Galaxies in fiction

Galaxies other than the Milky Way are popular settings for creators of science fiction, particularly those working with broad-scale space opera settings. Among the most common settings are the Andromeda Galaxy, the Magellanic Clouds, and the Triangulum Galaxy, all part of the Local Group close to the Milky Way, and in the cases of Andromeda and Triangulum the Local Group's two largest other galaxies. The difficulties involved in crossing the immense distances between galaxies are often overlooked in this type of science fiction.

M31 ('Andromeda Galaxy')

Andromeda Galaxy, a spiral galaxy in the Local Group, imaged in ultraviolet light

The Andromeda Galaxy has appeared in a number of science fiction works, as a source of alien life forms that invade the Milky Way galaxy, or as a setting for alien worlds and territories. Examples include the following:

Literature

• The novel Andromeda Nebula by Ivan Yefremov is named after the Andromeda Galaxy, even though the galaxy itself is only mentioned once, towards the end of the book.
• The novel The Patterns of Chaos by Colin Kapp features an intergalactic assassination attempt originating in the Andromeda Galaxy.
• Much of the fighting in the Revelation Space universe by Alastair Reynolds is caused by one race attempting to prepare the Milky Way for the impending collision with Andromeda, and attempting to wipe out any other race (including humanity) to prevent them interfering.
• Also by Alastair Reynolds, the main story in the novel House of Suns revolves around the "absence", where millions of years ago the Andromeda Galaxy was rendered invisible from the point of view of our Galaxy in order that causality, which would normally be broken by attempted super-luminal travel, would not be violated.
• The Andromeda Galaxy plays an important role in the German space opera Perry Rhodan, from the third cycle on.

Comics

• In Superman: Birthright, writer Mark Waid incorrectly describes Krypton as a megagravity planet circling an M3 star in the Andromeda Galaxy. Krypton is actually in the Milky Way Galaxy
• In Marvel Comics, the Skrull empire consists mainly of "about a thousand worlds" in the Andromeda galaxy. The Nova Corps hail from Xandar, also in the Andromeda galaxy.
• In Schlock Mercenary, the Fleetmind Artificial Intelligence character known as Petey (also P.D., Post-Dated Check Loan, Sword of Inevitable Justice, The Rogue) is currently prosecuting a war against the Paan'uri in their home Galaxy of Andromeda.

