Terraform: Difference between revisions

 

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

 

 

Often used to explain why [[All Planets Are Earthlike]].

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-Eating Plant|man-eating plants]], semi- to [[Evolutionary Levels|hyper-evolved]] sentients, and scores of other dangers. A few old sci-fi serials and pulps would have their heroes' effort designed to create a "domestication" of savage planets, much like [[The Western|The American West]] was "tamed" with all the attendant heartache and extinctions.

 

 

As seen in the trope picture, [[The Red Planet|Mars]] is likely to be a popular target for any terraforming operation in both fiction and reality. It has one of the shortest travel distances (second only to Venus), and is solid. Venus is also a popular candidate in fiction, being almost completely similar to Earth in terms of size and gravity, but it's second to Mars because warming something up is a lot easier than cooling it down, and unlike Mars, Venus's slow rotation would have to be dealt with.

* The Genesis Device from ''[[Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan|Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan]]'' turns a nebula into an Earthlike planet. Sadly, the planet tore itself apart within a year. If it had been used on a rocky planet instead of a nebula, the planet probably wouldn't have fallen apart if that terraformed underground location Khan imprisoned Kirk and co. in was any indication.

** In ''[[Star Trek III: The Search For Spock|Star Trek III the Search For Spock]]'', David Marcus admitted that he had used "Proto-matter" ([[Applied Phlebotinum|a highly-unstable element]]) in the design of the Genesis device. Even if Genesis had been aimed at a rocky planet, it would have fallen apart. There was never an explanation for the demonstration cavern.

** It may just be possible that he was referring to it being colonized, not terraformed.

* An inversion in ''The Arrival''. An astronomer discovers that a worldwide rise in carbon dioxide levels and [[Space Whale Aesop|resulting global warming]] is due to aliens seeking to kill off humanity and make Earth more like their planet.

* The [[Trope Namer]] was science fiction writer Jack Williamson, who coined the term in a 1942 novella called "Collision Orbit."

* Kim Stanley Robinson's [[Red Mars Trilogy]] goes into [[Shown Their Work|exhaustive detail]] about Martian terraforming.

* Another reverse-example is David Gerrold's ''[[War Against the Chtorr]]'' novels. Alien creatures are transplanted from their home planet to the Earth to replace our entire ecology.

* [[Isaac Asimov]]'s short story, "Founding Fathers," where a crew of multi-national astronauts crash-lands on an uncharted planet with just enough ammonia in the atmosphere to be unsuitable for human life. There are live plants on the ship, though, and if they can be coaxed to thrive somehow, a tipping point could be reached where the extra oxygen would wipe out the ammonia in a cascade. This is eventually done after a considerable time by burying the deceased humans in the crew into the soil. It is noted that the person who does this will not live to see the transformation finish (the ship's water supply got contaminated), and when this planet is discovered again, there would be no sign that there had ever been ammonia in the atmosphere...

* In one of [[Philip K. Dick]]'s stories, Earth and Titan were in an uneasy peace because of a war that was held because humans terraformed Mars. There were already people of Titan on Mars, but they couldn't breathe oxygen. By the time the humans learned of the Titanians, the terraforming had already begun, and "you can't terraform just part of an atmosphere..."

* ''Riverworld'' is set on a planet terraformed into one big twisting river valley, to maximize the surface area ideal for human habitation.

* The [[Robert A. Heinlein]] story ''[[Farmer in the Sky]]'' is about a terraforming effort... [[Science Marches On|on Ganymede]].

* The major theme of ''[[Dune]]'' is the back-and-forth attempts by humanity to terraform [[Single Biome Planet|the desert planet Arrakis]] inhabited by the various life-cycle stages of sandworms (which create an extremely necessary commodity) and by the (non-sentient) sandtrout phase of the worm species to counter terraform Arrakis (and later other worlds) ''back into desert''.

* ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' has a major factor in the economics of the various colonies being how well they were terraformed. This is largely a function of when you left Earth and how much money you had when leaving. Haven and Manticore were settled fairly late with good resources. Other planets like Grayson were settled by [[Sleeper Ship|cold sleepers]] who left very very early, had poor terraforming technology, and ended up on a planet full of heavy metal poisoning.

** 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.)

** Plus, terraforming often has unintended side effects, like the newly introduced atmosphere interacting with minerals or gases to cause a massive plague, and at least one planet is considered an uninhabitable "black rock" because the [[Blatant Lies|terraforming never took]].

* In ''[[Babylon 5]]'', humanity is in the first stages of terraforming Mars.

** However Federation Terraforming regulation require a planet to be devoid of any trace of life, so not even possible future species might be prevented from evolving naturally.

* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' has two whole galaxies full of planets terraformed by the [[Precursors|Ancients]] and the Goa'uld, complete with [[Transplanted Humans]].

** They also had a "pyroforming" species, similar to the Andromeda example above.

* In the ''Centauri Knights'' setting for ''[[BESM]],'' the planet being colonized has had its ecosystem wiped clean to the bedrock by [[Nanomachines]] made by the natives. The native ecosystem survives on a couple of still-working, but unoccupied, space habitats near the planet. One of the conflicts in the game's politics is: do we terraform the planet into a new Earth, rebuild its own ecosystem by transplanting from the colonies, leave it a barren desert and mine it for technology, or abandon it and go home?

* In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'', there's a card called [http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Terraforming "Terraforming"] that lets you search your deck for a field card. You literally make the environment more friendly to your creatures—whether human, beast, angel, demon, crystals, etc.

** The Imperium either terraforms any worlds it settles that are not already inabitable by humans, or turns them into [[Single Biome Planet|polluted hyper-urban hive worlds]].

** The Eldar Maiden Worlds are worlds undergoing long-term alteration to make them inhabitable by Eldar Exodites or (voluntary) outcasts. Non-Eldar races settling a Maiden World are... strongly encouraged to leave.

* ''Haegemonia'' has terraforming capabilities for all races. Planets can be sorted into four groups: for humans, the first group is gaia/terran/oceanic (can be colonized from the start), the second is forest/swamp/desert/arctic/plains/volcanic/rocky (needs research), the third is barren/acidic (needs more research) while the final one is gas (uninhabitable). Kariaks and Darzoks have different qualifications; for example, both like barren. If it's not good enough, it can be terraformed once which improves the quality of the planet; once the next level is researched, it can be terraformed again. For example, level 1 human terraforming can turn plains into forest while level 3 instantly pushes any planet to oceanic/terran. In the expansion ''The Solon Heritage'', spies can actually '''reverse-terraform''', causing an ecological catastrophe (talk about overkill...).

* ''[[Final Fantasy IV: The After Years]]'' reveals that the Four Elemental Crystals that show up in so many games of that series are actually terraforming implements. They're a bit less reliable than slower methods though, given that their terraforming effects tend to wear off once they're removed or destroyed.

* ''[[Escape Velocity]]'': [[Broad Strokes|In these games]], Mars was always the first planet to be terraformed. And it always [[Gone Horribly Wrong|went very, very wrong]], and the next few hundred years are spent trying to fix the mess.

** ''EV Nova'' also lets you see somebody get terraforming right in one quest line. And the [[Higher-Tech Species|Polaris]] have largely mastered it, with several planets listed as terraformed in the "communicate with planet" dialog box.

* 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.