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} }) </script> </div> </form> </fieldset> <article class="entryArticle content STeditorial"> <header class="entryHeader icon-theme"> <h1 class="entryTitle">Terraforming </h1> </header><p class='tagLine'>Entry updated 4 November 2024. Tagged: Theme.</p><div class="browsingBtns"> <span> <input class="button PNI previous" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?id=p&entry=terraforming'" value="Prev" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI next" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?&entry=terraforming'" value="Next" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI incoming" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/incoming.php?entry=terraforming'" value="About This Entry" title="What links to the entry; contributor initials explained; how to cite; other information" /> </span> </div> <p>If the <a href="/entry/colonization_of_other_worlds">Colonization of Other Worlds</a> is not to be restricted to those that prove almost-exact duplicates of the Earth, some form of adaptation will be necessary; the colonists might adapt <i>themselves</i> by <a href="/entry/genetic_engineering">Genetic Engineering</a>, as in James <a href="/entry/blish_james">Blish</a>'s <a href="/entry/pantropy">Pantropy</a> series, or cyborgization (see <a href="/entry/cyborgs">Cyborgs</a>), as in Frederik <a href="/entry/pohl_frederik">Pohl</a>'s <i>Man Plus</i> (<b>1976</b>), but if they are bolder they might instead adapt <i>the worlds</i>, by terraforming them. The verb "terraform" was coined by Jack <a href="/entry/williamson_jack">Williamson</a> in "Collision Orbit" (July 1942 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>), one of the series of stories revised as <i>Seetee Ship</i> (July and November 1942, January-February 1943 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>; fixup <b>1951</b>; magazine stories and early editions as by Will Stewart), in which an <a href="/entry/asteroids">Asteroid</a> has been terraformed as part of a minor subplot; but such a project had earlier been envisaged in Olaf <a href="/entry/stapledon_olaf">Stapledon</a>'s <i>Last and First Men</i> (<b>1930</b>), where <a href="/entry/venus">Venus</a> is prepared for human habitation by electrolysing water from its oceans to produce oxygen. Stapledon's project was primitive (and unworkable); most sf stories envisage plant life being used to generate a breathable atmosphere on terraformable planets, just as it once did on Earth.</p> <p>As it gradually became accepted that the other planets in the solar system could not sustain human life, terraforming projects became commonplace in sf, especially in relation to <a href="/entry/mars">Mars</a>. Stories like Arthur C <a href="/entry/clarke_arthur_c">Clarke</a>'s <i>The Sands of Mars</i> (<b>1951</b>) and Patrick <a href="/entry/moore_patrick">Moore</a>'s series begun with <i>Mission to Mars</i> (<b>1956</b>) envisage relatively small-scale modifications, but, as the true magnitude of the problem has become apparent, writers have been forced to imagine much more complex processes. Ian <a href="/entry/mcdonald_ian">McDonald</a>'s <i>Desolation Road</i> (<b>1988</b>) tends to the frankly miraculous, but compensates with some memorable imagery; its echoes of Ray <a href="/entry/bradbury_ray">Bradbury</a> seem slightly more appropriate than the echoes of Edgar Rice <a href="/entry/burroughs_edgar_rice">Burroughs</a> in <i>The Barsoom Project</i> (<b>1989</b>) by Larry <a href="/entry/niven_larry">Niven</a> and Steven <a href="/entry/barnes_steven">Barnes</a>. In the real world, however, people have been hatching long-term plans ever since the idea of terraforming was first treated seriously by such nonfiction popularizations as Carl <a href="/entry/sagan_carl">Sagan</a>'s <i>The Cosmic Connection</i> (<b>1973</b>) and Adrian <a href="/entry/berry_adrian">Berry</a>'s <i>The Next Ten Thousand Years</i> (<b>1974</b>). Kim Stanley <a href="/entry/robinson_kim_stanley">Robinson</a> has elaborated a trilogy of novels following his novella <i>Green Mars</i> (September 1985 <a href="/entry/asimovs">Asimov's</a>; <b>1988</b> dos), which endeavours to describe a realistic series of procedures: <i>Red Mars</i> (<b>1992</b>), <i>Green Mars</i> (<b>1993</b>) – no connection to the novella – and <i>Blue Mars</i> (<b>1996</b>).</p> <p>Other writers have followed Stapledon in imagining the terraforming of Venus, among them Poul <a href="/entry/anderson_poul">Anderson</a> in "The Big Rain" (October 1954 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>) and "Sister Planet" (May 1959 <a href="/entry/satellite_science_fiction">Satellite</a>). This project has recently become the subject of an ambitious and extensive series by Pamela <a href="/entry/sargent_pamela">Sargent</a>, begun in <i>Venus of Dreams</i> (<b>1986</b>) and continued in <i>Venus of Shadows</i> (<b>1988</b>). Kim Stanley <a href="/entry/robinson_kim_stanley">Robinson</a>'s <i>2312</i> (<b>2012</b>) describes the transformation of Venus via a two-pronged attack: dismantling Saturn's ice moon Dione and bombarding the planet with the fragments, while constructing a vast sunshield to block solar radiation and steadily reduce the killing temperature.</p> <p>The only other worlds in the solar system which seem to be plausible candidates for terraforming are some of the satellites of <a href="/entry/jupiter">Jupiter</a> and Saturn (see <a href="/entry/outer_planets">Outer Planets</a>). Ganymede is the favourite, featuring in Robert A <a href="/entry/heinlein_robert_a">Heinlein</a>'s <i>Farmer in the Sky</i> (<b>1950</b>), Poul Anderson's <i>The Snows of Ganymede</i> (Winter 1955 <a href="/entry/startling_stories">Startling</a>; <b>1958</b> dos) and Gregory <a href="/entry/benford_gregory">Benford</a>'s <i>Jupiter Project</i> (<b>1975</b>). Jack <a href="/entry/vance_jack">Vance</a>'s "I'll Build Your Dream Castle" (September 1947 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>), about custom-terraformed <a href="/entry/asteroids">Asteroids</a>, is decidedly tongue-in-cheek.