Talk:Earth in science fiction

HHGTTG

"The only surviving Earthman, Arthur Dent ...". Trillian (who was also a human) also survived.... If the meaning is that Arthur Dent is the only earth male human to survive I think it should be made more clear. Karih 22:56, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Merge Old Earth (Dune) into this page.

As Old Earth (Dune) is a relatively small page, I think it would be better placed here. Philip Stevens 09:01, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Minor Edit

Just made someminor edits to the Star Wars Section ( made ET link directly to the alien dude) Infantrymarine25 3:06, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Removed text from Star Wars section

I have removed the following paragraphs from the Star Wars section.

However, with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial's race being included in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, the idea that Earth is somehow reachable (at least in the future of Star Wars tech) is present.

And then there is the well-known quote from Han Solo: "You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon? It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs." A parsec is defined to be the distance from which the Earth and Sun appear to be separated from one another by 1 second of an arc. Therefore, since a parsec is a unit of measurement derived from Earth, the Star Wars universe must currently have or once had a knowledge of Earth.

Why?

1. It's original research, first of all.
2. Check the IMDb Trivia page for Phantom Menace: the appearance of an E.T.-looking alien in the Galactic Senate chamber is generally regarded as an "in-joke". It does not mean that Star Wars and E.T. take place in the same universe, any more than the musical keypad in Moonraker proves that James Bond lives in the same universe as Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
3. The "parsec" line is one of the most, if not the most discussed goofs in Star Wars. Solo uses "parsec" as a unit of time, which it isn't. All the justifications which fans have proposed in later years (the Falcon can make really tight corners, etc.) are beside the point. Why should we make wild extrapolations about a movie's world based upon a goof?
4. Supposing that there were a reason to measure a ship's proficiency at the Kessel Run using a unit of distance, the people in the Star Wars galaxy would have their own units to use. A "light year" in the Republic or the Empire would be, at a guess, the distance light travels in the time it takes Coruscant to go around its own sun. Likewise, a "parsec" would be the distance at which a star would show a parallax of one arc-second, as seen from opposite sides of Coruscant's orbit. No Earth necessary. (Sure, I just made that up, but it's no more made-up than the text I took out of the article, and it's just as good reasoning.)

Anville 15:18, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Mostly Harmless?

Isn't the description of Earth in Hitchhikers meant to be "Mostly harmless" instead of just "Harmless"?

Gregwmay 08:16, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

It gets changed one way or the other partway through the series. I think it becomes "Mostly Harmless" later on, and is then updated once again with all the information Ford Prefect submit

== ted during his stay on Earth, shortly before all versions of Earth are destroyed, rendering the entry useless.--Raguleader 00:48, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Wing Commander

A previous editor removed a link in my Wing Commander edit. The original link went to a disambiguation page, I replaced the link with a link to the Wing Commander (Computer Game) entry.--Raguleader 00:50, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Half-Life

Who deleted the Half-Life section? Why did this seem extraneous, or are they simply not a fan or something? If Buck Rogers is culturally signifcant enough to warrant it's own section, why would one of the most popular video game series of all time not be? More to the point, Half-Life portrays a fictional Earth in a pretty different manner to the other Science Fiction franchises noted in this article.

Planet of the Apes?

Seems to me the treatment/fate of earth in the PotA movies is significant enough to be discussed here. Perhaps someone who has better knowledge of that series than me could add it? If not I'll take a crack at it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Darthmix (talk • contribs)

Done. MrZaius^talk 15:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

My thanks. --Darthmix 20:01, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Earth RDM.png

Image:Earth RDM.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot 05:29, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Original research

This article appears to contain many summaries of and conclusions drawn from various works of fiction, which I believe qualify as original research. It should be cleaned up to cite reliable sources. Hastyreader (talk) 23:49, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

This article is without value

This article is pretty useless. It is nothing more than summaries of Earth from an odd selection of various pieces of science fiction. Without a through line that connects this disparity information, it is not an article useful as a piece of reference.

