Terraforming in popular culture

Terraforming is well represented in contemporary literature, usually in the form of science fiction, as well as in popular culture. While many stories involving interstellar travel feature planets already suited to habitation by humans and supporting their own indigenous life, some authors prefer to address the unlikeliness of such a concept by instead detailing the means by which humans have converted inhospitable worlds to ones capable of supporting life through artificial means.

History of use

Author Jack Williamson is credited with inventing and popularizing the term "terraform". In July 1942, under the pseudonym Will Stewart, Williamson published a science fiction novella entitled "Collision Orbit" in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine. The series was later published as two novels, Seetee Shock (1949) and Seetee Ship (1951). American geographer Richard Cathcart successfully lobbied for formal recognition of the verb "to terraform", and it was first included in the fourth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary in 1993.

The concept of terraforming in popular culture predates Williamson's work; for example, the idea of turning the Moon into a habitable environment with atmosphere was already present in La Journée d'un Parisien au XXI^e siècle ("A Day of a Parisian in the 21st Century", 1910) by Octave Béliard. In fact, perhaps predating the concept of terraforming, is that of xenoforming – a process in which aliens change the Earth to suit their own needs, already suggested in the classic The War of the Worlds (1898) of H.G. Wells.

Literature

Date	Title	Author	Planet/Moon	Notes
1898	The War of the Worlds	H. G. Wells	Earth	When the Martians invade the Earth, they bring with them red weed that starts to multiply rapidly and kill off Earth's indigenous plant life.
1910	«La Journée d'un Parisien au XXIe siècle» ("A Day of a Parisian in the 21st Century")	Octave Béliard	Moon	The Moon is gradually given an atmosphere, and vegetation is acclimated in order to turn the Earth's satellite into a natural reserve or sanctuary for endangered species, but also to allow human colonization.
1927	The Last Judgment	J. B. S. Haldane	Venus	An essay that proposes how life on Earth might end and speculates on the evolution of humanity, space exploration and colonization, and adaptation to new environments. Venus is proposed as a new home.
1930	Last and First Men	Olaf Stapledon	Venus and millions years after Neptune	Following up where Haldane left off, Stapledon's future history provides the first example in fiction in which Venus is modified, after a long and destructive war with the original inhabitants. Stapledon imagines a native Venus that is covered in oceans.
1950	Farmer in the Sky	Robert A. Heinlein	Ganymede	A family emigrates from Earth to the Jovian moon Ganymede, which is being terraformed. Farmer in the Sky is a historically significant novel in relation to terraforming in popular culture, as it was one of the first to take the subject more seriously than simple fantasy, portraying terraforming with scientific and mathematical considerations.
1951	The Sands of Mars	Arthur C. Clarke	Mars	First instance of Martian terraforming. Clarke's fictional methods for terraforming the planet include generating heat by igniting Phobos into a second sun, and growing plants that break down the Martian sands in order to release oxygen.
1952	The Martian Way	Isaac Asimov	Mars	Terraforming of Mars using ice from Saturn's rings.
1954	The Big Rain	Poul Anderson	Venus	Terraforming Venus. Anderson considers the great time scale inherent in planetary engineering and its effects upon society. Later, the title ("big rain") became associated with scientific terraforming models.
1958	The Snows of Ganymede	Poul Anderson	Ganymede	Terraforming of Ganymede
1960	Chirurgien d'une planète	Gérard Klein	Mars	Terraforming Mars.
1961	Second Ending	James White	Fomalhaut IV	The fourth planet of Fomalhaut was secretly terraformed by robots over millions of years
1969	Isle of the Dead	Roger Zelazny	Illyria	Francis Sandow is the last surviving human born in the 20th century who becomes a "worldscaper" - a terraformer with godlike powers.
1984	Greening of Mars	James Lovelock Michael Allaby	Mars	One of the most influential science fiction novels on the actual science of terraforming. The novel explores the formation and evolution of planets, the origin of life, and Earth's biosphere. Spacecraft are illustrated in a realistic manner, and terraforming models in the book foreshadowed future debates regarding the goals of terraforming.
1986–1988	Venus of Dreams Venus of Shadows	Pamela Sargent	Venus	Terraforming of Venus.
1992–1999	Mars Trilogy	Kim Stanley Robinson	Mars	Three novels (plus one collection of short stories) provide a lengthy description of terraforming Mars spanning centuries. The novels represent contemporary scientific and philosophical developments in the field, and also pay homage to the already existing fictional literature related to Mars.