Film and television

• In the 1961 BBC television series A for Andromeda, co-authored by astronomer Fred Hoyle, a radio signal is received from the direction of the Andromeda Galaxy. The signal contained instructions for building a super-computer, as well as the code needed to make it run. A year later the sequel series The Andromeda Breakthrough was released.
• In The Galaxy Being, the debut episode of The Outer Limits (1963 TV series), an engineer for a small radio station somehow makes contact with a peaceful alien creature from the Andromeda Galaxy, who gets transported to Earth by accident.
• In the 1968 Star Trek episode "By Any Other Name", the starship Enterprise is hijacked by Kelvans, aliens from an empire spanning the Andromeda Galaxy; their home galaxy was approaching an uninhabitable state and thus they aimed to conquer our own. In another episode, I, Mudd, the lead android says their creators were humanoids from "Andromeda".
• The second season of the 1970s anime series Space Battleship Yamato (known as Star Blazers to Western audiences) featured the Comet Empire, a massive empire contained in an artificial comet, which sought to conquer Earth after having enslaved the entire Andromeda Galaxy.
• The television series Blake's 7 included a battle between Blake's ship (the Liberator) and invaders from the galaxy.
• In the Japanese anime series Galaxy Express 999 and movies, an annual space train from Earth travels to the end of its line and arrives at the machine empire home world of Maetel in Andromeda.
• In Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, the Systems Commonwealth had territory in the Andromeda Galaxy, the Triangulum Galaxy and the Milky Way.
• Doctor Who episodes (precise usage of "Andromeda" not always certain):
  • Mission to the Unknown — The ruler of Earth's solar system mentions that he has attended an intergalactic conference in Andromeda.
  • The Ark in Space — Star Pioneers from Earth reached Andromeda where they fought a war with the Wirrn.
  • Castrovalva — The planet Castrovalva is in the "Phylox series" of Andromeda.
  • The Pirate Planet — Mentions "Andromedan Bloodstones".
  • The Mysterious Planet — Sabalom Glitz and the thieves who stole Matrix secrets from the Time Lords come from Andromeda.
  • Evolution (novel) — The Doctor takes a group of humans who have mutated into mermaids to live on a water planet in the Andromeda Galaxy.
  • Monsters and Villains (reference) — The Face of Boe was around when the stars of the Andromeda Galaxy were still dust.
• In the seventh episode in the first series of the British comedy sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus, blancmanges from the planet Skyron in the Andromeda galaxy were a major plot point. For instance, they are seen to convert people into stereotypical Scotsmen in order to win the Wimbledon tennis tournament, as it was well known that the Scots cannot play tennis (!).
• In the Renkin 3-kyū Magical? Pokān episode "The Spell of Dreams is Magic That Lasts One Day," Aiko has Umu use the magical Happy Chalk to draw a galactic train that could take them to the Andromeda Galaxy as one of Aiko's attempts to gain a human body since she has heard about something like this happening there before. Uma draws up the galactic train and they end up riding it to the Andromeda Galaxy even getting there faster when Uma drew a turbo boose enough for a trip due to the effects of the Happy Chalk lasting until the end of the day's first use. Upon landing on a planet in the Andromeda Galaxy, Uma, Pachira, Liru, and Aiko head to the area near Andromeda Tanashi where a robot would gain a real body or vice versa. It turns out that it takes a full day in order for the body changing to occur. The princesses leave and Aiko now knows that what she heard about the Andromeda Galaxy was true all along.
• In Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, there is a small group of 5 aliens (An Orishan named Bivalvan, a Geochelone Aerios named Galapagus, a Prypiatosian-B named P'andor, a Talpaedan named Andreas, and an Amperi named Ra'ad) kidnapped from the Andromeda Galaxy by Aggregor.
• In "District 9" the "prawns" are from the Andromeda Galaxy.
• In "Julestjerner", a Danish Christmas show consisting of 25 episodes, alien travelers looking like elves visit the earth to bring happiness and peace. These travellers are from the andromeda galaxy

Games

• In the Star Fleet Universe games, the Andromedans (who may or may not have been Kelvans; see Star Trek above) launch a devastating war on the Milky Way, using the Lesser Magellanic Cloud as a stepping-stone.
• In the Sega video game series Phantasy Star, the instruction booklet of the first game states that the Algol Solar System is located deep in the Andromeda Galaxy (while the real Algol is only about 90 light years away from us)
• In Star Trek Online, the alien race known as the Iconians are revealed to have a Gateway network and a Dyson Sphere in the Andromeda Galaxy, which is where they have been hiding since fleeing their homeworld in the Milky Way. Once their invasion of the Milky Way begins, the sphere teleports itself there.
• In Ben 10 Ultimate Alien: Cosmic Destruction, the five Andromeda aliens (listed above) are playable forms for Ben as Water Hazard, Terraspin, NRG, Armodrillo, and AmpFibian.
• In the Space Quest series, there are recurring characters, who are the alter egos of the creators, called the Two Guys from Andromeda.
• In Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, the Andromeda Galaxy is referenced when a message regarding the "closing" of the Milky Way Galaxy server is issued to all Eternal Sphere players. Due to the player party's emergence into 4D space from the Milky Way server of the Eternal Sphere MMO, all current players in that server are advised to relocate to the Andromeda server, which houses its titular galaxy.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda is to be set in the Andromeda Galaxy.

Music

• The Andromeda galaxy has also featured heavily in the central theme of Enigma's sixth album A Posteriori, in which a collision involving the Milky Way is prophesied to occur in the distant future. The most explicit reference to this appears at the album's close with a doom-laden yet mysterious statement, suggesting a collision of the galaxies will give rise to a "new, gigantic cosmic world" being born.
• The Andromeda Galaxy as M31 (its Messier catalog designation) appears in the song Out of the White Hole of the album Flight of the Migrator by Ayreon. There the protagonist after, in the two previous songs of the album, falling into a supermassive black hole located in the center of the quasar 3C 273 and crossing a wormhole located on it, finds and explores the Planet Y, that it's located on Andromeda, before leaving towards Earth.
• In the story of the ship named Iron Savior, as told by the band Iron Savior, in the Andromeda Galaxy there is a region of space called the Realm Of Steel, with a Machine World at its center. Both the Realm Of Steel and the Machine World are feared by the rest of the galaxy.