I rather doubt there’s any real interest in improving this article while retaining the premise of describing Earth from various pieces of fiction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.203.135.66 (talk) 17:51, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Suggestions for structure

It strikes me that the article in its re-write needs structure. That will allow the addition of secondary sources that fit into each subtopic, as well as cited examples. I also suspect it would help us to unearth secondary sources that do have more general things to say about Earth in science fiction. Some of the themes that come out of the Encyclopedia entries:

• The shape of the Earth (Hollow, flat, inc influence from mythology)
• The role of the Earth in a developed galaxy (homeworld of an empire vs cosmic insignificance)
• Ecological warnings inc the Earth as a living organism, future fate of the Earth.

Any thoughts? OsFish (talk) 05:05, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Actually, there are a lot of pages that deal with these subgenres, many of which we're already linking to on this page. It would seem reasonable to use these pages for structure so long as there are secondary/tertiary sources that mention them under the general idea of Earth in science fiction. Those sources may be within those pages.

* Subterranean fiction or Hollow Earth

* Alien invasion, Galactic empire, although that doesn't feature a specific section on Earth at the moment.

* Dying Earth genre, Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, climate fiction

OsFish (talk) 05:24, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@OsFish Check out the article, newly expanded based on two sources I found.

Things that seem to be missing IMHO in those overviews:

• rescuing the Earth theme (saving it from an asteroid, Category:Impact event novels)
• the theme of the world government / Earth united
• more on alternate history, particularly the concept of unknown history (ex. Conan's Hyborian Age, in other words, Mythopoeia)

Can't really add it without sources, as it would be ORish.

I can also imagine a list of the relatively rare works "about Earth", but we have to avoid this becoming a fancruft list of trivia.

The old version of this article is here, maybe a few examples would be reusable, but we need to avoid OR/SYNTH or turning this into a long list of examples; the ones used in the text are from sourced overviews (but I'll admit I added a few more that where not in the two big overviews, each with a reliable reference that it discusses a given theme, but where to stop and how to format the growing lists is an issue.). The list of examples, mostly in parenthesis, already look a bit cluttery and I do wonder about splitting them into footnotes which could improve readability. The big issue is "a few examples are good, but too many are not good". Where to draw the line? At mininumum, all examples need secondary references, obviously... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:31, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

What you've done so far is great - thanks! I think that if there is a Wiki page on a subgenre, it's very probably not OR to take that up as a subgenre given the other page. A general rule that if a work has been mentioned in secondary sources as an example, it can be included, should be enough to prevent fancruft. Whether a list forms or not depends on how many works qualify according to that criterion. I'm sorry I haven't had time to pay more attention to this page. I'll see if I do in the coming weeks. OsFish (talk) 14:44, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

I think the article is already too heavy on examples. I am of the opinion that unless we're elaborating on the details of individual examples, no concept should have more than two examples. At present, we have four examples of a flat Earth, five examples of a hollow Earth, seven examples of moving the Earth from its orbit, and five examples of accidental climate change. We're supposed to be summarizing, not enumerating. Using footnotes would perhaps ameliorate this issue somewhat by increasing the readability of the prose text, but I don't think that's the right way to go about it. TompaDompa (talk) 04:34, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Uncited Premise/Not Encyclopaedic

The article opens with the uncited assertion, "An overwhelming majority of fiction is set on or features the Earth. This also holds true of science fiction, despite perceptions to the contrary." This sounds less like an encyclopaedia article and more like a position paper--or worse, a school report. However, it would be hard to correct this article when the most obvious thing to do is delete it. Count Robert of Paris (talk) 18:16, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Count Robert of Paris: It's not uncited. The source is at the end of the paragraph. "[D]espite perceptions that science fiction is largely a literature of space travel, most of its stories occur on Earth". TompaDompa (talk) 18:24, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

References

Fair enough. So many "facts" are in that paragraph, it had not occurred to me that the citation at the very end sufficed for all of them. That being said, and without getting into how scholarly this source is or is not, what the cited source says is merely, "Moreover, despite the perceptions that science fiction is largely a literature of space travel, most of its stories occur on Earth as well," essentially the same vague and unsubstantiated statement as begins this article. How many is "most"? How would you even make that determination, without knowing the total number of science fiction works and the total number that take place on Earth? This does not sound at all falsifiable or encyclopaedic. Just because someone paraphrases an opinion he or she finds in a book does not mean it is not just an opinion. That's why we need to cite sources: to know whether the source is any good. Count Robert of Paris (talk) 19:29, 31 August 2021 (UTC)