</p> <p>The unlikely prospect of terraforming the <a href="/entry/moon">Moon</a> is referenced in Arthur C. <a href="/entry/clarke_arthur_c">Clarke</a>'s <a href="/entry/far_future">Far Future</a> take "Transience" (July 1949 <a href="/entry/startling_stories">Startling</a>), which mentions that humans "had torn down its mountains and brought it air and water." Gene <a href="/entry/wolfe_gene">Wolfe</a>'s <i>The Book of the New Sun</i> (<b>1980-1983</b> 4vols) similarly indicates in passing that this era's the Moon has long sustained forests and other vegetation, and so appears green. Stephen <a href="/entry/baxter_stephen">Baxter</a>'s <i>Moonseed</i> (<b>1998</b>) features rapid-action terraforming or at least oxygenation of the Moon to provide an emergency bolt-hole from this book's <a href="/entry/disaster">Disaster</a>-afflicted Earth.</p> <p>The idea that the terraforming of worlds might be reduced to a matter of routine as humanity builds a <a href="/entry/galactic_empires">Galactic Empire</a> is occasionally featured in sf novels, although generally as a throwaway idea. Elaborate descriptions of terraforming in such a context are rare, but David <a href="/entry/gerrold_david">Gerrold</a>'s <i>Moonstar Odyssey</i> (<b>1977</b>) and Andrew <a href="/entry/weiner_andrew">Weiner</a>'s <i>Station Gehenna</i> (<b>1987</b>) both involve terraforming projects whose methods are more-or-less scrupulously sketched out. Some of Roger <a href="/entry/zelazny_roger">Zelazny</a>'s works assume that terraforming projects can be so routinized that "worldscaping" might become a kind of art form; his <i>Isle of the Dead</i> (<b>1969</b>) features a protagonist who is in this godlike line of work, with many finished worlds to his credit. The same notion surfaces in Robert <a href="/entry/sheckley_robert">Sheckley</a>'s <i>Dimension of Miracles</i> (<b>1968</b>), in Douglas <a href="/entry/adams_douglas">Adams</a>'s <b>Hitch Hiker</b> series (with the planet-builders of Magrathea) and in the film <a href="/entry/time_bandits">Time Bandits</a> (<i>1981</i>) directed by Terry <a href="/entry/gilliam_terry">Gilliam</a>, and technologically powerful worldmakers with a mischievous bent hover (unfathomably) in the background of Terry <a href="/entry/pratchett_terry">Pratchett</a>'s <i>Strata</i> (<b>1981</b>). It is probable, though, that it is the realistic treatments of Sargent and Robinson which will set the pattern for the most significant future uses of the theme in sf. Jack <a href="/entry/williamson_jack">Williamson</a> offers a logical twist in <i>Terraforming Earth</i> (<b>2001</b>), whose title describes the lengthy post-<a href="/entry/disaster">Disaster</a> operations after an <a href="/entry/asteroids">Asteroid</a> impact has wiped out most of humanity and triggered a new Ice Age.</p> <p>On a more grandiose scale, some stories feature radical transformation of the universe as a whole to render it more hospitable to some particular form of life, either by gradual reshaping or by radical <a href="/entry/time_travel">Time-Travel</a> intervention in the formation of the universe (see <a href="/entry/alternate_cosmos">Alternate Cosmos</a>). Thus Frederik <a href="/entry/pohl_frederik">Pohl</a>'s <b>Heechee</b> sequence introduces the dread foes the Assassins, who have retreated to sanctuary in a form of <a href="/entry/black_holes">Black Hole</a> after setting in motion mechanisms intended to change the universal constants of <a href="/entry/physics">Physics</a>: the motive proves to be the making of a universe better suited to <a href="/entry/upload">Uploaded</a> intelligence, which will benefit humanity when we too have made this transition. Less comfortably, the photino birds of Stephen <a href="/entry/baxter_stephen">Baxter</a>'s <a href="/entry/xeelee_series">Xeelee</a> saga are changing things to benefit their own non-baryonic life, as distinct from the familiar baryonic matter which is the substrate of our own and other <a href="/entry/aliens">Aliens</a>' <a href="/entry/biology">Biology</a>. The time-travel approach features in Baxter's Wellsian <i>The Time Ships</i> (<b>1995</b>), producing a new and supposedly better <a href="/entry/alternate_cosmos">Alternate Cosmos</a>. [MJE/BS/DRL]</p> <p><b>see also:</b> <a href="/entry/xenoforming">Xenoforming</a>.</p> <p><b>further reading</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li>Brian Merchand and Claire L Evans, editors. <em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Terraform+Watch+/+Worlds+/+Burn&field-author=Brian+Merchand+and+Claire+L+Evans" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Terraform: Watch / Worlds / Burn</a></em> (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux/MCD, <b>2022</b>) [anth: pb/Childe Scheffe]</li> </ul> <p><b>previous versions of this entry</b></p> <ul><li><a href='https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/terraforming' target='_blank'>Internet Archive</a></li></ul><br /><br /></article></div> <div class="sideBarsWrapper"> <div class="sideBarsColsWrapper clearfix"> <div class="column sideBar12 clearfix"> <div class="columnForm"><aside id="blogFeed" class="widget"> <div class="content STeditorial clearfix"> <h2>Recently visited entries<span style="background:url(/images/thingSFE2.png) !important"></span></h2><ul style='width: 50%; 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