Large Magellanic Cloud

• In the children's book and animated series Alien Characters, aliens from the Large Magellanic Cloud come together aboard The Celestial Breeze Space Ship and its companion planet Elizabeth with a mission to create a relationship with the aliens of the Milky Way Galaxy. The first 3 series are set within The Large Magellanic Cloud with much of the fourth series spent travelling across the void to the Milky Way Galaxy. Further series refer to regularly flash jumping between the galaxies.
• In the 1988 film My Stepmother Is an Alien, the Clouds of Megallan is a galaxy 92 light years from Earth, and the home planet of the alien Celeste Martin
• In Olaf Stapledon's 1937 science fiction novel Star Maker, there is a group of aliens that live in the Large Magellanic Cloud called the Symbiotics, a super-intelligent symbiotic race composed of telepathically linked arachnoid beings and whale-like ichthyoid beings. The "Symbiotics" are the most advanced intelligent life in the Milky Way Galaxy and its satellite galaxies. The reason is because they combine the manipulative tool-using intelligence of the arachnoids with the contemplative meditative and mathematical intelligence of the ichthyoids. The "Symbiotics" travel in starships equipped with tanks of water for the ichthyoids and piloted by the arachnoids. They conduct vast terraforming projects, terraforming planets in numerous different planetary systems. They also construct large artificial planetoids, hollow spheres filled with water inhabited on the inside by the icthyoids and on the surface by the arachnoids. They have the most advanced and powerful telepathic powers of any race in our galaxy and its satellites and are thus able to stop the War of Galactic Empires within the Milky Way Galaxy by telepathically attacking the military forces of the various Galactic Empires and causing them to have doubts about imperialism. This causes the various Imperial military forces to become totally disorganized. The Galaxy is led into a new era of galactic peace supervised by the democratic and communistic Galactic Community of Worlds, which emerges after the fall of the Galactic Empires.

The Large Magellanic Cloud

• The Large Magellanic Cloud is the destination of the spacecraft Yamato in the first season of the 1970s anime series Space Battleship Yamato (known as Space Cruiser Yamato or Star Blazers to Western audiences). The LMC is the host galaxy for the destination, Iscandar, and the home planet of the alien force attacking Earth, Gamilas. The Yamato must use an untested faster-than-light drive to make the 296,000 light year round trip in one Earth year.
• In Scientology, these are said to be literal clouds. They are involved in the fictional story of Helatrobus.
• In Marvel Comics, the Large Magellanic Cloud is home to the Kree empire but its territory may extend into other galaxies.
• In Alan Dean Foster's novel Glory Lane, the inimical Sikan race is reported to have come from the Magellanic Clouds.
• In Arthur C Clarke's novel Rendezvous with Rama, the giant spaceship Rama is at the end directed towards the Large Magellanic Cloud. Its journey through the solar system was apparently just to use the Sun to refuel and as a gravitational slingshot.
• In A. E. van Vogt's Mission to the Stars an Earth's Spaceship, the Star Cluster, is searching for the long lost human colonies of the Fifty Suns.
• In The Forever War, a 1974 science fiction novel by Joe Haldeman, a significant battle takes place on a 'collapsar' portal planet in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
• In James Blish's series Cities in Flight, hero John Amalfi and the New Earth planet escape to the Greater Magellenic Cloud to avoid unjust prosecution for an atrocity.
• In the Robert Silverberg novel, Collision Course, a wayward space ship trying to fly back to Earth gets lost in "null-space" and ends up emerging into normal space within the Large Magellanic Cloud; the captain suggests they find a permanent home there as their chances of getting home are extremely remote and they are fortunate to have dropped into normal space within a galaxy. Ultimately, they are returned to the Milky Way by sympathetic, superior aliens. The Milky Way galaxy is easily visible, evoking a feeling of loneliness and separation when the crew realize they're looking at their home galaxy.
• In the game Infinite Space, the main character flees to the Large Magellanic Cloud after the civilizations of the Small Magellanic Cloud are taken over by an invading empire. Most of the second half of the game is spent in this galaxy.
• In the Deadlands: Lost Colony roleplaying game, the Faraway system is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
• In Halo, the parasitic Flood was said to have come from Large Magellanic Cloud on ancient cargo ships. In the novel Halo: Silentium, Forerunners (who called it "Path Kethona") were revealed to have chased the surviving Precursors during a Forerunner war and ruthlessly killed off nearly the entire species to the Magellanic Cloud. The Forerunners that committed this act were ashamed and lived the rest of their lives on a planet in the Magellanic Cloud.
• The Doctor Who story The Ribos Operation is described as being set "three light centuries" from "the Magellanic cloud".
• In the 1998 science fiction film, Species II, an uncredited Peter Boyle says the aliens of the title originally came from the Magellanic Galaxy (sic).

