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Landfill Beyond the Stars: Difference between revisions
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{{examples}}
== Anime
* An episode of the [[Kirby]] [[Kirby: Right Back at Ya!|anime]] involved aliens trying to turn Popstar into one of these, as part of Dedede paying off his debts. Key word: Trying.
* The ironically named Shangri-La colony from ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ|Gundam ZZ]]'' is mostly used as a scrapyard, collecting all the wreckage from the space wars that have been raging intermittently for the past 9 years. [[Joisey|Unsurprisingly it's mostly populated by devil-may-care teens who dream of running away to a better world & lots of people with names ending in vowels.]]
* In the [[Animesque|American manga]] ''EV,'' the robotic alien Evie encounters seems to come from a world like this—specifically, a world [[Shout-Out|based on]] Junkion from ''The [[Transformers]].''▼
* An episode of ''[[Doraemon]]'' involves how littering is wrong. The gang travel to an Earth-like planet where littering is [[Serious Business]]. Gian and Suneo got caught littering and sent work at a disposal site where all garbage is compressed into giant balls and illegally launched into orbit.
== Comic Books ==
▲* In the [[Animesque|American manga]] ''EV,'' the robotic alien Evie encounters seems to come from a world like this—specifically, a world [[Shout-Out|based on]] Junkion from ''The [[Transformers]].''
== Film ==
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* ''Garbage World'' by Charles Pratt. An asteroid is used as the dumping ground for the trash of the pleasure asteroids.
* In the ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' novelizations, the Garbage World on which Lister ended up stranded turned out to be {{spoiler|[[Planet of the Apes Ending|Earth]], after being voted such in a [[Eurovision Song Contest]] vote}}.
* In the "Shatnerverse" corner of ''[[Star Trek]]''{{'}}s [[Expanded Universe]], a resurrected Kirk gets dumped onto a Borg planet used as a holding station for refuse before it's recycled. This is partially explained in that the Borg canonically have easy interstellar "transwarp", but it's still a Class-M planet (inhabited, even) when any random location in space would do, and far less efficient than just recycling on-site.▼
▲== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[Firefly]]'':
** The [[Expanded Universe]] has Beylix, essentially a giant storage yard for the United Reclamation company.
** Also, to some degree, Boros.
* The '70s sci-fi spoof ''[[Quark]]'' was set on an interstellar garbage truck, presumably headed to one of these planets.
▲* In the "Shatnerverse" corner of [[Star Trek]]'s [[Expanded Universe]], a resurrected Kirk gets dumped onto a Borg planet used as a holding station for refuse before it's recycled. This is partially explained in that the Borg canonically have easy interstellar "transwarp", but it's still a Class-M planet (inhabited, even) when any random location in space would do, and far less efficient than just recycling on-site.
* In a different version of this trope, the Malon in ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' dump their theta radiation in other regions of space whether or not they're inhabited.
* The setting of a ''[[Lexx]]'' episode. The system's other planets were mutually annihilated by war, leaving a few hundred employees stranded on the landfill planet. [[Hive Queen|It got worse.]]
* Gerry Anderson's ''[[Space: 1999]]'' started with the moon being used as a nuclear waste dump.
== Tabletop Games ==
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** The ''Phase World'' setting has a unique justification: the planet in question is a deliberate social experiment to see what kind of civilization will emerge from such a place. It was set up by a [[Mega Corp]] that operated across three galaxies, and a few dimensions besides, and collected debts that were sometimes measured in ''planets''.
** The Rifts megaverse builder sourcebook also has an entire Landfill dimension. Seems when you can use magic to open Rifts and just dump your garbage it has to all go somewhere.
* The ''[[GURPS]]'' setting of [[Infinite Worlds]] features Empty worlds, parallel Earths where no intelligent life has evolved, and some where no life has evolved at all. The latter are occasionally used as dumping grounds for hazardous waste. Nonetheless, Homeline's Greenpeace is still opposed to the idea.
* Given the sheer scale and variety of environments, it's almost impossible for ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' to NOT have a bunch of these. Interesting twist though: they weren't dedicated trash planets, but rather "hive worlds" that are so overpopulated, overdeveloped and over-mined that they're literally out of obtainable resources, the surface covered in barren rock, polluted (if not boiled-off/siphoned-away) seas and sprawling arcologies that house billions. Many of these worlds subsist on simply scrounging for material in sub-continent-sized piles of industrial refuse, and mass recycling of all water and organic products. Yes, that includes people. The lucky ones that reach this state are able to trade off millions of people a year (or month, or ''week'')) as labor or military in exchange for fresh sustenance, although they of course just squander it away just as quickly.
* In the anthology module ''The Vortex of Madness and Other Planar Perils'' for ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'', there is the demi-plane of Leonis (named after the archmage who discovered it) a huge junkyard of scrap metal and debris. This is a dumping ground for Mechanus, and while natives of that plane deny this is true (claiming the Plane of Ultimate Law is, by nature, flawless and thus can produce no waste or residue) it has been confirmed by the - admittedly few - inhabitants.
* ''[[Planescape]]'': the Trash Heap is a location in the Para Elemental Plane of Ooze where Sigil - and likely other planar cities - dump all their garbage, the reason being that Ooze is already a disgusting, foul place where only madmen would willingly visit, let alone live. Given that Sigil has been a functional city longer than most Prime societies, the place is the size of a mountain, and continually growing. The numerous scavengers who end up here make this one of the most dangerous parts of the plane.
== Video Games ==
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== Real Life ==
* Real World example of the sort of thinking that leads to this trope: the Apollo astronauts jettisoned urine (they said it made a beautiful sight) but were required to store all feces and return it to Earth; apparently the idea of turds in lunar orbit was too much for the mission planners, despite the fact that such matter would quickly desiccate in the cold vacuum.
** It also makes you wonder: if and when space travel becomes significantly cheaper, can we get rid of garbage by [[Hurl It Into the Sun|shooting it into the sun]]? Or better yet, gigantic land-based mass drivers! Space Is Our Landfill!
*** Considering how many bits of old satellites and rockets are drifting around in orbit these days, some might say that's ''already'' the case.
*** Though this will probably be done with trash that forms in space, sooner or later (apart from the low orbits, where it's smarter just to direct them to burn in the atmosphere), it'll always be cheaper to bury your garbage in the ground, or recycle it, than to shoot it up from Earth's gravity well. Not to mention that if something goes wrong, there will be tons of potentially hazardous waste raining from the skies.
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{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Tropes in Space]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
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