Television and film

Date	Title	Country	Notes	IMDb
1982, 1984	Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock	USA	Project Genesis, a device for rapidly terraforming worlds to make them suitable for settlement and food production is introduced. At the end of the film, a Genesis Device is detonated in the Mutara nebula resulting in the creation of a main sequence star and a habitable planet known as the Genesis Planet. Due to unstable "proto-matter" used in the terraforming process, the planet's evolution is accelerated, leading to the eventual premature destruction of the Genesis Planet. The nine-disc Star Trek: The Motion Picture Collection contains an extra featurette on the "real-science applications of terraforming".	[1] [2]
1990	Total Recall	USA	Aliens have built a terraforming device on Mars, which when turned on, fills the atmosphere with oxygen, allowing humans to live on the surface. Total Recall was one of the first films to portray terraforming on Mars, however it was criticized for its scientific inaccuracy.	[3]

Video games

Deformable terrain, as used in e.g. Perimeter and Red Faction, is occasionally called terraforming but is not a form of planetary engineering.

As a game mechanic

Date	Title	Genre	Notes
1999	Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri	4X	Clearing native fungus and building infrastructure as part of colonizing an alien planet. Native life can be treated as allies or as enemies. Regional landscaping: planting forests, constructing canals or isthmuses or adjusting mountains. Changing sea levels. Making the atmosphere breathable was considered, but not implemented.
2003	Master of Orion III	Spacebound 4X	Redesigned terraforming with more details than in the previous installments. Tracking planetary fertility by region rather than identifying each planet by one dominant biome. According to the manual, terraforming is unstable and will decay if not maintained.
2008	Spore	Multiple	Terraforming (or unterraforming) planets in a matter of seconds in the spacebound sandbox phase. A handful of tools to affect heat and humidity, then introduce life. Planetary landscaping.
2012	Terraform	Turn-based puzzle	Terraforming planets made of hexagonal tiles by using tools and different weather conditions to reach planet-specific goals.
2019	Surviving Mars: Green Planet	City-building, survival	Green Planet downloadable content allows the terraforming of Mars.
2023	Terraformers	City-building	The player builds a colony on Mars, starting underground, mining the planet's crystals before moving the population to the surface.

References

• Béliard, Octave (1910). "La Journée d'un Parisien au XXI^e siècle". Lecture pour tous. No. Christmas issue.
• Bly, Robert W. (2005). The Science In Science Fiction: 83 SF Predictions that Became Scientific Reality. BenBella Books, Inc. ISBN 1-932100-48-2.
• Flatow, Ira (2004-06-18), Analysis: Mars in science and science fiction, Talk of the Nation/Science Friday: National Public Radio
• Fogg, Martyn J. (1995). Terraforming: Engineering Planetary Environments. SAE. ISBN 1-56091-609-5.
• Goodale, Gloria (2002-11-29). "To: My brother, film geek". Christian Science Monitor. 95 (4).
• Muirhead, Brian; Reeves-Stevens, Garfield (2004). Going to Mars: The Stories of the People Behind NASA's Mars Missions Past, Present, and Future. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-02796-4.
• Pak, Chris (2016). Terraforming: Ecopolitical Transformations and Environmentalism in Science Fiction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9781781384541.

Further reading

• Edwards, Malcolm; Stableford, Brian; Langford, David (2020). "Terraforming". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 2023-12-29.
• Kerslake, Tris (2005). "Terraforming". In Westfahl, Gary (ed.). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 807–809. ISBN 978-0-313-32952-4.
• Mann, George (2001). "Terraforming". The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Carroll & Graf Publishers. pp. 514–515. ISBN 978-0-7867-0887-1.
• Nicholls, Peter (1983). "Terraforming". In Nicholls, Peter (ed.). The Science in Science Fiction. New York: Knopf. pp. 28–29. ISBN 0-394-53010-1. OCLC 8689657.
• Stableford, Brian (2006). "Terraform". Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 524–525. ISBN 978-0-415-97460-8.
• Westfahl, Gary (2021). "Terraforming". Science Fiction Literature through History: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. pp. 631–633. ISBN 978-1-4408-6617-3.