Trope-a-Day: Terraform

Terraform: Played mostly straight, but note that the general term is “ecopoesis” – after all, different species have different ideas as to how the ideal planet looks, most of which are not at all “terra”-like.

Also, only mostly, because both the constraints of physical reality (you only have so much sunlight, even with solettas, and gravity does not change easily) and those of economics, not to mention aesthetics, often mean meeting the planet somewhere in the middle with pantropic adaptations of the permanent residents.  (And if the process starts with a life-bearing world – well, in that case, responsible ecopoesis means the even more complex variation of an already complex and incredibly expensive task, namely, building a functional hybrid ecosystem.  Ecocide is unethical entropism, and thus very much illegal under almost every circumstance.)

And let’s not forget that depending on the magnitude of the changes involved, we’re generally talking high decades (for trivial changes) to low millennia (both extreme cases; middling centuries is more usual) to make them comfortably self-sustaining.  Even with very high technology indeed, a planetary ecology has a lot of momentum.

(A “cool Arean” archetype is actually the most common result, at least within the Associated Worlds.)