Most science fiction tells fundamentally human stories, on human timescales. However sometimes science fiction authors venture into the longer timescales on which cosmic evolution itself unfolds.

Interstellar comets are rare and unusual visitors - but while they're alien, are they result of intelligences beyond our Solar System? It is a premise that has formed part of the science fiction repertoire for many years.

Given the essential role of the Sun in life on our world, perhaps its natural that a large body of solar system explores the concept of how life might survive on worlds without their own sun - rogue planets.

Tales of people under the sea are likely as old as humanity. In more recent times, fantasy has been succeeded by science fiction which explores what it would mean for humanity to live as natives in water, and how that might be achieved.

A bonus blog to celebrate a year of Cosmic Stories, detouring from science exploration to a brief survey of our host town in science fiction.

The concept of a scanner - a remote sensing device that can identify evidence of life at a distance - is a common staple of science fiction. While some science fiction takes this to an extreme, it’s neither a new idea nor one that is entirely divorced from science fact.

A lot of science fiction assumes we will adapt and use alien technologies, despite dramatic differences in their development and background physics. But how realistic is this?

In the mid twentieth century, young children were wowed by tales of heroism by a succession of space pilots with unlikely or alliterative names. But what was their attraction and impact?

Today we look at three stories, each of which imagines a single Earth astronaut stranded alone on the Martian surface, and considers what they tell us about changing conceptions of Martian habitability.

For the many young people who thrilled to the adventures of characters such as Dan Dare or Doctor Who, the factual information presented in Annual gift books may well have provided their first insights into the genuine science and sweeping discoveries which lay behind their idols.

In a universe in which faster-than-light travel is, to the best of our current underssanding, impossible, journeys to other stars are likely to be measured in decades or centuries rather than days or weeks.

If the laws of mathematics and science are the same everywhere in the Universe, then these might provide a key common ground for communication - as science fiction has explored.

The visual imagery of humans struggling with everyday objects many times their own size, or encountering usually benign animals as terrifying monsters, captures the imagination. Hence the popularity of the SF of miniaturisation.

Is it possible for individuals to own entire planets? Science fiction has explored this question more than once, in a range of different contexts.

A common theme in science fiction is to consider the possibility of teleportation - the ability to move instantaneously between two locations, whether through natural mental abilities or mechanical means

Many science fiction stories consider the possibility of terraforming Mars - but what about the reverse: areoforming Earth?

Exotic binary and multiple star systems, so very different from our own Solar System, have captured the imagination of many astronomers. But these strange environments also captured the imagination of the public and of science fiction writers too.

Alternate histories are one of the mainstays of science fiction. A subset of these are notable for the attention they pay to our scientific history, and how it influenced the development of modern culture.

The role of organised religion in the preservation of knowledge across extended time periods has been explored in the science fiction of religious futurisms.

Looking at science fiction which considers rule by science in a variety of forms.

One of the key functions of science fiction is to explore both the potentialities and the risks of technologies, particularly those which are new or to which we aspire. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, automation has been a preoccupation of SF almost since it began.

The quest for highly extended or eternal life, in the form of longevity treatments, technological solutions or genetic improvement, has been a staple of science fiction almost since it started

The 1970s children's television SF drama "Timeslip" posed questions of scientific ethics which are still relevant to the current day.

Looking at the astronomy and the catastrophism in an early episode of The Avengers from 1963.