Which Sci-Fi shows or novels tackle "god-like space clouds"?
March 24, 2019 6:32 AM Subscribe
I'm cribbing from this review
"There are boundless storyline possibilities to pursue when writing for a science fiction show. Not every week has to confront god-like space clouds, or warring civilizations that manifest some internal struggle of human psychology, or anything heavy and intense like that"
is this a star trek reference?
The Enterprise-A travels to "find God" on a planet at the center of the Galaxy in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. (He's not technically in space, though.)
The Enterprise-D gets trapped in a pocket dimension by a godlike entity named Nagilum in the second-season episode "Where Silence Has Lease".
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:52 AM on March 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
The Enterprise-D gets trapped in a pocket dimension by a godlike entity named Nagilum in the second-season episode "Where Silence Has Lease".
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:52 AM on March 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
Star Trek: Memory Alpha: Non-corporeal lifeform
See also: Futurama's Where No Fan Has Gone Before.
posted by zamboni at 6:54 AM on March 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
See also: Futurama's Where No Fan Has Gone Before.
posted by zamboni at 6:54 AM on March 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
The Hitchhiker’s Guide series eventually features a godlike cloud computer in space. It appears as a haze entirely enclosing a planet— Hactar.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:02 AM on March 24, 2019
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:02 AM on March 24, 2019
Fans got mad when Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer depicted Galactus as a godlike space cloud instead of a giant dude.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:27 AM on March 24, 2019
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:27 AM on March 24, 2019
Response by poster: these are great thank you. have any of these tackled "intelligent clouds" in a bit more hard sci-fi manner?
posted by beshtya at 7:49 AM on March 24, 2019
posted by beshtya at 7:49 AM on March 24, 2019
How about Sir Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud, which IIRC, is based around a sentient cloud in space?
posted by Logophiliac at 7:52 AM on March 24, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Logophiliac at 7:52 AM on March 24, 2019 [5 favorites]
Response by poster: yes, indeed, the black cloud is a good one. are there any more recent examples
posted by beshtya at 8:06 AM on March 24, 2019
posted by beshtya at 8:06 AM on March 24, 2019
Isaac Asimov's Foundation's Edge. The cloud isn't there in the book, but smaller versions exist.
posted by Fukiyama at 8:10 AM on March 24, 2019
posted by Fukiyama at 8:10 AM on March 24, 2019
I'm seriously wondering if the author was thinking of the "god like space cloud" in this Rick and Morty episode.
posted by belau at 8:23 AM on March 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by belau at 8:23 AM on March 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfellas
More Futurama, Bender becomes a god.... Sorta... Then meets a bigger god and has profound conversation
posted by Jacen at 8:35 AM on March 24, 2019
More Futurama, Bender becomes a god.... Sorta... Then meets a bigger god and has profound conversation
posted by Jacen at 8:35 AM on March 24, 2019
Response by poster: @Fukiyama, what is this thing you speak of? i don;t recall any such thing in foundation?
posted by beshtya at 9:08 AM on March 24, 2019
posted by beshtya at 9:08 AM on March 24, 2019
I would guess that the first 'God-like space cloud' was described by Olaf Stapledon in Star Maker (1937):
It might be worth browsing TV Tropes too for some other sentient cloud type things.
posted by 0bvious at 10:02 AM on March 24, 2019 [5 favorites]
Gradually I discovered that I had made contact not with micro-organisms, nor yet with worlds or stars or galactic minds, but with the minds of the great nebulae before their substance had disintegrated into stars to form the galaxies. Presently I was able to follow their history from the time when they first wakened, when they first existed as discrete clouds of gas, flying apart after the explosive act of creation, even to the time when, with the birth of the stellar hosts out of their substance, they sank into senility and death....Also, it is well worth checking out Stapledon's precursor to Star Maker, Last and First Men (1930), where many other strange minds are described.
Each of the great nebulae was aware of its own lentoid body as a single volume compact of tingling currents. Each craved fulfilment of its organic potency, craved easement from the pressure of physical energy welling softly within it, craved at the same time free expression of all its powers of movement, craved also something more...
In the earliest phase of all, when these huge creatures were still very close to one another and also immature, their parleying was concerned wholly with the effort to reveal themselves to one another. With child-like glee they laboriously communicated their joy in life, their hungers and pains, their whims, their idiosyncrasies, their common passion to be once more united, and to be, as men have sometimes said, at one in God.
