# What is the largest organic creature in sci-fi. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 1, 2009, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593 "2009-07-01T17:32:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Iggins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Iggins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggins)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2009, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/41 "2009-07-01T23:04:03Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > Nobody thought to include the gigantic cell from the TOS episode “The Immunity Syndrome”? A single cell, tens of thousands of kilometers long, on the point of dividing? How big would the entire organism be when fully grown? Isn’t that what the OP referred to as too stupid? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2009, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/42 "2009-07-01T23:20:16Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > Nobody thought to include the gigantic cell from the TOS episode “The Immunity Syndrome”? A single cell, tens of thousands of kilometers long, on the point of dividing? How big would the entire organism be when fully grown? But was it a single cell of some gigantic organism forming, or a gigantic single celled organism splitting into two gigantic single celled organisms? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2009, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/43 "2009-07-01T23:58:28Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, in the nuWho “Doctor Who” episode 42, there’s a living sun. > [@](#): > > I think it’s strongly implied in If the Stars Are Gods, that some stars, even our own, are sentient. Come to think of it, Frank Herbert had a few books with living, sentient stars, too. And in Madeline L’Engel’s _A Wrinkle in Time_, Mrs. Who, Which, and Whatsit are manifestations of stars. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/44 "2009-07-02T02:22:59Z")
In the story “He Who Shrank” by Henry Hasse, our solar system is merely an atom in a larger universe. That larger universe has living creatures in it. Each solar system in that larger universe is merely an atom in a still larger universe. And so on. The same thing is true going the other way, so that each atom in our universe is a solar system in a smaller universe, etc. This means that there are infinitely large living creatures, since the chain of larger universes goes on forever according to that story. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/45 "2009-07-02T02:52:32Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Come to think of it, Frank Herbert had a few books with living, sentient stars, too. And in Madeline L’Engel’s _A Wrinkle in Time_, Mrs. Who, Which, and Whatsit are manifestations of stars. And in _Rogue Star_ it turns out that many stars are intelligent. And in Olaf Stapledon’s _The Star Maker_ most or all of them are. In _Starplex_ there are Jupiter sized creatures called Darmats, made of dark matter. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/46 "2009-07-02T03:17:14Z")
> [@](#): > > In the story “He Who Shrank” by Henry Hasse, our solar system is merely an atom in a larger universe. That larger universe has living creatures in it. Each solar system in that larger universe is merely an atom in a still larger universe. And so on. The same thing is true going the other way, so that each atom in our universe is a solar system in a smaller universe, etc. > > This means that there are infinitely large living creatures, since the chain of larger universes goes on forever according to that story. OK, show of hands: Has anyone but the two of us ever read that one? IIRC, the protagonist has already passed through hundreds or thousands of layers before reaching ours, so the beings of his original universe would have been something like 10[sup]1000000[/sup] times larger than our solar system (even if there aren’t any layers larger than where he started, which there probably are). And they’re undoubtedly natural, organic entities, and the story is undoubtedly science fiction. I can’t see any way to quibble with that, nor to top it. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/47 "2009-07-02T03:27:08Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > OK, show of hands: Has anyone but the two of us ever read that one? IIRC, the protagonist has already passed through hundreds or thousands of layers before reaching ours, so the beings of his original universe would have been something like 10[sup]1000000[/sup] times larger than our solar system (even if there aren’t any layers larger than where he started, which there probably are). And they’re undoubtedly natural, organic entities, and the story is undoubtedly science fiction. I can’t see any way to quibble with that, nor to top it. I did; in fact I considered mentioning it ( because it was mentioned in a thread on another forum about this subject ). I just wasn’t sure if it qualified as “size” in the normal sense of the term. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/48 "2009-07-02T03:44:19Z")
Voyager had that thing that ate starships; > **[Bliss (Star Trek: Voyager)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_%28Voyager_episode%29)** > > "Bliss" is the 108th episode of the science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager, the 14th episode of the fifth season. > In this science fiction story set in the 24th century on a lost spaceship, the character Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) returns to the Starfleet starship USS Voyager to discover they have found a possible way home, a wormhole back to Earth. The spacecraft has become stranded on the other side of the Galaxy, 70,000 light years from Earth, an ongoing plot device in the serie... ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/49 "2009-07-02T04:27:35Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > OK, show of hands: Has anyone but the two of us ever read that one? See also _[The Girl in the Golden Atom](http://www.wildsidebooks.com/The-Girl-in-the-Golden-Atom-by-Ray-Cummings-40trade-pb41_p_1863.html)_ By Ray Cummings. IIRC, Cummings was an apprentice to Edison. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/50 "2009-07-02T04:41:13Z")
