Panspermia: Difference between revisions

* The backstory of the [[Lensman]] novels states that all life in Earth's galaxy (and I believe the Second Galaxy as well) came from Arisian spores. Mentor tells at least one Lensman that this is why he's offering the Lens to the Galactic Patrol -- they're "family".

* This appears to be the case in [[Dan Brown]]'s ''[[Deception Point]]''. {{spoiler|It's actually a conspiracy to get NASA back up on its feet.}}

** What's more, he created the Pemalites specifically so that ''they'' would go out and "spread life around the universe".

** Also, several Earth vegetables were apparently imported by crab people during the Cretaceous period.

* [[Larry Niven]] has done this at least twice. In his [[Known Space]] future history, nearly all alien species evolved from food yeast grown to feed the Thrint and their subjects. Then, about 3 million years ago, a species called the Pak colonized the Earth and became ''Homo habilis''.

* One [[The Authority|Authority]] story had the team face off against an alien life-form the size of the moon -- "the closest thing to God" that had "planted" life millions of years ago. Subverted in that life on the planet didn't develop as it should have, leading to, among others, the rise of humanity.

* The Darkness from Michael Grant's ''[[Gone]]'' is an alien virus that was riding a meteorite when it crashed into Earth -- specifically a nuclear plant, which caused it to rapidly mutate and somehow become a mind-devouring god-like being.

* At the end of ''Last and First Men'' the solar system is about to be destroyed by increasing radiation from the sun. The Last Men devote their remaining time to sending out [[Science Marches On|"the germs of life"]] on the solar wind.

* In Sergey Lukyanenko's ''A Lord from Planet Earth'', it is common knowledge among [[Human Aliens]] (no [[Starfish Aliens]]) that life on all of their planers began with intentional panspermia by the mysterious [[Precursors|Seeders]], who also left behind numerous [[Forgotten Technology]] and temples on each planet ({{spoiler|except for Earth}}). What they don't know is that the Seeders are, in fact, {{spoiler|humans from the future, who need an army but do not have the time for a massive breeding program. They send autonomous seeder ships into distant past to spread life and leave behind carefully-selected pieces of technology to accelerate the development of these cultures. They also choose planets in unexplored systems in order to avoid any temporal paradox and ensure that their "children" are unable to get to Earth via conventional means before the time is right}}.

* One of the novels in Mikhail Akhmanov's ''[[The History of the Galaxy]]'' series reveals that biological life in the galaxy (possibly, the Universe) is an unintentional side-effect of an [[Energy Being]]'s attempts to survive. The being was "born" in the magnetic fields of a gas giant but foresaw that its homeworld would eventually die. In order to escape, it created artificial proto-plasmic semi-sentient creatures called Forerunners. They would travel through space and spread the [[Energy Being]] to other compatible gas giants. The Forerunners were themselves mostly energy, but parts of them were organic and composed of rudimentary DNA (how else do you program an organism to do something?). Over billions of years, the Forerunners spread through the galaxy and, possibly, beyond. Some of them died, and their remains ended up on planets, unintentionally starting the process of life. This, of course, raises more questions than it answers, such as how the [[Energy Being]] came to be, and how it was able to create a semi-biological organism.

* ''[[Star Trek]]'' uses the [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]] version to explain all its [[Rubber Forehead Aliens]]--they actually are related. (This still doesn't explain all the Rubber Foreheads that Voyager runs into in the Delta Quadrant...)

** [[Fridge Logic|On the other hand they'd still be about as related as birds and mollusks.]]

* In perhaps its biggest predictive stretch, an episode of ''[[Life After People]]'' proposed that this could happen to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, which is believed to have water oceans. With no humans left to direct it, a deep-space probe crashes there and introduces Earth bacteria to these oceans, which gradually give rise to an entire complex aquatic biosphere.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* ''[[Traveller]]'', to some extent, as a means of explaining why Humans and Earth-Like life is everywhere.

 

 

** And in the end, {{spoiler|it turns out subverted: All the creatures the [[Lizard Folk|dinaurians]] planted died out. Humans and everything else evolved out of Earth's natural life forms after all.}}

* ''[[Spore]]'' uses the proper definition of the theory. That is, alien bacteria hitching a ride on a rock to a different planet. This is the opening animation for the cell stage (the first stage). This was added to avoid answering the always difficult (and for now unanswerable) question of how life actually arose. And also to try to explain why all life in the universe is made of the same handful of parts.

** Though it does have ''some'' native life forms, as evidenced by Balthasar's paleontological studies. While their planet's fossil record goes back millions of years, no evidence of humans or related beings can be found any further back than ten thousand.

* The [[Big Bad]] reveals this during his [[Hannibal Lecture]] at the end of ''[[X-COM]]''.

* The [[Abusive Precursors|H'riak]] in ''[[Alien Legacy]]'' are a violent race whose goal is to seed the galaxy with violet life that attacks anything not related to the H'riak. The Centaurians and the Empiants are the two known examples of their work.

* In both the [[Super Robot Wars Compact|Pact]] and subsequent [[Super Robot Wars Original Generation|OG]]-verses of the ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' metaseries, all life in the universe was actually created by an ancient lost civilization originating on Earth, handily justifying the numerous invading [[Human Aliens]] that appear as antagonists. Strangely, other continuities, such as ''[[Super Robot Wars Judgement]]'' feature Earth life being created by aliens, which they're going to have a hell of a time working into the OG-verse.

 

 

== Western Animation ==