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In 2004, physicist and science fiction author Gregory Benford calculated that a concave rotating Fresnel lens 1000 kilometres across, yet only a few millimeters thick, floating in space at the L 1 point, would reduce the solar energy reaching the Earth by approximately 0.5% to 1%. [26] The cost of such a lens has been disputed.
The term itself, however, was coined by Jack Williamson in a science-fiction short story ("Collision Orbit") published in 1942 in Astounding Science Fiction, [6] [7] [4]: 235 [8] although the concept of terraforming in popular culture predates this work; for example, the idea of turning the Moon into a habitable environment with atmosphere was ...
The list includes technologies that were first posited in non-fiction works before their appearance in science fiction and subsequent invention, such as ion thruster. To avoid repetitions, the list excludes film adaptations of prior literature containing the same predictions, such as " The Minority Report ".
Most extrasolar planets in fiction are similar to Earth—referred to in the Star Trek franchise as Class M planets—and serve only as settings for the narrative. [1] [2] One reason for this, writes Stephen L. Gillett [Wikidata] in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, is to enable satire. [3]
Inspired by the 1937 science fiction novel Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon, [5] the physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson was the first to formalize the concept of what became known as the "Dyson sphere" in his 1960 Science paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation". Dyson theorized that as the energy requirements of ...
Future of the Earth. Climate change—science fiction dealing with effects of anthropogenic climate change and global warming at the end of the Holocene era; Megacity; Pastoral science fiction—science fiction set in rural, bucolic, or agrarian worlds, either on Earth or on Earth-like planets, in which advanced technologies are downplayed.
For a few days in October 2023, the capital of the science fiction world was Chengdu, China. Fans traveled from around the world as Worldcon, sci-fi ’s biggest annual event, was held in the ...
Other purposes for Mercury in modern science fiction include as a base for studying the Sun, as in the 1980 novel Sundiver by David Brin where humans attempt to determine whether there is extraterrestrial life inside the Sun. [2] [3] [16] Similarly, the planet is used as a solar power station in the 2005 novel Mercury, part of Ben Bova's Grand ...