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Terraform: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|'''Fry:''' I'm impressed. In my time we had no idea Mars had a university.<br />
'''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.<br />
'''Leela:''' They planted traditional college foliage. [[Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick|Ivy... trees... hemp...]] soon the whole planet was terraformed!|'''[[Futurama]]''', ''Mars University''}}
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 40000|at least one]] setting actively proselytizes, at gunpoint!)
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Harder scifi settings can construct entire books about the sciences and engineering involved, not to mention the political and social effort these huge undertakings would entail.
We would also like to draw your attention to a little bit of verbal trickery in the first sentence: "human-unfriendly environment". This is not the same as uninhabitable, with acid rains, lead-melting temperatures, or hard vacuum. Sometimes, a planet is plenty alive... sometimes, ''too alive'', with [[Man
More recently, some shows turn this around by showcasing how terraforming an already-living world can be ecologically disastrous, or ethically questionable, [[Hostile Terraforming|even weaponized]]. Or just plain pisses off the [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens|near omnipotent residents]]. Some works even turn the concept inside-out, showing how aliens arrive on Earth and mess the ecology up so badly that the planet becomes barely habitable, if at all, for humans (any [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|similarities]] to [[Global Warming]] are [[Sarcasm Mode|entirely coincidental]]); this is sometimes termed xenoforming or un-terraforming.
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Compare the [[Genesis Effect]], for when an entire planet is actually created instead of just made livable.
{{examples
== Anime and Manga ==
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== Comic Books ==
* In the [[Wildstorm]] universe, it's eventually revealed that Earth was in fact terraformed by technology created by the ancestors of the Kherubim, who were far more [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens|Sufficiently Advanced]] than even the present-day Kherans were aware. This explains in part why humans and Kherans can [[Half
* But in ''[[The Authority]]'', another [[Wildstorm]] series, a totally different explanation was given at the end of Warren Ellis's run (not surprisingly, since it's Warren "[[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made On Drugs?]]" Ellis). Here the Earth was placed in its proper orbit by what is, essentially, God: a pyramidal being the size of our moon with four thousand hearts and pores the size of Staten Island. God even placed some "watch spores" on the planet to make sure everything stayed perfect, then went off to wander the universe for a bit. In the meantime, a big chunk of something hit the Earth, then started orbiting, becoming our moon. By sheer chance, the watch spores were among the matter blown off by the impact. This tilted Earth's axis, altered the atmosphere, and eventually led to the development of life as we know it today. God eventually comes back to discover that its vacation home has suddenly developed a totally poisonous (to it) atmosphere and grown a six-billion-strong infestation. In order to return the planet to its "proper" state, God drops some disgusting organic machinery into the African veldt that begins restoring the original atmosphere. So it's not so much terraforming as ''un''-terraforming.
** The Engineer even tries to come up with a term for it:
{{quote| '''Engineer:''' What would you call that? Un-terraforming? Monsterforming? Disgusting stuff. Turdscaping.}}
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* The major plot element of the [[New Jedi Order]]. Picture a cross between [[Dragon Ball (Manga)|Super Saiyajin]] and [[Star Trek Voyager (TV)|species 8472]].
* ''Cthulhu's Reign'', edited by Darrell Schweitzer, is a [[Cthulhu Mythos]] anthology of short stories on what <s>life</s> existence on Earth would be like <s>if</s> when the Old Ones return. There are several references to the [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch Abominations]] 'terra-deforming' the Earth so it's more suited to themselves.
* In one [[Arthur C. Clarke (Creator)]] novel Mars is being terraformed by selection and spread of oxygen-generating plants native to Mars, as well as by turning Deimos into a coninuous thermonuclear explosion, effectively providing the planet more sunlight than the Earth gets for a hundred years.
* In ''[[Helm]]'', Epsilon Erdani II -- known to its settlers as Agatsu.
* In part three of Alexander Kazantsev's ''Destruction of Faena'', Mars' surface is made inhabitable by bombarding it with rockets made of ice, which melts, creating the first ocean.