Small Magellanic Cloud

In the nearby galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, a massive star has exploded as a supernova, and begun to dissipate its interior into a spectacular display of colorful filaments.

• The Small Magellanic Cloud is the site of the climax of Robert A. Heinlein's novel Have Space Suit—Will Travel, in which the spectacular view of the Milky Way is admired.
• In two Star Trek books from Pocket Books - The Lost Era: The Sundered and Titan: The Red King, the Small Magellanic Cloud is home to the Neyel, an offshoot of humanity who dominated several species native to the Cloud.
• The Small Magellanic Cloud is the location of an Alderson disk onto which the surface of Cold War-era Earth is transplanted in Charles Stross's short story "Missile Gap."
• In the Star Fleet Universe, the Small Magellanic Cloud (referred to in that setting as the Lesser Magellanic Cloud) is home to a number of starfaring empires; such as the Baduvai Imperium, the Eneen Protectorates and the Maghadim Hives. All of these empires were conquered by the Andromedans, who then used the Cloud as a jumping off point into the Milky Way. The Cloud was eventually liberated from Andromedan rule in Operation Unity; a coalition of task forces sent by the Federation, Klingons and other Alpha Octant powers.
• Iain M. Banks' novel The Player of Games is partially set in the Empire of Azad in the Small Magellanic Cloud.
• In Dan Simmons' Hyperion series, the planet Earth is thought swallowed up by a black hole but is actually transported to somewhere within the Lesser Magellanic Cloud.
• In Larry Niven's Ringworld novels, the Puppeteers are fleeing the Milky Way core explosion in the five planet Fleet of Worlds. They are heading in the general direction of the Magellanic Clouds at sublight speed.
• In Edmond Hamilton's Star Kings series, a race of powerful telepaths called H'Harn originated in the Small Magellanic Cloud has made two attempts to conquer the Milky Way Galaxy.
• Salo, the space traveler stranded on Titan in Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan, hails from the fictional planet Tralfamadore, located in the Small Magellanic Cloud.
• The Small Magellanic Cloud is the destination of the generation ship that is the subject of Ted Reynolds's novella Ker-Plop.
• The first half of the video game Infinite Space takes place in the Small Magellanic cloud.
• The Small Magellanic Cloud is the home of the 'Maker' aliens in Neal Asher's novel Polity Agent.

M33 ('Triangulum Galaxy')

