<![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @ ac14112 No, not the only one, just one of the few ... You are correct sir (or madam as the case maybe) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_%28Foundation_universe%29 Gaia was the planet sized "seed" from which Galaxia would/did grow (is growing?) So ... as far as >one< fictional veiw ... Galaxia could be the largest ... longest established (known) "Large entity" However ... mention of the Borg should have been quickly countered with another, long established and known, single dimension of existence ... [url=http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/library/aliens/article/119943.html]species 8479[/url] ... fluidic space and alla that ... eh? Then again ... those two "galactic" sized entities are, yet again, Dwarfed ... by the creatures playing mables with galactic "spaces" ... In the final scene of Men In Black ... *bows*

TrilbyNangified

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> I'm surprised this list and the link at the top didn't mention Asimov's Gaia, Galaxia, or Multivac.

RileyBam

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @Git Em SteveDave: True but I think he was more of a "Q-ish" pest - considering he contacted Picard afterwards on his personal viewscreen. And being Q-ish he wouldn't necessarily count as a mega-sentient.

rileyjam514

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @Tim Faulkner: Well said. Solaris remains one of my favorite SF novels to this day. Too bad I can't get through more than an hour of the original Russian movie without falling asleep. :)

@Jeff-Minor: The dark matter entities were called photino birds, and they were causing stars to prematurely age in order to make the universe more hospitable to them. I don't remember them being colossal in size, however, but it's been a long time since I read any of Baxter's Xeelee books.

Ubik2501

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> Where's Erythro? It's the best psychic bacteria planet ever!
[en.wikipedia.org])

spookyjon

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> How do we know our own universe isn't sentient? It could be chatting to another universe right now. I bet you could find 1000 people who think it has spoken to them directly.

Also in HHGTTG I think it is safe to assume that the Earth would have had the same sentience as Deep Thought if it had not been so destroyed and had finished its programming.

MrLister

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @Ubik2501: Exactly my point. How often does someone say: when we encounter an alien, they are likely to be so foreign we can't comprehend their sentience (but we rarely get this in scifi)? Well, Solaris is the classic example of an incomprehensible sentience. It's also mega (after all, are we judging mega by surface area, volume, or density -- Solaris is essentially the planet). Most of these other examples are merely anthropomorphic villains that happen to be big as planets (very clever). To me, Solaris exemplifies Mega-Sentience.

Tim Faulkner

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> Am I the only one who has read Isaac Asimov? Only one of the greatest sci-fi series ever, the Foundation series. Remember Gaia and Galaxia?

[en.wikipedia.org])

ac14112

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> Gurren-lagann: it hurls galaxies to its enemies.

fistrodisco

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> Larry 832, yes, you're right! That old paper back is sure buried deep. There are the dark-matter birds in Baxter's book/s, whatever the name was. They are the size of galaxies, if I remember correctly. And there are numerous hive-mind swarms, like the one in Glen Cook's Star Fisher books.

Jeff-Minor

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> egads... Does no one remember the magnetic entities from Arthur C. Clarke's "Against the Fall of Night", and the sequel by Gregory Benford "Beyond the Fall of Night"? The Mad Mind, Vanamonde, and the precursor magnetic entities were at least light weeks in length.

larry_832

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @Nealjs: It still doesn't change the fact that this article misattributes Solaris to Tartovsky and not to Lem, the author of the original novel. And I think the Solaris organism deserves its own entry in this article if other not-quite-planet-sized organisms make the list. After all, none of the other entries in this list are living oceans of goo that make fantastically complicated and bizarre structures for no reason and create living facsimiles of people snatched from the memories of a research crew.

Ubik2501

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @rileyjam514: There was also the alien "rift" that envelped the Enterprise and started killing off crew members. It was Nagilum.

Git Em SteveDave is a poor substitute for LindsayJoy

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> I guess Herbert's God Emperor Leto II counts. He controls the spice, the Universe is his for the most part.

Jeff-Minor

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> I know they're not truly sentient, but how can one make a list like this and not mention the two biggest mecha ever. Getter Emperor (radius of the Solar System, and growing) from one of the entries in the Getter Robo series, and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (size of a galaxy), from the series of the same name.

brainwav

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> There's a lot that was later extrapolated from Transformers: The Movie's weird vague concepts, including not only Unicron being a god, but Cybertron being inhabited by an opposing god, Primus, who had been responsible for luring Unicron into imprisoning himself in a planet in the first place and then created the Transformers to fight him. Later on there was even a Primus/Cybertron toy just as big as the one they made of Unicron. Primus first showed up in the Marvel comics in the late 80s and was never in the original cartoon, so he's kind of obscure as pop culture Transformers knowledge goes.

