Drake Equation - in Fiction and Popular Culture

In Fiction and Popular Culture

The Drake equation and the Fermi paradox have been discussed many times in science fiction, including both serious takes in stories such as Frederik Pohl's Hugo award-winning "Fermi and Frost", which cites the paradox as evidence for the short lifetime of technical civilizations—that is, the possibility that once a civilization develops the power to destroy itself (perhaps by nuclear winter), it does. Optimistic results of the equation along with unobserved extraterrestrials also serves as backdrop for humorous suggestions such as Terry Bisson's classic short story "They're Made Out of Meat," that there are many extraterrestrial civilizations but that they are deliberately ignoring humanity.

• In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, the Drake equation is briefly flashed during the opening theme song, a reference to Haruhi's intention to find aliens among other things.
• The equation was cited by Gene Roddenberry as supporting the multiplicity of inhabited planets shown in Star Trek, the television show he created. However, Roddenberry didn't have the equation with him, and he was forced to "invent" it for his original proposal. The invented equation created by Roddenberry is:

Drake has gently pointed out, however, that a number raised to the first power is merely the number itself. A poster with both versions of the equation was seen in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Future's End."

• The formula is also cited in Michael Crichton's Sphere.
• In James A. Michener's novel Space, several of the characters gather to discuss the formula and ponder its implications.
• In the Evolution-based game Spore, after eventually coming into contact with living beings on other planets, a picture is shown, along with the comment, "Drake's Equation was right...a living alien race!"
• George Alec Effinger's short story "One" uses an expedition confident in the Drake Equation as a backdrop to explore the psychological implications of a lonely humanity.
• Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space trilogy and short stories focus very much on the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox, using genocidal self-replicating machines as a great filter.
• Stephen Baxter's Manifold Trilogy explores the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox in three distinct perspectives.
• Ian R. MacLeod's 2001 novella "New Light On The Drake Equation" concerns a man who is obsessed by the Drake Equation.
• The Ultimate Marvel comic book mini-series Ultimate Secret has Reed Richards examining the Drake Equation and considering the Fermi Paradox. He claims that when Drake plugged in his numbers, he came up with 10,000 alien races that would have a civilization advanced enough to contact Earth, but only one that Richards knew of had done it (actually 10 others already had, and two more were about to, but Richards did not know that at the time). In discussion with Sue Storm, it is revealed that he believes that advanced civilizations destroy themselves. In the story it turns out that they are also destroyed by Gah Lak Tus.
• Eleanor Ann Arroway paraphrases the Drake equation several times in the film Contact, using the magnitude of N * and its implications on the output value to justify the SETI program. However, in one scene of the 1997 motion picture based upon the Carl Sagan novel, she misstates her Drake Equation result by several billion.
• In the 20th episode of the second season of the television series The Big Bang Theory, the equation was mentioned by Howard Wolowitz and detailed by Sheldon Cooper. Howard goes on to modify the terms in the equation to project the likelihood of a member of the group hooking up with a member of the opposite sex.
• The band Carbon Based Lifeforms incorporates the Drake equation into their song "Abiogenesis," off of their 2006 album World of Sleepers.