As far as pets in science fiction are concerned, fish are pretty low on the popularity list. They don't make very good companions when exploring a newly-discovered planet or help keep you space ship rat free. However, there are a few science fictional characters that do keep an aquarium. Not only are those pet fish educational and entertaining, they tell us something about the personality and interests of their owners.
So here are a few of my favorite science fictional pet fish:
Arthur Dent's Babel Fish
One of the biggest problems in a universe full of intelligent beings is communication. In the Star Trek universe, the solution is a universal translator. In the universe of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the solution is much wetter, as Arthur Dent finds out when his friend Ford Prefect: rescues him from the destruction of earth and shoves a Babel Fish into his ear:
The Babel fish," said The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with never signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish into your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. [...] ". . . the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything in the history of creation." ~ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Of course, the fish in his ear doesn't stop poor Arthur from stumbling from adventure to adventure without quite grasping the situation, even when he does catch all the words. When Arthur finally returns to the surprisingly still-exisiting Earth, he finds that someone has sent him a beautiful glass fishbowl:
Finally he stood up, filled the bowl with water from the tap, and put it back on the table next to the television. He shook the little Babel fish from his ear and dropped it, wriggling, into the bowl. He wouldn't be needing it anymore, except for watching foreign movies. ~ So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
A very handy pet to have on hand! (And of course that wasn't really the end of Arthur's intergalactic adventures.)
Jean-Luc Picard's Lionfish Livingston
Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the USS Enterprise-D, is both a great leader and a man of wide-ranging and a man of diverse rifined interests. In his scant leisure time he studies archaeology, fences, crafts model starships, plays the flute - and keeps a spherical aquarium in his ready room. The aquarium is inhabited by Livingston, a red lionfish, who fascinated Picards visitors, both human and alien. Picard has been accused of caring about his fish as much as he cares about his crew. While that probably isn't the case, Livingston is eventually treated to a much bigger tank.
George R. R. Martin's classic novelette "Sandkings" features exotic pet collector Simon Kress. His piranhas don't make past the first page, but they are very important in setting up the story:
Simon Kress lived alone in a sprawling manor house among the dry, rocky hills fifty kilometers from the city. So, when he was called away unexpectedly on business, he had no neighbors he could conveniently impose on to take his pets. The carrion hawk was no problem; it roosted in the unused belfry and customarily fed itself anyway. The shambler Kress simply shooed outside and left to fend for itself; the little monster would gorge on slugs and birds and rockjocks. But the fish tank, stocked with genuine Earth Piranha, posed a difficulty. Kress finally just threw a haunch of beef into the huge tank. The piranha could always eat each other if he were detained longer than expected. They'd done it before. It amused him. Unfortunately, he was detained much longer than expected this time. When he finally returned, all the fish were dead. [...] Simpon Kress was vexed.
It's quite clear that while Kress's vicious pets entertain him, he doesn't care about them enough to bother taking proper care of them. It's no surprise then, that when he replaces the piranha with the more exotic - and more intelligent - sandkings, that events take a horrible turn. "Sandkings" is one of the best science fiction-horror stories I've read, and I highly recommend reading it for yourself. There aren't any (legal) free copies online, but it's been widely anthologized, so copies are pretty easy to find. It was also the basis of an episode of 1990s revival of The Outer Limits, in which Simon Kress is changed from an arrogant violence-loving playboy to an arrogant scientist - so no piranhas!
Dr. Wernstrom's Goldfish Cinnamon
Last, but not least, of science fictional pet fish is Cinnamon, the goldfish of Futurama's Dr. Ogden Wernstrom. Cinnamon bravely demonstrates it's ability to fetch a stick while wearing a Reverse SCUBA suit, winning Wernstrom the Academy of Inventors Symposium Prize in the year 3000.
(Watch a clip of Cinnamon fetching ) And while it's not quite as sophisticated as the technology in Futurama, Seth Weiner's robotic Terranaut allows fish explore dry land:
Clearly the science fictional future for fish has arrived!
Peggy Kolm's blog, Biology in Science Fiction, is based on one of the most unique topics you'll find on the web. She writes about the appearance of real life biology in science fiction stories, poems, novels, tv shows and movies. Her blog discusses topics such as cloning, genetic engineering, mutant monsters, longevity treatments, and of course, marine science.
As far as pets in science fiction are concerned, fish are pretty low on the popularity list. They don't make very good companions when exploring a newly-discovered planet or help keep you space ship rat free. However, there are a few science fictional characters that do keep an aquarium. Not only are those pet fish educational and entertaining, they tell us something about the personality and interests of their owners.
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