AutobotTrixter

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> DUDE you totally left out the pitcher plant beast from Voyager (which is absolutely sentient or it wouldn't know to target starships and people's brains and take them away in a cumbaya-ish fantasy land dreamworld).

And why'd you leave out the Borg? Yes, I'm sure they aren't technically one big Thing, but they are mega-sentients in the sense that you've got an entire race of beings thinking as one. THEY SO TOTALLY ARE STOP WRITING A COMMENT AGAINST IT NOW kthxbai.

rileyjam514

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> Greg Bear's Eon has an alien race that strives to collect all the knowledge in the Universe, just like V-y-ger wanted to. I think that most AI would reach the conclussion that one can not know everything unless you freeze the Universe so that no new information is created as those femtoseconds scream by.

Jeff-Minor

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> There is a Jupiter-size ship that contains an Earth-size planet at it's core, in the Robert Reed book Marrow. And interesting read, and this ship stays at sublight, so you get wild time spans. Please, may I fanboyishly scream about Charles Stross's Accelerando, with its matryoshka-doll-sphere of smart matter. Or Singularity sky with its post-Singularity uber AI that becomes an super-being-un-god. I think Ian M. Banks needs a mention for his Minds that watch over entire ring worlds and ships the size of states (Rhode Island). I liked the Herbert cosmology that got worked into the TV show Andromeda, with its sentient stars. The Green Lantern planet reminds me of a God that's just doing his job but doesn't want to chat with the local rabble.

Jeff-Minor

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> The series refers to the Lexx as being "the size of Manhattan."

RAHfanboy

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @HomoSapiensRex: Sounds like it might be fun rereading Stapledon. I read everything of his that was available as a teeenager but can't recall any detail. Of course plenty of people speculate about the universe evolving sentience (though given current thinking about dark energy I think it might require faster than light communication.)

By the way, quite arguably we're all already part of information processing systems larger in scale than the individual human. Whether some of those systems can become conscious, well...

Mathmos

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> Comment on The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe The organism at the end of Greg Bear's music of the blood would qualify too, I presume?

UnerAlthaemenes

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @QuasarErazar: I remember this show. It reminds me of Titan AE.

Git Em SteveDave is a poor substitute for LindsayJoy

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> There was the InfoSphere from Futurama as well, which was basically a giant brain. But its size is debatable I guess, it seems to change shot to shot. At first its planet sized and can house millions of brains, where as when inside its not as big.

Killa_Charlie

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> Also from Futurama was the InfoSphere, which was was pretty much just a giant brain. How ever its size tends to change shot to shot, on the out side its planet sized and big enough to house millions of flying brains, yet inside the size is reduced quite a bit.

Killa_Charlie

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> How about Iain M. Banks's giant Culture ships? Not planet-sized perhaps, but they could take on a sentient planet and win.

Asterion

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> New Futurama movie? Yay!

I'm glad somebody already pointed out God -- don't know how you could mention Futurama without remembering him! That was a great episode.

Also, does Deep Thought count?

Maybe V-ger?

Also, stars were people, called "illuminaries", in Diana Wynne Jones's book "Dogsbody". Sirius is sentenced to live life on Earth in the body of, wait for it, a dog.

bluewyvern

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> What about "The Beast Planet"? From cgi tv show War Planets aka Shadow Raiders.
The Beast Planet eats other planets whole, and before the intro of the first episode, has eaten Planet Tek!
It eats planets by opening up huge doors, and a huge claw comes out and grabs the whole planet, a field of death goes over the planet, and then the claw is retracted.

Check out this link
[www.veoh.com]
and welcome to Planet Tek...on Doomsday!
This was a Mainframe production, the people who did Reboot.






QuasarErazar

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> I'd guess multivac from a few Asimov stories for both largest and most intelligent. It did eventually get so large that it could exist only in hyperspace and powerful enough to become god.

[en.wikipedia.org]

Hlaode

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> The Ellimist and Crayak are pretty frellin huge.

