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 and Seetee Ship. 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 XXIe siècle by. 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 of H.G. Wells.
Literature
| Date | Title | Author | Planet/Moon | Notes |
| 1910 | «La Journée d'un Parisien au XXIe siècle» | Octave Béliard | Moon | The Moon is gradually given an atmosphere, and vegetation is acclimated to allow colonization and make the Moon into a natural reserve or sanctuary for endangered species. |
| 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 of years later, 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 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 |
| 1965 | Dune | Frank Herbert | Arrakis | Initiated by the Planetologist Pardot Kynes and continued by his son Liet-Kynes, the Fremen of Arrakis were slowly collecting water and environmental data to terraform the desert planet. Originally, this plan was expected to take several generations, or roughly 500 years. However, once Paul Atreides takes the throne as Padishah Emperor, the process is sped up significantly. By the time of Children of Dune, merely 23 years after Paul Atreides became Emperor, half of the desert had been terraformed, and the process is long complete by the time of God Emperor of Dune, in which the desert only remains in a small personal sanctuary of the God Emperor, completely surrounded by man-made mountains. Given that sandworms are poisoned and killed by water, this process decimated their population and all of them were exterminated by the time of God Emperor of Dune, except for the God Emperor himself. This process is undone after God Emperor of Dune's ending, when the God Emperor dies after he is submerged in water and decomposes into sandtrout, the juvenile stage of sandworms, which likely turned Arrakis into a desert planet in the first place with their water-locking abilities. |
| 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 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. |