Exploring the discussion of silicon and other mineral-based life in science fiction.

Looking at modern era insights into Venus in science and science fiction

Looking at early representations of Venus in science fiction

Looking at issues of biocontamination and planetary protection

Dinosaurs! On a spaceship!

Human beings have evolved in an environment of constant gravity. Here we explore the challenge of artificial gravity in SF

Looking at degenerate futures for humanity in science fiction.

One of the common uses of science fiction is to imagine the habitability of worlds very different from our own. Some famous science fiction narratives consider a desert as their setting, but how is human habitability envisaged in these worlds and how plausible are they?

World ships - planets which move under the deliberate control of their inhabitants or others - are a staple of science fiction. But how plausible are representations of world ships in SF, and why are they so popular?

Published in 1955, Arthur C. Clarke’s The Star is an unusual take on the relationship between science, religion and science fiction. In this blog, we take a look at this story in detail.

The asteroid belt is a collection of small rocky worlds, ranging in size from pebbles to the dwarf planet Ceres at almost a thousand kilometres across. Located in orbit between Mars and Jupiter they have been an important site in the imagination of both SF writers and scientists alike.

Human settlement of space has been a given since the earliest science fiction stories were written. The High Frontier was an influential popular science book published in 1976 by an American physicist Gerard K O’Neill. The High Frontier had an enormous impact, and cylindrical space habitats have since acquired the name O’Neill Cylinders, both in fact and in fiction.

Supernovae, the explosions that end the lives of certain stars, are amongst the brightest and most dramatic events in the Universe. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they’ve attracted their fair degree of attention from the writers of science fiction.

Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future, in his journeys through the Solar System, has given us a fascinating snapshot of how our understanding of solar system habitability has changed. Here I take a look at Saturn's moon system and its very different representations in 1953 and 2017.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.