Mutton_chops

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> How about the planet-sized "cloud of evil" from the Fifth Element? You know, the one that calls you on the phone and makes you sweat 10w30?

mysterious1der

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @mikecoscia: Silly rabbit: [io9.com] do pay attention.
@CantankerousDave:I'm petty sure Great A'tuin is a female. These bozos claim its gender is unclear. [en.wikipedia.org] But I recall that in one of the books She travelled to a star to laya clutch of eggs that hatched into baby planetoid-sized turtles complete with elephant calves. Awwww.
Not that any of us serious Skiffy types adore such silly frippery such as Discworld.(harrumph) No indeed!



Grey_Area

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> Dude, no props for Zenoma Sekot?!

Not only is it conscious and planet sized it has the power of the Force! Which basically trumps every other freaky cosmic power.

No seriously. It basically ended the most costly war in the Star Wars EU's history!

bingofenix

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @mikecoscia: [io9.com]

Git Em SteveDave is a poor substitute for LindsayJoy

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @Mathmos:
If I remember right, the titular Star Maker creates many universes - both pre and post our own. However, at the end of the book, ours joins its myriad parts into one supreme whole so it can attempt a communion with its creator. Which in true Stapledonian style fails miserably because the truth is all ultimately ineffable and stuff. I think. Old Olaf always was a mind****.


JustThisGuyYouKnow?

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> What happened to that chart that showed all the artificial constructs. It was great to see the size differences between everything from the Halo rings, to the enterprise.

mikecoscia

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @HomoSapiensRex: Just one universe?

Mathmos

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @Charlie Jane Anders:
No biggie. Now let's have a shout-out for the sentient universe that evolves at the end of Olaf Stapledon's 1937 novel 'Star Maker' and we'll say no more about it...


JustThisGuyYouKnow?

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @Tim Faulkner: Technically, Lem's Solaris was an ocean-like organism covering a planet, it wasn't the planet itself. Still, that would make it pretty huge.

Nealjs

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> check out the multitude of mega-entities in Benford's Galactic Center series.

Mathmos

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @Charlie Jane Anders: Its moon size-ish. Definetly Pluto sized. Then again, Unicron is more of a Pluto size as well.

donkeyjote

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @Charlie Jane Anders: Sorry, I missed it b/c the name wasn't in bold and I just assumed it was still about Gaea, which I didn't care about. I am a bad io9er.

Git Em SteveDave is a poor substitute for LindsayJoy

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @Charlie Jane Anders: [io9.com] I knew I remembered io9 doing something featuring the various ship sizes and scale of them.

Git Em SteveDave is a poor substitute for LindsayJoy

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @HomoSapiensRex: Totally missed that one!

Charlie Jane Anders

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @Git Em SteveDave: Marvin is in there!

Charlie Jane Anders

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> What, no mention of the Solid State Entity from David Zindell's Neverness?
Surely a 'nebula-sized brain made up of millions of moon-sized biocomputers' is worth a mention?
For shame!



JustThisGuyYouKnow?

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> Wasn't Marvin from HGTTG equipped with a planet sized intellect? Does that count?

Unicron does have the advantage of his "conscience", Starscream

Git Em SteveDave is a poor substitute for LindsayJoy

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> @donkeyjote: I looked up Lexx, but couldn't find its size... how big is it? Is it actually planet sized? I know it eats planets.

Charlie Jane Anders

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]>

[www.lilformers.com]
[www.lilformers.com]
Unicron V. Galactus V. Darth Vader/Death Star the Transformer sellout

donkeyjote

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> [www.lilformers.com]
[www.lilformers.com]
Unicron v. Galactus

donkeyjote

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> What, no Lexx?

donkeyjote

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> He/She is Fantasy, not sci-fi, but we mustn't overlook the Discworld series' astrochelonian, Great Atuin.

CantankerousDave

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> How did Solaris end up a parenthetical to the Futurama entry? And how did it become Tarkovsky's and not Lem's?

Tim Faulkner

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> gwar!? on io9!? *sniffle* yay! seriously... yay.

fabescore

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> You forgot God from Futurama! Sentient galaxy? Cmon! ;>

inakizombie

]]> <![CDATA[The Largest Mega-Sentients In The Entire Universe]]> Oh my lord. Captain Simian! And you have a toy to scan!

Spin me indeed.

Wait, now I have to dig out my captain simian.

Also, you forgot to tag this post as a [en.wikipedia.org]

Seth L

]]>