• In the novel Voyage of the Space Beagle by A.E. Van Vogt, the starship Space Beagle is sent out by Earth to investigate alien life forms. When it reaches the M33 galaxy in Triangulum, it encounters an enormous disembodied life form called The Anabis that covers the entire galaxy. "The Anabis" turns planets into jungle planets because it lives off the life force of living beings when they die and jungle planets have the highest rate of ecological energetics. Since "The Anabis" has destroyed civilized planets in this way, the crew of the starship devises a way to defeat this being.
• In the fictional Star Trek universe, the Triangulum Galaxy is where the USS Enterprise-D is warped to after a being known as The Traveler uses his knowledge to influence the ship's warp drive. M33 is said to be approximately 2.7 million light years away from the United Federation of Planets territories, or about three hundred years' travel time for the Federation's most advanced vessels. The galaxy was first encountered in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Where No One Has Gone Before".
• In the Star Fleet Universe, the Triangulum Galaxy was once dominated by a now-defunct precursor empire; the civil war, which tore the Old Empire asunder, left two major successor states (the loyalist Imperium and the rebel Frigian Kingdom) picking up the pieces. Another elder species, the Helgardians, appeared in M33 at the same time; in the modern era, an array of younger powers (such as the Mallaran Empire) would emerge on the back of Helgardian-traded warp technology.
• The second season finale of seaQuest DSV featured the seaQuest being transported to the planet Hyperion, over eleven million light years away from Earth in the Triangulum Galaxy.
• On Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda the Systems Commonwealth had territory in the Triangulum Galaxy in addition to the Andromeda and Milky Way Galaxies. The new homeworld of which, Tarazed, was located in this Galaxy.
• In the Belgian comic book series Yoko Tsuno written by Roger Leloup, M33 is the home of the blue-skinned Vineans, whom the main characters befriend. About a third of the stories take place in this galaxy.
• In the Orion's Arm universe, the Triangulum galaxy is home to an extra-galactic civilization, having sent a powerful warning message about a massive artificial object heading towards the local group several million years ago.
• In the 2004 Iain M. Banks novel The Algebraist, the Triangulum Nebula was the starting point of the Long Crossing, a 30-million-year journey undertaken by the Dweller civilization to return to the world of Nasqueron where much of the novel is set.
• In the Crysis video game series, the alien antagonists, named the "Ceph", originate from this galaxy.
• The 2000 computer game Gunman Chronicles takes place in M33, where humanity has established multiple colonies and has the ability to trigger supernovae.
• In March 2012 the news satire website The Onion reported that a fleet of warships from the planet Zarklan 12 in the Triangulum Galaxy has arrived at Earth to intervene in the Syrian War on the side of the Syrian rebel alliance. "Supreme Emperor and Dynastic Overlord Thuu'l", the Onion reported, is disturbed by Earth's apathy toward the massacres of innocent Syrians.
• The promotional posters for the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial give the phrase "three million lightyears from home", leading many to believe that the title character hails from M33. Furthermore, the Easter egg of E.T.'s race appearing in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace have many Star Wars fans pointing to M33 as the "galaxy far, far away".

'Pegasus Galaxy'

• The Pegasus Dwarf Irregular Galaxy is the "Pegasus Galaxy" in which the television series Stargate Atlantis takes place.

M51 ('Whirlpool Galaxy')

• The Whirlpool Galaxy or M51 was used as the basis for the galaxy in which the story of the Homeworld series of games takes place. The original Homeworld game takes the player on a journey from the galaxy's outer rim to its core; this is accurately illustrated by the background images as the game campaign progresses.
• The Whirlpool Galaxy appears in the video game, Ōkami where it is summoned by the main character, Amaterasu, to create a whirlpool in the ocean that she uses to travel to an aquatic palace.
• M51 also features in the Wingmakers.com mythology, in which it is said to be the home galaxy of an extremely advanced synthetic race (called 'the Animus'), who invade earth in the early part of the twenty-first century in order to conduct genetic experiments.

M81

• In the fictional Star Fleet Universe, M81 is the home galaxy for a number of star-faring species, including the Tholians (who conquered that galaxy and ruled it for many centuries), the Nebuline (one of the Tholians' former enemies, whose remaining nebula-bound colonies laid the groundwork for M81 piracy.) and the Seltorians (the last of a series of enforcer species for the Tholians; their Revolt virtually exterminated the Tholians as a people, and their subsequent Tribunal fleets pursued exile Tholians to other galaxies, such as the Milky Way ) and the Bolosco (some of whom established themselves in the Omega Octant of the Milky Way).
• M81 is the galaxy Destiny is headed, as of episode 16 in the TV series Stargate Universe.

Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte Galaxy

• Part of the Lensman series by E. E. Smith takes place in Lundmark's Nebula. This is a clear reference to astronomer Knut Lundmark whose particular area of specialization was the study of galaxies, and may refer to the Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte Galaxy. — albeit this hypothesis would be contradicted by the series establishing material stating that "Lundmark's Nebula" and the Milky Way Galaxy collided "edge-on" during the "planet-forming era, as well as by stated discrepancies in the books regarding distances and structures compared to the real Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte."

Fictional galaxies

• Murray Leinster's novel The Last Spaceship has escapees from our galaxy founding a new civilization in a remote galaxy.
• The Stargate movie and television series feature several fictional galaxies, including the Kaliem galaxy (a vague reference to the constellation Caelum, perhaps), in which the planet Abydos is located in the film (this was later retconned to be in the Milky Way), and the Ida galaxy, home of the Asgard alien species. The Ori in Stargate SG-1 come from another unnamed galaxy that's in a different supercluster of Galaxies, and use the Supergate to travel to the Milky Way galaxy.
• In Marvel Comics, the Shi'ar Imperium is within a region referred to as the "Shi'ar Galaxy" and is controlled by the Shi'ar race. As this region is said to be situated close to the Skrull and Kree Empires mentioned above, and is one of the three main alien empires of the Marvel Universe, the Shi'ar empire may actually be the Triangulum Galaxy or one of the many dwarf galaxies within the Local Group. The Black Galaxy is the home of Ego the Living Planet.
• Star Wars is set "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...".
• In the Superman film series, Krypton is said to be located in the "Xeno Galaxy".
• In the Doctor Who series, the Face of Boe is said to be the oldest living inhabitants of the Isop galaxy. The insectoid inhabitants of the planet Vortis were also from the Isop galaxy. Representatives of the six "Outer Galaxies" meet in The Daleks' Master Plan. In Doctor Who novels the Daleks are said to have colonised the Seraphia galaxy where the Dalek Empire rules.
• In Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy, Terra Venture and the Lost Galaxy Rangers travel to the 'Lost Galaxy', a galaxy that seems to exist outside our dimension and which can only be reached by portal. After many adventures in this galaxy Terra Venture and the Rangers escape the Lost Galaxy through a portal opened by reciting the Lost Galaxy Spell backwards.
• In the book Skylark of Valeron (part of the Skylark of Space series by E. E. Smith), the protagonists visit another galaxy after being rotated through the fourth dimension and visit a number of different galaxies in the last book in the series, Skylark DuQuesne.
• The finale of the 2007 anime series Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann features the titular mecha as being larger than a galaxy, and capable of wielding small galaxies as deadly projectiles.
• In the Mel Brooks film Spaceballs Captain Lone Starr hails from the 'Ford' galaxy, in reference both to Harrison Ford and the automobile Ford Galaxie.
• Insomniac Games' popular video game franchise 'Ratchet & Clank' features three fictional galaxies called the Solana Galaxy, the Bogon Galaxy, and the Polaris Galaxy.
• In the 1956 book Islands of Space (part of the Arcot, Wade, and Morey stories by John W. Campbell) the protagonists are lost in space and ask the astronomers of a planet in another galaxy to help them find the Milky Way by looking for a spiral galaxy with two small satellite galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
• In Episode 1.21 of The Outer Limits, "The Children of Spider County," the alien/human hybrids are said to be from the Krell Galaxy (an allusion to the fictional extinct extraterrestrial race, native to Altair IV, in the s.f. film classic Forbidden Planet).
• In Space Battleship Yamato (also known as Star Blazers), the final major battle before reaching Gamilas/Iscandar is said to occur in what the characters call "The Rainbow Galaxy". However, onscreen, this looked more like a group of planetary masses than an actual galaxy. Presumably, the name comes from the different color of the different planets. This designation was only used in the English language Star Blazers. In the original Japanese Yamato, it was properly called the Rainbow System.
• In the lore of space MMORPG EVE Online humanity has colonized a distant galaxy named "New Eden", where the game takes place.

External links

• Galaxy at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• As Others See Us, a poem by Jared Carter on the view of the Milky Way from the Large Magellanic Cloud.