It might be worth browsing TV Tropes too for some other sentient cloud type things.
posted by 0bvious at 10:02 AM on March 24, 2019 [5 favorites]
The short story "The Island" by Peter Watts offers a more recent take on something like a black cloud entity.
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:48 AM on March 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:48 AM on March 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
Oh, Violet Allen's "Infinite Love Engine" has another recent example of a god-like space cloud in recent SF/F short fiction.
If planet-sized god-like entities count, there's also Ego from Marvel Comics, who recently featured in Guardians of the Galaxy 2. IIRC, people fly around inside him, giving him a space cloud ambience.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:02 AM on March 24, 2019
If planet-sized god-like entities count, there's also Ego from Marvel Comics, who recently featured in Guardians of the Galaxy 2. IIRC, people fly around inside him, giving him a space cloud ambience.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:02 AM on March 24, 2019
Response by poster: damn mefi u shure know yer syfy
thanks y'all
i mean keep em comin
posted by beshtya at 12:34 PM on March 24, 2019
thanks y'all
i mean keep em comin
posted by beshtya at 12:34 PM on March 24, 2019
There's a sideplot in Iain Banks's The Algebraist, and also Stanislaw Lem's short "How Microx and Gigant Made the Universe Expand".
also: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CosmicEntity
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:52 PM on March 24, 2019
also: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CosmicEntity
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:52 PM on March 24, 2019
How about the “Lions and Tigers and Bears” that live in the “Void Which Binds” in Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos?
posted by ZipRibbons at 3:56 PM on March 24, 2019
posted by ZipRibbons at 3:56 PM on March 24, 2019
beshtya, I am thinking of Trevize's choice and the Milky Way eventually becoming sentient. Maybe that doesn't fit your idea?
posted by Fukiyama at 5:32 PM on March 24, 2019
posted by Fukiyama at 5:32 PM on March 24, 2019
Writer Tony Daniel (not to be confused with the C-3PO actor, Daniels), wrote a pair of books, Metaplanetary and Superluminal basically one story in 2 volumes, of the post-singularity humans fighting an interplanetary war in our solar system. While Earth and many of the colonized outer planets had regular biological humans around, there were many others who were living in the grist, the pervasive nanotechnology matter which could emulate or contain a human personality/person/soul, and the war was, substantially, a war for these people to be recognized as humans equal to the flesh-and-blood (and grist) humans.
Relevant to your question, there were a number of people who were large clouds of rock, big spirals of asteroid-matter who traveled among the planets propelled by grist-generated laser, and tried their level best to stay out of the war. Some of them preserved a biological body within their giant rock bodies, but that was mainly for the purpose of interacting, on occasion, with people of a similar body type. The book talks a bit about their social interactions, sexual dimorphism (by convention) and how they'd get it on, even. They are not, however, particularly godlike, except insofar as their innate immortality, by virtue of their dispersed soul, basically.
posted by Sunburnt at 7:42 PM on March 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
Relevant to your question, there were a number of people who were large clouds of rock, big spirals of asteroid-matter who traveled among the planets propelled by grist-generated laser, and tried their level best to stay out of the war. Some of them preserved a biological body within their giant rock bodies, but that was mainly for the purpose of interacting, on occasion, with people of a similar body type. The book talks a bit about their social interactions, sexual dimorphism (by convention) and how they'd get it on, even. They are not, however, particularly godlike, except insofar as their innate immortality, by virtue of their dispersed soul, basically.
posted by Sunburnt at 7:42 PM on March 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
TVTropes: Energy Beings, though as the article says these are often portrayed more like intelligent gas clouds
posted by Rhaomi at 11:49 PM on March 24, 2019
posted by Rhaomi at 11:49 PM on March 24, 2019
I don't know if it is really what you're looking for but Jack McDevitt's Academy series features a cloud which isn't exactly godlike (TV tropes labels the cloud as a Big Dumb Object) but periodically destroys civilisations (which seems pretty Biblical to me).
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:19 AM on March 25, 2019
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:19 AM on March 25, 2019
« Older Recommend word game apps without advertising | On LOA, Giving Notice Upon Return, Feeling Guilty Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by johngoren at 6:40 AM on March 24, 2019