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Dyson spheres in popular culture

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This is a listing of the use of the Dyson sphere concept in popular fiction. For a discussion of the general concept and its history, see the main article.

In science fiction some additional fictional technologies are described to enhance convenience and possibilities. One of them is the use of "gravity generators" to bind an atmosphere to the interior surface of the sphere.

Most fiction depict the Dyson shell variant. Unless otherwise noted, that is the type of Dyson sphere in the instances below.

Television

  • The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Relics" - The crew happens upon a full Dyson's Sphere when its gravitational fluctuations distort their warp field and bring them to a stop. Being further advanced than the Federation, the sphere's automatic systems pulled the ship into the structure, revealing the majority of the shell inside was covered with habitable regions, including weather. Lieutenant Commander Data stated that "250 million class-M worlds" was equal to the inside surface area. As the diameter of the sphere is given as being 200 million kilometers or two thirds the Earth's orbit around the sun this would indicate that the surface area of one "M-class world" is in fact equivalent to the Earth's surface area.
  • Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda — the episodes "Its Hour Come Round At Last" and "The Widening Gyre" — The Magog Worldship. Several planetary objects with cave systems, physically locked in close proximity to a small sun, somewhat like the Dyson net variant of the Dyson sphere.
  • In Crest of the Stars, the capital of the Humankind Empire Abh, Lakfakale, contains and is likely powered by a Dyson Swarm.
  • The Japanese anime Gundam 00 features a Dyson Ring in geostationary orbit around the Earth, providing a replacement power supply for the planet's dwindling fossil fuel reserves, and serves as a central catalyst in the conflicts depicted in the series. Although the ring harnesses energy from the sun, the ring orbits around the Earth and not around the sun. Though the ring depicted in Gundam 00 follows Dyson's theorised design, Dyson's name is not mentioned.
  • The Shadow Star employed by Umbra and its minions was depicted very much as transitional form of a solid shelled Dyson Sphere,though it was shown as having gaps and voids through which some measure of light escaped into outer space. It appeared to be a large planet with some parts of its surface torn away and others still connected in a rough analog Earth's own continental plates.

Literature

  • The novel Across a Billion Years by Robert Silverberg.
  • The novel The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter.
  • The novel The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons, featuring a partly completed sphere, being grown using advanced biotechnology.
  • The short story Star Light, Star Bright by Robert J. Sawyer.
  • The novel Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer.
  • The Doctor Who New Adventures novel The Also People by Ben Aaronovitch.
  • The novel Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks; several Spheres mentioned only in passing as casualties of the Idiran-Culture War.
  • The novel House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds; comprised of thousands of individual rings surrounding stars.
  • The novel Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds; surrounds a single planet only.
  • The novel Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds (Passing reference).
  • The novel Russian Spring by Norman Spinrad. (Brief mention in a news blurb)
  • The novel Vacuum Flowers by Michael Swanwick.
  • The "Cageworld" novels Search for the Sun!, The Lost Worlds of Cronus, The Tyrant of Hades, and Star-Search by Colin Kapp. Features concentric nested Dyson shells built from collected interstellar matter, also inhabited on their outer surfaces.
  • The novel Illegal Aliens by Nick Pollotta and Phil Foglio mentions two Dyson shells. The first, simply called "Big", is the headquarters of a galactic federation. The second is unnamed and apparently consists of nothing but nested Dyson shells built by an insane race to cope with their sun getting smaller.
  • The novel The Singers of Time by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson visits a parallel universe totally covered in Dyson shells, where only the farthest quasars are visible (already covered, but the light from them is still traveling). They were constructed by a formerly biological race that slowly converted their bodies to cyborgs and then full robots, the only logical evolution being the creation of a Type V or VI civilization.
  • The novel Heaven's Reach by David Brin explains a more advanced (and more fragile) form of the Dyson sphere known as a Criswell Structure. This type of sphere utilizes fractal geometry to further maximize the light capturing inner surface as well as increase natural stability. Billions of these have been placed around slow burning red stars for extended periods of habitation by ancient lifeforms awaiting transcendence to a higher form of life.
  • The novel Polity Agent by Neal Asher He describes under 'The Cassius project' a Dyson sphere under construction.
  • The short story Hold Until Relieved, by William H. Keith, Jr. Part of Keith Laumer's Bolo universe. Galactic core surrounded by Dyson shell.
  • The novel "Federation World", by James White, partially set in a terraced Dyson sphere, which rotates to provide internal centrifugal force as a substitute for gravity. Since the terraces have different radii of rotation, alien species native to multiple gravity levels can be accommodated.
  • In the novel Accelerando by Charles Stross, a Dyson swarm (possibly a Dyson bubble) of computronium forms a massive matrioshka brain around the sun providing virtual space for trillions of uploaded human minds and corporate AI.
  • At the conclusion of the novel Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, the majority of the human survivors travel through a rift in slipspace to reach a habitat built by the ancient Forerunners that is separated from normal space and guarded by a massive latticework of automated drones. This habitat is actually a compressed Dyson Sphere, and is to serve as an effective bomb shelter from the activation of the Halo network.
  • The technology is alluded to in the short story The Last Question by Isaac Asimov.
  • The novel Old Man's War by John Scalzi, an enemy alien race that is far more advanced than the Human civilization has a Dyson Sphere around their sun powering a shield around their home world.
  • Though it never refers to it by name, the novel Elven Star, volume 2 of the Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman features a Dyson Sphere featuring 4 suns in its center.
  • The novels The Ring of Charon and The Shattered Sphere by Roger MacBride Allen feature a Dyson Sphere and the space surrounding it.
  • The novels The Book of the Long Sun saga by Gene Wolfe features a large population of people living in a massive Dyson Sphere like spaceship called the Whorl, with a long sun in the centre.
  • The novel Debatable Space by Philip Palmer briefly mentions a Dyson Swarm of habitats around Sol known as the Dyson Jewels.
  • In the fantasy series The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, the world of Pryan resembles a Dyson Sphere.
  • The novel The Architects of Hyperspace by Thomas R. McDonough features an abandoned space station which is formed of concentric rings orbiting a star near the center of the universe.

