History Main / LostColony

* Creator/VernorVinge's ''Literature/ZonesOfThought'' novels touch on Lost Colonies a great deal - in ''A Deepness In The Sky'' in particular, due to technological limitations and no FasterThanLightTravel, colonies tend to self-destruct on a regular basis.

* Not another planet, but the trope naming Utopia is apparently a lost Ancient Greek colony. This makes the trope OlderThanSteam.
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* In ''Eater-Of-Bone'', set in the ''Literature/GreatShip'' universe, a colony ship was catastrophically damaged and flung off of its trajectory, sending it towards one of the lone stars at the periphery of the Milky Way. The [[HealingFactor nigh-immortal]] TransHuman colonists are forced to settle on a world which is [[MetalPoorPlanet extremely metal-poor]] (particularly in salts and iron), making [[LostTechnology any kind of machinery precious beyond belief]] and every drop of blood lost a tragedy. One character laments that there's metal in the world, but so far below the ground that it is unreachable to the damaged machinery of the starship. The colonists cooperated with each other for a short time, but the strains of resource shortages fractured them into dozens of small groups, who often fight each other for resources. [[ImAHumanitarian "Eater-of-bone" isn't meaningless]], either, [[HumanResources because even bone and marrow hold the metals required for metabolism]].

* Earth in ''Manga/TenchiMuyo'' is a colony of Jurai, officially known as Colony World 0315. This is an odd mix as the colony's existence is known but Jurai has left it alone aside from maintaining contact with a few governments.

** ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'' has the titular ship discovering a planet populated by the descendants of a hundred or so humans, rescued by a mysterious angelic figure at the height of WorldWarThree from a church. Without any technological base, they have reverted to an agrarian lifestyle. Unable to figure out which religion adequately explains what happened, they have chosen to create an InterfaithSmoothie out of all major Earth religions. Most thing that Earth destroyed itself during the war and that they are the last humans in existence. Some believe differently. Since they were taken from Earth without a ship and aren't even close to being warp-capable, Pike insists on keeping to the Prime Directive at any cost.

** Moreover, it used to be implied rather heavily that the TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}} setting was an example of a world that had been cut off from Imperium contact, with hints that Sigmar and Bel'hakor were the two missing Primarchs. GW have subsequently moved away from this attitude however, treating the two game settings as being completely independent.

** ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'' has the titular ship discovering a planet populated by the descendants of a hundred or so humans, rescued by a mysterious angelic figure at the height of WorldWarThree from a church. Without any technological base, they have reverted to an agrarian lifestyle. Unable to figure out which religion adequately explains what happened, they have chosen to create an InterfaithSmoothie out of all major Earth religions. Most thing that Earth destroyed itself during the war and that they are the last humans in existence. Some believe differently.

Has nothing to do with [[VideoGame/SonicAdventure2 the eponymous level.]]

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* ''Franchise/StargateVerse'':
** Most planets of the week in ''Series/StargateSG1'' and ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' are like this, populated by humans seeded by either the [[NeglectfulPrecursors Ancients]] or their successors as dominant galactic powers, the [[AbusivePrecursors Goa'uld]] and [[ImAHumanitarian Wraith]].
** Atlantis itself was almost a lost colony during the first season as they were completely cut off from earth.
** In ''Series/StargateUniverse'' some members of the expedition attempted to start one of these. [[spoiler: Unfortunately they all (rather depressingly realistically) died from accidents or exposure.]]
** And "now" an alternate timeline version of the ''Destiny'' crew founded an entire civilization [[TimeyWimeyBall two thousand years ago]], which advanced to the point where they began using the stargates and slowships to colonize other planets. Unfortunately the colonies were then cut off when a supervolcano destroyed their homeworld and drones attacked their stargates, becoming lost colonies of a lost colony.

* The ''Series/DoctorWho'' arc "The Face of Evil" featured a lost colony of humans who were manipulated over generations by [[AIIsACrapshoot rogue AI Xoannon]] into becoming two enemy tribes; the Sevateem (a corruption of "survey team") and the Tesh ("technicians"). Leela, a Sevateem warrior, became the Doctor's companion for a time.

