type of Dyson sphere in the instances below.

1 Television
2 Movies
3 Literature
4 Comics
5 Games
6 Audio
7 Websites
8 See also
9 References

Television

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Relics" - The crew of the USS Enterprise-D happens upon a full Dyson sphere when its gravitational fluctuations distort their warp field and bring them to a stop. Being further advanced than the Federation, the sphere's automatic systems pulled the ship through a door-equipped portal into the structure, revealing the majority of the shell inside was covered with habitable regions, including weather. Lieutenant Commander Data stated that the inside surface area was equal to "250 million class-M worlds." As the diameter of the sphere is given as being 200 million kilometers or two thirds the Earth's orbit around the sun this would indicate that the surface area of one "M-class world" is in fact equivalent to the Earth's surface area. About "Relics", Dyson said: "Actually it was sort of fun to watch it. It's all nonsense, but it's quite a good piece of cinema."^[1]
Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda — the episodes "Its Hour Come Round At Last" and "The Widening Gyre" — The Magog Worldship. Several planetary objects with cave systems, physically locked in close proximity to a small sun, somewhat like the Dyson net variant of the Dyson sphere.
In Crest of the Stars, the capital of the Humankind Empire Abh, Lakfakale, contains and is likely powered by a Dyson Swarm.
The Mighty Orbots Shadow Star employed by Umbra and its minions was depicted very much as transitional form of a solid shelled Dyson Sphere, though it was shown as having gaps and voids through which some measure of light escaped into outer space. It appeared to be a large planet with some parts of its surface torn away and others still connected in a rough analog Earth's own continental plates.
The Mobile Suit Gundam 00 anime series feature a Dyson Ring-like megastructure around Earth that diverts from the concept by being anchored to the Earth's surface via three orbital elevators located around the Equator in South America, Africa and South-East Asia. There are two rings in the structure: the smaller LEO ring that appears to be structural support for the orbital elevators and a larger MEO ring filled to the brim with large, circular solar panels protected from space debris by an energy field of some kind. Both rings are connected to the orbital elevators by large space stations utilizing centrifugal force for artificial gravity. It is mentioned in-series that the nearly century-long construction was motivated by the energy crisis sparked due to the depletion of fossil fuels; the upper orbital ring's solar power plant functions as an inexhaustible energy source. The orbital elevators only function as structural supports; energy transmissions are performed with microwave radiation directed at the planetary surface. Interestingly, the Earth's gravitational pull on the lower orbital ring is still enough to present a falling hazard: personnel performing EVA are required to stay away from the ring's edge without umbilical cables.

Movies

Dyson Spheres played a prominent role in the 2008 remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" starring Keanu Reaves. They were not only sources of energy and light, but were also used as transports and "arks" for all the lifeforms on Earth.