Comics

  • The sci-fi webcomic Schlock Mercenary by Howard Tayler features an alien race known as the F'Sherl-Ganni, who live in habitats hanging from the interior surfaces of Dyson Bubbles they call Buuthandi (an abbreviation of the F'Sherl-Ganni phrase "Buut go buut-buut nnaa-nnaa cho handi", which translates to "This was expensive to build", or more literally as "Expensive and expensive-expensive [expletive] we built").[1] They use these Dyson bubbles to collect power with which to operate a galaxy-wide network of transportation wormholes.
  • The manga BLAME! by Tsutomu Nihei. In the artbook, BLAME! And So On it is revealed by the artist that the "city" the characters keep referring to and are currently wandering in is actually a Dyson Sphere extending to the orbit of Jupiter.
  • In the Marvel comic series New Mutants (original series) the rock star Lila Cheney, a mutant with the power to teleport across interstellar distances, had a home on an abandoned Dyson Sphere.

Games

  • The PlayStation 2 game Code Age Commanders takes place in an "intraglobular world", a fictional hollow world similar to a Dyson sphere, with people living on its internal surface.
  • The PC game Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Final Unity by Spectrum Holobyte features a Dyson Sphere in its endgame, containing 'The Unity Device' (the players goal).
  • The PC game Freelancer by Microsoft Game Studios shows a Dyson Sphere (specifically, a Dyson Shell) in the last system visited in the game campaign. It was constructed by either the highly advanced "Dom Kavash" civilization, or their servant race the "Nomads".
  • The PC game Homeworld by Relic Entertainment contains what appears to be a half completed Dyson Sphere in Mission 13, The Karos Graveyard. It later turns out to be the site of a massive ship battle, where the vessels were never salvaged. Homeworld 2 later revealed the large bits of wreckage viewed in the distance to be from a massive ship that broke apart many years ago.
  • The epilogue of the PC game Mission Critical by Legend Entertainment. Humans created the artificial electronic lifeforms (ELFs) and after decades of research they will both construct such a sphere; the humans will live inside and the ELFs outside.
  • The PBeM Game Quadrant Delta
  • In the Warhammer 40,000 fictional universe, The Outsider, a C'tan, is said to inhabit a Dyson sphere, having been trapped inside it by The Laughing God of the Eldar, Cegorach.
  • The PC game Space Empires IV and Space Empires V by Malfador Machinations allows the construction and colonization of Dyson spheres (called "sphereworlds")
  • The PC game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri by Firaxis Games refers to a Dyson Sphere in one of the game endings.
  • The PC & Xbox 360 game Prey by Human Head Studios (after a short introductory level in a bar) takes place on a Dyson Sphere (more specifically it is a Dyson Net constructed of organic and technological matter).
  • The internet game Flash Trek 2: Broken Mirror contains a Dyson sphere in the system beyond the Bajoran wormhole
  • In the PC game Chronomaster, the final pocket universe to be explored is encapsulated entirely by a Dyson sphere

Audio

  • BBV Pocket Universe audio episode "The Search" (set in the Doctor Who universe) features a Dyson Sphere encountered by robot dog K-9 and his Mistress.

Websites

  • The collaborative worldbuilding website Orion's Arm describes several fictional planetary systems that incorporate Dyson Swarms, which orbit the local star and collect energy to use for life support, industry and computation.[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ Schlock Mercenary archives - Saturday, March 9, 2002
  2. ^ Dyson Sphere
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