* ''Savior'' by [[Robert Reed]] - A rapidly failing alien starship uses a massive laser cannon to melt the ice bergs to try and make the Earth habitable for them. Naturally, this [[Nuke
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** It turns out this isn't terraforming, it's just a massive mining operation. Tiberium sucks up all resources, then the Scrin collect the Tiberium and go home. They wouldn't have shown up yet, but Kane tricked them into arriving early.
** Its also an effective [[Depopulation Bomb]]. Tiberium devastates the environment and disrupts ecosystems, causing widespread famine and sickness. At the same time, it offers the native population plentiful resources to manufacture equipment and weaponry. Intense social pressures + massive availability of material to construct weapons = total implosion of the local population and devastating wars that crush the remainder of civilization. Generally, by the time the Scrin arrive, the locals have wiped themselves out or been killed off by the transformation of their planet.
* ''[[Sid
* ''[[Freelancer]]'' has no terraformed planets, but instead has ''terraforming'' planets like California Minor. It also shows a little bit of the process with Planetform, Inc., the company that handles terraforming operations, and by letting you trade stuff like terraforming gases, alien organisms that eat carbon dioxide and release oxygen, and H-Fuel to power these operations. The game also features the Gaians, a rebel faction of [[Well
** Not that all these efforts are successful. A Planetform NPC in Bretonia mentions that the efforts to terraform a planet in Bretonian borders has had mixed results. Although habitable, the planet is mentioned to be suffering from bouts of extreme weather and the NPC mentions it ''will'' revert to its original state as soon as Planetform packs up and leaves.
* Inverted in [[Half Life|Half-Life 2]] when the invading aliens, the Combine, aim to strip the planet of its atmosphere and water leaving it desolate and uninhabitable. An effective reverse terraform.
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* The third game in the ''UFO'' series, ''Afterlight'' has this as much of the point. Humans, forced off of Earth, travel to Mars to create another habitable planet. Terraforming technology very slowly changes the red planet to a blue and green planet in real-time, and tactical combat maps change from red and deadly to green and (relatively) safe. In fact, if you fail to start the terraformation process shortly after the beginning of the game, the environmental hostility will quickly go out of control, and your space suits will not protect you. The terraformation is also shown in "stages", with the dead, red planet as stage 1, small "plant" organisms and cacti as stage 2, and the appearance of water and more complex organisms as stage 3.
* Terraforming Mars is mentioned in ''[[Doom]] 3.'' You have to go outside a few times, [[Oxygen Meter|and you can last only a few minutes]].
* In the first two ''[[Master of Orion (Video Game)|Master of Orion]]'' games, terraforming goes on for much of the game. Together with the tech for planetary gravity generators, radiation shields, enriching biospheres and ''installing'' biospheres, it's possible to transform an empire into a verdant garden where previously inhospitable planets have between three and fifteen times their original population limits. In the second game it's then possible to fashion asteroid belts and gas giants into new planets and terraform them as well. It's great fun for [[
** Interestingly, despite the ability to take a gas giant, squeeze it into a rock, and turn that rock into a lush world, you can't de-toxify a planet. Possibly, an oversight on the part of the creators. The only alternative is to [[Earthshattering Kaboom|destroy the planet]] with a [[Wave Motion Gun|Stellar Converter]] and then rebuild it into a world of your liking.
* ''[[Galactic Civilizations]] 2'' gave various levels of terraforming, which would each make a planet slightly more habitable. In the later expansions, planets with extreme conditions were introduced which required special technology to be researched even to colonize.
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** Fallout 3 featured one side-quest involving a mutated tree and it's offspring which are (thankfully) non-hostile and thriving in the wasteland. A small cult has sprung up around worshipping this tree and they believe it may eventually ''re''-terraform the entire planet (or at least the DC area) into a state more capable of sustaining life and human populations.
* ''Star Wars: The Gungan Frontier'' has the player setting up a complete ecosystem on one of Naboo's moons so the Gungans can colonize it.
* In ''[[Jeff
* ''[[Champions Online (Video Game)|Champions Online]]'' features as a mid-level quest chain fights against the froglike Gadroon who are seeking to Xenoform Earth into a much warmer, swampier habitat -- starting in the middle of Canada.
* ''[[Lost Planet]]'', though the original plan for making E.D.N. III hospitable would have fried the Akrids and more importantly the colonists already on the planet.
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