Terraform: Difference between revisions

{{quote|'''Fry:''' I'm impressed. In my time we had no idea Mars had a university.

'''Professor Farnsworth:''' That's because then Mars was a uninhabitable wasteland, much like [[Place Worse Than Death|Utah]]. But unlike Utah, Mars was eventually made livable when the university was founded in 2636.

 

A [[Speculative Fiction]] staple, the act of turning an otherwise human-unfriendly environment into an Earth-like, or "Terra-formed" planet. Narratively, this is done to give the cast a place to go outside the ship (off Earth) that won't require them dressing in [[Space Clothes]] constantly. Within a given setting, it's often done to showcase humanity's drive to explore and colonize new places for the famed trifecta of God, Gold and Glory. (Hey, [[Warhammer 40,000|at least one]] setting actively proselytizes, at gunpoint!)

** In Manticore's case it's stated that the only terraforming that was needed was the introduction of a few Terran plants, and that the unusual compatibility of the native life allowed a hybrid plague to develop.

*** And it's probably no coincidence that the most populous planet in the Manticore system is the one that doesn't have high gravity or turbulent storms.

* Like the Magratheans two entries above, [[Roger Zelazny]]'s character Frank Sandow in ''Isle of the Dead'' and ''To Die in Italbar'' made a business of building planets, to order, or to his own design. Near the end of the first book, he has a vision of every planet he's built. After seventeen names, it trails off with "and so on." (He's over twelve centuries old; he's had time.)

* In [[Robert Charles Wilson]]'s ''[[Spin]]'', when the Earth is placed under a membrane that slows down time (which means that for the people of Earth the Sun will expand in a few decades), humans successfully terraform Mars; a whole civilisation appears there within a few years (for those on Earth)/a few millennia (for the people of Mars - humans who have evolved slightly differently.)

* In ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' Mars, Venus, Europa, and Luna (Earth's moon) have all been terraformed.

** This becomes a plot point when they visit a planet which hasn't introduced many oceanic species because its economy is based on tourism and ocean resorts. There are a few deaths which look like shark attacks, and the first suggestion offered by a character is that someone made a robotic shark with a robotic jaw to murder people.

* In ''[[The Cyantian Chronicles|Campus Safari]]'' the Cyantians are terraforming Mars and Venus as gifts for humanity when they make [[First Contact]]. Their colony on Mars doubles as a [[Wacky College]].

* In ''[[Homestuck]]'', {{spoiler|[[Beethoven Was an Alien Spy|Betty Crocker]] }} tries making Earth more like her homeworld Alternia, introducing Alternian life and flooding the planet.