> [@Staale\_Nordlie](#): > > A [budong](http://farscape.wikia.com/wiki/Budong) (from Farscape) is _really_ big. I’ll third this. Budongs are gigantic. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/51 "2009-07-02T08:41:12Z")
“Planet” from Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is truly organic. It’s a fungus that grows in huge forest-sized swaths that also acts as a type of brain tissue. The bigger it gets, the smarter it gets. It periodically “blooms” to cover the entire surface of the planet, attains a god-like intellect, and promptly has 99.9% of its mass die because there’s no ecosystem left to sustain it (none of this “can magically survive in a vacuum” crap). The transcendence victory means that the humans living on Chiron use their high-tech gizmos to not only sustain Planet, but to link their minds to it. I think that the epilogue at least implies that this new Planet-humanity amalgam is able to grow well past biosphere size, and do so sustainably. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/52 "2009-07-02T10:16:27Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > OK, show of hands: Has anyone but the two of us ever read that one? Read it. I think… Masters of Science Fiction three book set? Two short story books, one novelettas? ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/53 "2009-07-02T11:50:04Z")
Marvel’s Beyonder filled an entire universe. ---
**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/54 "2009-07-02T14:28:23Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Come to think of it, Frank Herbert had a few books with living, sentient stars, too. And in Madeline L’Engel’s _A Wrinkle in Time_, Mrs. Who, Which, and Whatsit are manifestations of stars. Oh yeah, living stars. Farscape had one that wanted to eat Talyn and Doctor WHo had one recently as well. ---
**Author:** ![Barking\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Barking\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barking_Dog)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/55 "2009-07-02T14:57:16Z")
> [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](#): > > Oh yeah, living stars. Farscape had one that wanted to eat Talyn and Doctor WHo had one recently as well. Nah, both creatures just lived in/on the stars, but weren’t stars themselves. It’s fantasy not scifi, but in Simon Green’s _Drinking Midnight Wine_, all of the bodies in the solar system were sentient, including the sun. Don’t know if that counts though. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/56 "2009-07-02T15:09:59Z")
> [@Barking\_Dog](#): > > Nah, both creatures just lived in/on the stars, but weren’t stars themselves. > > It’s fantasy not scifi, but in Simon Green’s _Drinking Midnight Wine_, all of the bodies in the solar system were sentient, including the sun. Don’t know if that counts though. For sentient stars, there is also the classic _Star Maker_ by Olaf Stapelton. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/57 "2009-07-02T15:23:06Z")
> [@thirdname](#): > > The [Lexx](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexx#The_Lexx) was pretty big, but not the biggest. I think the Gigashadow on that show was bigger. Yes, the Gigashadow was the last of the Insects, gigantic free-space dwelling lifeforms of tremendous physical and psionic power. It had formed the core of a Ceres-Luna sized planetoid before hatching, withstood blasts capable of destroying a planet, and was only destroyed when it collided with a wormhole it was _too big to fit into_. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/58 "2009-07-03T01:59:29Z")
There was the gigantic creature that landed on the Earth in “Heresies of the Huge God” by Brian Aldiss. ---
**Author:** ![Sparky812](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Sparky812](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sparky812)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/59 "2009-07-03T02:51:25Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > OK, show of hands: Has anyone but the two of us ever read that one? . I too read it years ago in an Asimov anthology, I believe. I’ve always thought this idea was interesting. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593/60 "2009-07-03T13:18:32Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > OK, show of hands: Has anyone but the two of us ever read that one? IIRC, the protagonist has already passed through hundreds or thousands of layers before reaching ours, so the beings of his original universe would have been something like 10[sup]1000000[/sup] times larger than our solar system (even if there aren’t any layers larger than where he started, which there probably are). And they’re undoubtedly natural, organic entities, and the story is undoubtedly science fiction. I can’t see any way to quibble with that, nor to top it. I have – heck, it’s in the classic anthology **Adventures in Time and Space**. It’s always bugged me, though – not only does the guy cause effects on his own atmos and sub-atomic structure from drinking a mere _chemical_, but he’s able to get himself over to a planet (when he finds that he’s shrunken down into that universe’s “interplanetary space” by “inchworming” his way along, totally ignoring conservation of momentum. yeah, I know – I buy the premise of the story and object to _those_ two issues? but the truth is that they bother me. It’s not science fiction, it’s fable. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-largest-organic-creature-in-sci-fi/501593.md?page=2)