Literature

Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon. The novel which inspired Freeman Dyson to propose the concept of the Dyson sphere - he has suggested that "Stapledon sphere" would be a more accurate term for the technology.^[2]
The Star Trek novel The Starless World by Gordon Eklund.
The Star Trek: The Next Generation novel Dyson Sphere by George Zebrowski, Charles R. Pellegrino. A follow-up to "Relics".
The novels Orbitsville, Orbitsville Departure, and Orbitsville Judgement by Bob Shaw.
The Ringworld series of novels by Larry Niven feature a Dyson Ring which requires an entire orbit.
The "Journal Entries" from Elf Sternberg use a ringworld as their home called Pendor.
The novel Spinneret by Timothy Zahn (Dyson net).
The novel The World Is Round by Tony Rothman. Inhabited on the outside, central body is a black hole.
Two novels by Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson — These are notable in that the sphere in these novels is inhabited on the outside, producing an unusual environment with both very low gravity and an atmosphere hundreds of miles deep. Light is provided by clouds of bioluminescent organisms which feed on heat radiating from the "ground".
- Farthest Star (1975)
- Wall Around a Star (1983)
The Commonwealth Saga (2002–2005) and Void Trilogy (2007–2010) by Peter F. Hamilton. In Pandora's Star, the sudden disappearance of two separate star systems separated by several light-years, called the Dyson Pair, prompts the building of a faster than light starship, Second Chance, to uncover reason behind the disappearance. It is heavily theorised by characters that both stars have been enclosed in Dyson Spheres. However, upon arrival, the Second Chance discovers that both systems have instead been sealed behind immense forcefields to imprison a hostile alien lifeform, not physical shells. In The Evolutionary Void the Sol system (including Earth) is entrapped behind a similar forcefield, which was derived from the Dyson Pair technology.
The novel Across a Billion Years by Robert Silverberg.
The novel The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter.
The novel The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons, featuring a partly completed sphere, being grown using advanced biotechnology.
The short story Star Light, Star Bright by Robert J. Sawyer.
The novel Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer.
The Doctor Who New Adventures novel The Also People by Ben Aaronovitch.
The novel Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks; several Spheres mentioned only in passing as casualties of the Idiran-Culture War.
The novel House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds; composed of thousands of individual rings surrounding stars.
The novel Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds; surrounds a single planet only.
The novel Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds (Passing reference).
The novel Russian Spring by Norman Spinrad. (Brief mention in a news blurb)
The novel Vacuum Flowers by Michael Swanwick.
The Cageworld novels Search for the Sun!, The Lost Worlds of Cronus, The Tyrant of Hades, and Star-Search by Colin Kapp. Features concentric nested Dyson shells built from collected interstellar matter, also inhabited on their outer surfaces.
The novel Illegal Aliens by Nick Pollotta and Phil Foglio mentions two Dyson shells. The first, simply called "Big", is the headquarters of a galactic federation. The second is unnamed and apparently consists of nothing but nested Dyson shells built by an insane race to cope with their sun getting smaller.
The novel The Singers of Time by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson visits a parallel universe totally covered in Dyson shells, where only the farthest quasars are visible (already covered, but the light from them is still traveling). They were constructed by a formerly biological race that slowly converted their bodies to cyborgs and then full robots, the only logical evolution being the creation of a Type V or VI civilization.
The novel Heaven's Reach by David Brin explains a more advanced (and more fragile) form of the Dyson sphere known as a Criswell Structure. This type of sphere utilizes fractal geometry to further maximize the light capturing inner surface as well as increase natural stability. Billions of these have been placed around slow burning red stars for extended periods of habitation by ancient life-forms awaiting transcendence to a higher form of life.
The novel Polity Agent by Neal Asher He describes under 'The Cassius project' a Dyson sphere under construction.
The short story Hold Until Relieved, by William H. Keith, Jr. Part of Keith Laumer's Bolo universe. Galactic core surrounded by Dyson shell.
The novel "Federation World", by James White, partially set in a terraced Dyson sphere, which rotates to provide internal centrifugal force as a substitute for gravity. Since the terraces have different radii of rotation, alien species native to multiple gravity levels can be accommodated.
In the novel Accelerando by Charles Stross, a Dyson swarm (possibly a Dyson bubble) of computronium forms a massive matrioshka brain around the sun providing virtual space for trillions of uploaded human minds and corporate AI.
At the conclusion of the novel Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, the majority of the human survivors travel through a rift in slipspace to reach a habitat built by the ancient Forerunners that is separated from normal space and guarded by a massive latticework of automated drones. This habitat is actually a compressed Dyson Sphere, and is to serve as an effective bomb shelter from the activation of the Halo Array.
The technology is alluded to in the short story The Last Question by Isaac Asimov.
The novel Old Man's War by John Scalzi, an enemy alien race that is far more advanced than the Human civilization has a Dyson Sphere around their sun powering a shield around their home world.
Though it never refers to it by name, the novel Elven Star, volume 2 of the Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman features a Dyson Sphere featuring 4 suns in its center.
The novels The Ring of Charon and The Shattered Sphere by Roger MacBride Allen feature a Dyson Sphere and the space surrounding it.
The novels The Book of the Long Sun saga by Gene Wolfe features a large population of people living in a massive Dyson Sphere like spaceship called the Whorl, with a long sun in the centre.
The novel Debatable Space by Philip Palmer briefly mentions a Dyson Swarm of habitats around Sol known as the Dyson Jewels.
In the fantasy series The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, the world of Pryan resembles a Dyson Sphere.
The novel The Architects of Hyperspace by Thomas R. McDonough features an abandoned space station which is formed of concentric rings orbiting a star near the center of the universe.
The novel Second Genesis by Donald Moffitt is largely set on one disc of a Dyson Swarm composed of massive orbital aligned discs whose shadows overlap to completely surround a star, to act as energy-collectors for an interstellar communicator.
The novel The Berserker Throne and the related short story Some Events at the Templar Radiant by Fred Saberhagen. The fortress "Templar Radiant" is a stone sphere constructed around a starlike source of inverse gravity.
The novel Hex by Allen Steele

Comics

The sci-fi webcomic Schlock Mercenary by Howard Tayler features an alien race known as the F'Sherl-Ganni, who live in habitats hanging from the interior surfaces of Dyson Bubbles they call Buuthandi (an abbreviation of the F'Sherl-Ganni phrase "Buut go buut-buut nnaa-nnaa cho handi", which translates to "This was expensive to build", or more literally as "Expensive and expensive-expensive [expletive] we built").^[3] They use these Dyson bubbles to collect power with which to operate a galaxy-wide network of transportation wormholes.
The manga BLAME! by Tsutomu Nihei. In the art book, BLAME! And So On it is revealed by the artist that the "city" the characters keep referring to and are currently wandering in is actually a Dyson Sphere extending to the orbit of Jupiter.
In the Marvel comic series New Mutants (original series) the rock star Lila Cheney, a mutant with the power to teleport across interstellar distances, had a home on an abandoned Dyson Sphere.
In the Marvel comic series Guardians of the Galaxy the Guardians teleport to a Dyson sphere.
Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, Jupiter, a human colony, was surrounded by incomplete sphere.
The webcomic xkcd by Randall Munroe references a Dyson Sphere in it's mouseover text for its November 9th, 2011 comic: Occulting Telescope.

