User:JCDenton2052/mh2

Kardashev scale/Classifying fictional civilizations

These categorizations are not firm, and are neither complete nor absolute. Most science fiction space opera writers do not specifically write their works with Kardashev classification in mind. Isaac Asimov's short story The Last Question covers many of the same themes as Kardashev's papers, in its descriptions of the future use of energy and entropy by human civilization; however it does not mention the scale, as it was written in 1956.

• Type I
  • The Pierson's Puppeteers from Larry Niven's Known Space books. Their society consumes so much power from Total conversion that surface temperatures are maintained, by waste heat, even after the planet is moved 1/10th of a light year away from its star. Power production must therefore be equivalent to the previous insolation. See Fleet of Worlds.
  • The Krell, the (extinct) inhabitants of Forbidden Planet. They left behind a facility of enormous power (described as 9,600 thermonuclear generators occupying 33,000 cubic kilometers), though the purpose was initially unknown. However, a monster created by Dr. Morbius's id was able to tap into this power. According to the power meters shown in the generating plant during the attack, energy use was about 10¹⁵ times that used by Dr. Morbius and his daughter under normal conditions. Assuming normal use would be 1–10 KW, this puts them at Type I or slightly above.

• Type II
  • The United Federation of Planets of Star Trek.
  • The People of the Worldsphere of Doctor Who first seen in The Also People.
  • The territory of Eelong in the Pendragon Series by D. J. MacHale utilizes all power from a belt of suns known as the Skaa.
  • The Galactic Empire of The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov is a galaxy-spanning civilization which possesses the technology necessary to harness energy on a planetary level. Combined with the large number of planets, this produces a Type II civilization.

• Type III
  • The Asgard from the Sci-Fi series Stargate. Thor's race employs technology allowing them to cause time dilation. Their ships are capable of crossing the voids between galaxies in mere days to weeks.
  • The Galactic Republic of Star Wars by George Lucas is a galaxy-spanning society. It has constructed planet-destroying space platforms which expend energy consistent with a Type III civilization, albeit not continuously.
  • Dr. Michio Kaku has argued the Borg Collective of Star Trek represent a Type III civilization.
  • The Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon. The stellar energy output of the whole galaxy is utilized by the Galactic Community of Worlds.
  • Manifold: Time, by Stephen Baxter — in the distant future, descendants of humanity maintain vast Dyson nets around the supermassive black hole remnants of galaxies until they evaporate via Hawking radiation, accessing the energy equivalent of multiple galaxies.
  • The Forerunners, of the Halo (series) and its universe, had the power to wipe out life on a galactic scale and had done so before to eradicate the parasitic species known as the Flood, wiping themselves out in the process. They also were able to create such megastructures as the dyson sphere and 'shunt' them into slipspace.
  • The Therians from AT-43, a science fiction themed strategy game by Rackham. The Therians have constructed dyson shells around a very large number of stars including every star in the Milky Way galaxy and an unknown number of stars from nearby galaxies.

• Type IV and above
  • The Q Continuum and its individual members in the Star Trek mythos
  • The Time Lords of Doctor Who — in the story The Gallifrey Chronicles the Time Lord Marnal claims "The Time Lords were the Type 4 civilization. We had no equals. We controlled the fundamental forces of the entire universe. Nothing could communicate with us on our level. Most races pray to lesser beings than the Time Lords".
  • The Dancers at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock - a past civilization is described which consumed all the energy in all the stars in the universe (saving Earth's own sun) in order to fuel an existence where the inheritors of the Earth lived as nigh-omnipotent gods.
  • The Ancients from the Stargate mythos invented a machine to harness all the power of this universe and other universes, by using Zero-point energy. Unfortunately it never worked properly, creating a large amount of uncontrollable exotic particles. The Ancients did finally achieve powers over the universe by Ascending to another plane of existence. This is an example of Transhumanism in fiction.
  • In Isaac Asimov's science fiction novel "The Last Question", humanity is able to harness the power of the entire Universe.
  • In Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence, the Photino Birds harness the power of all of stars in the universe and the Xeelee, another universe spanning civilization, flee to other universes.
  • In the video game series Half-Life, the Combine is an alien empire that spans an undefined number of parallel universes, due to the unique ability to control inter-dimensional travel (by means of Dark Fusion reactor). The Combine expands its empire by invading worlds and enslaving the dominant species to be exploited as it sees fit.