Interstellar Ark - Fiction

Fiction

• The 1933 novel When Worlds Collide is one of the earliest examples of an interstellar ark. To save humanity from extinction when a star is about to destroy Earth, a group of astronomers construct a massive spaceship to carry forty humans, in addition to livestock and equipment, to a new planet.

• Jack Williamson's 1934 story "Born of the Sun" is another early example, in which planets are revealed to be no more than eggs for immense creatures. A steel magnate and his geologist/astrophysicist uncle create an "ark of space" to preserve the human race in the six months left in the Earth's existence. The ark is designed to hold two thousand people, be powered off of cosmic rays, and to recycle water and waste to create synthetic food and air, thus providing for an unlimited survival of its crew in space.

• A group of three large arks served as the homes and battleships of the space-faring Thraki race in William C. Dietz's Legion of the Damned series.

• The concept of an interstellar ark was used humorously in the cult sci-fi classic The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in the form of the B-Ark of the Golgafrincham Ark Fleet, filled to capacity with cryosleeping advertising executives, management consultants, independent filmmakers, and other "undesirables" whom the Golgafrinchams wanted to expel. Hitchhiker's Guide author Douglas Adams had first proposed these plot elements for a TV special that was to have featured Ringo Starr, but the show was never produced.

• The Starlost is a television series about a generation ship lost in space, whose inhabitants had forgotten that they were on a ship.

• In the PC game Outpost series, an interstellar ark named Conestoga was used to evacuate a population of humans from the impending destruction of Earth.

• The PC game Alien Legacy features "seedships", used to spread mankind due to an interstellar war that might wipe out the Earth.

• The SS Botany Bay was a sleeper ship used by Khan Noonien Singh in the Star Trek first season episode "Space Seed".

• A Star Trek third season episode entitled "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" takes place on a hollow asteroid generation 'ship' called Yonada.

• The Centauri Princess is a cylindrical interstellar ark peopled with humans, depicted in elaborate detail in the novel First Ark to Alpha Centauri by A. Ahad

• The cylindrical generation ship Vanguard serves as the centerpiece of Robert A. Heinlein's 1963 novel Orphans of the Sky, a combination of two shorter 1941 works.

• In the animated Disney-Pixar film WALL-E, the space vessel Axiom, originally intended as a temporary dwelling for humanity for a 5 year period during which robots were to clean up an environmentally devastated Earth, becomes a de facto ark housing multiple generations of humans over a period of 700 years.

• In Stargate Atlantis third season episode "The Ark", Colonel Sheppard's team discovers a facility inside a hollowed-out moon that turns out to be an ark created by the people of the planet around which the moon is in orbit. The ark was built to preserve the existence of the people from the planet and rebuild its civilization after a Wraith defeat. People were stored in stasis in the ark using Wraith beaming technology. The government then waged an unwinnable war against the Wraith, and purposely decimated the remainder of their own population with atomic bombs, leading the Wraith to believe that these people are extinct.

• Episode 30 of the radio drama Dimension X, "Universe", featured a seed ship whose human population had split into the lower deck inhabitants and the upper deck inhabitants. The upper deck inhabitants were mutated by radiation leaking through the ship's hull. The inhabitants were not aware they were on a ship and believed the vessel contained the entirety of the universe. The episode was written by Robert A. Heinlein.

• In the Warhammer 40,000 fictional universe, the Eldar race live and travel aboard interstellar arks, Craftworlds

• In Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke, an alien interstellar ark transits through Earth's solar system.

• In Hull Zero Three, by Greg Bear (2010), an interstellar ark is equipped with a library of biological forms and generates customized individuals as needed during its voyage.

• In the Film Pandorum a 2009 German-British science fiction thriller film written by Travis Milloy and directed by Christian Alvart The human race is sent out to seed a new world after the destruction of Earth in their ship Elysium.