Trope-a-Day: Space Whale

Space Whale: Not naturally, at least – so far, no-one’s found naturally evolved space-native life – but, y’know, once they’d got around to uplifting cetaceans it was close to inevitable that some of them would take an interest in that other endless three-dimensional environment (not to mention being better instinctually equipped than most hominids to serve as a starship’s sailing master), and between them and hydrogen-breathing gas giant life and ambitious genetic engineers, it was equally inevitable that people would engineer actual Space Whales, equipped to swim-sail the vacuum (with biosolar sails, mostly) and harvest volatiles where they can find them.  Just how it goes.

And then there are their cousins that prefer to dwell in the solar corona…