Heretofore, design concepts for free-floating space colonies, says Sherwood, have entailed large hollow toroidal spheres with clouds, yards and pastures.

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In many ways these are dreary, dreadfully boring alternatives to moon colonies and space travel.

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His acquisition of two electric guitars from 1955 inspired the revved-up new song "21st Century Blues, " in which the boyhood fan of sci-fi books pines for the flying cars and Mars colonies predicted in the Space Age.

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The result, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, means worm colonies can be established on space stations without the need for researchers to tend to them.

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The heroes of Mr Morton's book are the astronomers who yearn to solve Mars's scientific puzzles, the science-fiction writers who project their politics on to Mars's blank canvas, and the space-flight enthusiasts who dream of Martian colonies.

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In Galactica, there were the 12 colonies of Kobolin that quase-biblical space epic that ultimately asked whether Earth had close relatives elsewhere in the cosmos.

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