Games

The PlayStation 2 game Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne by Atlus takes place in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo that's been ripped from the surface of the Earth and folded in upon itself around a nucleus called "Kagutsuchi" to form what is essentially a Dyson sphere.
The PlayStation 2 game Code Age Commanders takes place in an "intraglobular world", a fictional hollow world similar to a Dyson sphere, with people living on its internal surface.
The PC game Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Final Unity by Spectrum Holobyte features a Dyson Sphere in its endgame, containing 'The Unity Device' (the players goal).
The PC game Freelancer by Microsoft Game Studios shows a Dyson Sphere (specifically, a Dyson Shell) in the last system visited in the game campaign. It was constructed by either the highly advanced "Dom'Kavash" civilization, or their servant race the "Nomads".
The PC game Homeworld by Relic Entertainment contains what appears to be a half completed Dyson Sphere in Mission 13, The Karos Graveyard. It later turns out to be the site of a massive ship battle, where the vessels were never salvaged. Homeworld 2 later revealed the large bits of wreckage viewed in the distance to be from a massive ship that broke apart many years ago.
The epilogue of the PC game Mission Critical by Legend Entertainment. Humans created the artificial electronic life-forms (ELFs) and after decades of research they will both construct such a sphere; the humans will live inside and the ELFs outside.
The PBeM Game Quadrant Delta
In the Warhammer 40,000 fictional universe, The Outsider, a C'tan, is said to inhabit a Dyson sphere, having been trapped inside it by The Laughing God of the Eldar, Cegorach.
In the AT-43 fictional universe, the Therians plan to enclose all stars inside Dyson spheres. The first released campaign, Operation Damocles, takes place on a mobile, solid Dyson sphere.
The PC game Space Empires IV and Space Empires V by Malfador Machinations allows the construction and colonization of Dyson spheres (called "sphereworlds")
The PC game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri by Firaxis Games refers to a Dyson Sphere in one of the game endings.
The PC & Xbox 360 game Prey by Human Head Studios (after a short introductory level in a bar) takes place on a Dyson Sphere (more specifically it is a Dyson Net constructed of organic and technological matter).
The internet game Flash Trek 2: Broken Mirror contains a Dyson sphere in the system beyond the Bajoran wormhole
In the PC game Chronomaster, the final pocket universe to be explored is encapsulated entirely by a Dyson sphere
The Xbox 360 strategy game Halo Wars set in the Halo series sees the latter half of its campaign take place on and inside a planetary sized Dyson Shell with a small artificial sun in the center. This so-called Shield World was meant to protect the Forerunners and their technology from The Flood, and the Forerunners or another life form from the Halo Array's firing. The entire inside of the shell is habitable and thus must have some sort of artificial gravity system to keep everything from floating off the surface. Also, in the Halo series, Shield Worlds are Micro-Dyson Spheres often protected by a planet-sized Dyson Swarm of sentries called Sentinels, whereas the Shield World itself will protect its inhabitors from the superweapon's firing, and the Sentinels will protect the Micro-Dyson Sphere from being destroyed by means of weapons or asteroids and such, as is the case with the Shield World called "Onyx" in the book by Eric Nylund "Halo: Ghosts of Onyx". Albeit the Micro-Dyson Sphere in question is said to be externally "only a few meters in diameter", while internally is approximately the size of Earth's orbit around our sun, with a small artificial star.
In the PC/Xbox 360 game Mass Effect 2, the Geth character "Legion" (a sentient artificial intelligence) mentions the Dyson Sphere as the closest analogue to the mega structure its species is currently working.
In the Nintendo DS video game "Infinite Space", the "Overlords" - a transcendent race responsible for the destruction and rebirth of universes - use a Dyson sphere attached to the Sun to power the "True Void Gate" with which they access and manipulate the current universe.
The Face book Game Galaxy Legion features Dyson Spheres as one of the discoverable and colonizable types in the galaxy, although they are extremely rare.
In the role-playing game Final Fantasy XIII, the floating utopia of Cocoon is a Dyson Sphere. Cocoon surrounds an artificial sun, which is the fal'Cie Phoenix.

Audio

BBV Pocket Universe audio episode "The Search" (set in the Doctor Who universe) features a Dyson Sphere encountered by robot dog K-9 and his Mistress.

Websites

The collaborative worldbuilding website Orion's Arm describes several fictional planetary systems that incorporate Dyson Swarms, which orbit the local star and collect energy to use for life support, industry and computation.^[4]