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* WebOriginal/OrionsArm: The exodus from [[EarthThatWas Old Earth]] following the nanodisaster resulted in many Lost Colonies, though most were re-contacted when the [[TheFederation First Federation]] was formed or sometime later in the next 10,000 years. The Metasoft Version Tree maintains "baseline preserves" that are essentially intentional lost colonies. The original colonists were baseline humans who wanted to leave Sephirotic civilization and paid Metasoft for worlds where they could preserve their culture undisturbed, although at least one preserve world has rediscovered space travel and rejoined interstellar civilization.

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* ''Literature/DragonridersOfPern'': The series is set on a LostColony, with the original colonists having used what remained of their technology to genetically engineer the telepathic, teleporting dragons which guard the world from the bicentennial rain of alien parasites. It should be noted here that the rest of humanity DID send a ship to check it out, which found a small group who convinced the crew that everyone else had perished. The captain of the ship then quarantined Pern's system because of the Thread. Also, Pern was intended from the start to be cut off from the rest of Humanity. the Pern colonists wanted to get away from the politics and war suffusing the rest of the Galaxy, and live a [[SpaceAmish simple agrarian life]] with limited technology. Thread turned life on Pern into a struggle for survival, and caused them to lose the little bit of technology they intended to keep. The loss of knowledge of life before Pern was gradual; a book set in the Second Pass (roughly 150 years after the colonists arrived) mentions that computers still exist, but are becoming less practical as power and repairs get harder to come by. A book set in the Fourth Pass shows that the idea of Man coming to Pern from space is a one of two competing hypotheses rather than a plain historical fact, and by the Seventh Pass (when the "main" series takes place, 2500 years after Landing), even said ideas are completely forgotten.
* There are few hints that ''Literature/{{Dragaera}}'' is a LostColony. If true, the colonists had landed at ''least'' 150,000 years before the start of the story, with all trace of the old technology long gone, making the use of the trope nothing more than a bit of flavoring.
* Has happened ''at least twice'', and very likely at least three times, to the planet on which ''Literature/TheSagaOfRecluce'' is set. Something about the planet acts like a magnet towards spaceships which have undergone malfunctioning [[FasterThanLightTravel hyperspace jumps]].
* In Creator/LarryNiven's ''Literature/{{Protector}}'', Earth is actually a LostColony of a species called the Pak, who start life as a larval form (unintelligent hominids) and, in their thirties, are irresistibly drawn to eat a certain tuber which is host to a virus that transforms them into ageless hyper-intelligent killing machines (Protectors of their descendants). The colony failed because the tuber can't incubate the virus in soil deficient in thallium oxide (a later protector finds that the virus will grow in a sweet potato), and the humans developed intelligence on their own. One Pak comes looking for the lost colony, kidnaps a human and turns him into a Protector, who is even smarter than the original variety ([[TranshumanTreachery and acts very different]]). Eventually we learn that the Literature/{{Ringworld}} was built by Pak.
* Niven's ''Literature/TheIntegralTrees'' series has a lost colony without a planet: they live in a torus of gas that encircles a dwarf star, where the closest thing to solid ground is the enormous, kilometers-long Trees.
* In Creator/UrsulaKLeGuin's Literature/{{Hainish}} sequence, Earth (and probably Gethen, too) were lost colonies of the oldest known inhabited world, Hain. Both may have started off as rather ethically suspect experiments, although the Hainish are very ethical these days. It's subtly implied that all the inhabited worlds may be Hainish in origin.

* In ''Literature/KingdomsOfThornAndBone'' by Greg Keyes, a part of the American colony of Virginia appears to be the ancestors of some of the characters.

* ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'':
** Barrayar was a Lost Colony at a point of its history when the wormhole leading to it suddenly closed. However at the time when the series takes place, it's already been rediscovered through another route for three generations. It does still bear the barbaric mark of that time, however.
** Alpha Colony, one of [[UnitedSpaceofAmerica America's]] first attempts at space colonization by using sublight drives, was forgotten after a world war brought other concerns into play. When the war was over and wormhole technology had been discovered, a path was found to Alpha Colony, where all of the colonists had died out.
* Interestingly, ''Literature/ArtemisFowl: The Lost Colony'' does not contain a traditional lost colony. In fact, the "colony" has forgotten magic in favour of technology, and possesses full knowledge of the outside world [[spoiler: though it is later revealed that the colony's leader made up most of his stories about it so the other inhabitants would be easier to manipulate]].
* Christopher Stasheff's ''Literature/WarlockOfGramarye'' series:
** Gramarye, a colony founded by the Society for Creative Anachronism. In this case the loss of technology was deliberate.
** Considering that the government of Earth became isolationist around the time Gramarye was settled, it is not surprising that they were not found for a long time. This same isolationist policy cut off all of earths colonies from the technological goods of the homeworld, leading many of them to lose all tech. They were not exactly lost colonies, since earth knew where they were in most cases, but it was practically the same thing. Although there were a few that earth had lost the paperwork for, come to think of it.
** Before he settled down on Gramarye, the protagonist's job was to search out lost colonies and steer them towards democracy; in the ''Wizard'' sequel series, his son takes up the job.
* The setting of Creator/MercedesLackey's ''Literature/BardicVoices'' books is implied to be a lost colony for at least one of the non-human species, the technologically advanced Deliambrens, and AfterTheEnd for everyone else.

* ''Literature/TheLastColony'', though it was deliberately lost and recovered.
* Creator/VernorVinge's ''Literature/ZonesOfThought'' novels touch on Lost Colonies a great deal - in ''A Deepness In The Sky'' in particular, due to technological limitations and no FasterThanLightTravel, colonies tend to self-destruct on a regular basis.

* In David Brin's ''Literature/{{Uplift}}'' series, it is hotly debated whether humanity (uniquely among living peoples) developed intelligence independently or was created by some folk that abandoned the job incomplete. The second trilogy take place largely on Jijo, a planet hosting lost colonies of almost a dozen species, including humans.
* In ''Virgin Planet'' by Creator/PoulAnderson, a shipload of women goes off course and, by necessity, founds a parthenogenetic society. Generations later, a male scout lands and is denounced as a monster, partly because he threatens the power of those who control the reproductive technology.

** A fairly common occurance in Chandler's novels; in his [[TheVerse Verse]] FTL travel used to be accomplished by "gaussjammers" which were vulnerable to space magnetic storms, which could throw them severely off course and force them to land at the nearest possible planet with a permanently disabled spaceship (such storms would also wreck their power plants and they would have to limp to a refuge on ''emergency diesel power.'') As a result, any gaussjammer could find itself forced to found a lost colony and they all carried rudimentary equipment for founding a colony in case of such an emergency. By the time of the novels, however, the gaussjammers have been replaced by the far more reliable (though not without its quirks) Mannschenn Drive (timejammers, as they're sometimes called).
* Creator/HarryHarrison's novel ''Literature/{{Deathworld}} 2'' is a GivingRadioToTheRomans story set on a Lost Colony. The third part is about trying to mine ores on a planet inhabited by nomadic tribes which forbid permanent structures.

* Keithland in ''Literature/TheCycleOfFire'' was founded when a ship was forced down on an uncharted world. All post-medieval technology was deliberately abandoned so their escaped alien prisoners wouldn't try to capture it.
* ''Literature/TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'':
** Happens a lot. After the discovery of the [[SubspaceOrHyperspace Hypersphere]] anomaly, hundreds of colony ships were sent out to colonize other worlds. Many got lost due to the poorly-understood nature of the anomaly and lack of navigation equipment that works in another dimention. Throughout the series, many lost colonies are being rediscovered, many of which have regressed to barbarism and forgotten their origins. One short story details a demonstration of a new type of SpaceFighter that involves dropping a cluster bomb onto a planet thought to be devoid of life. However, during the demonstration, a sensor on the planetary surface detects the presence of a human child, making the testers realize what a horrible mistake they've made. Luckily, a daring pilot manages to save the colony.
** The [[TheWarOfEarthlyAggression First Galactic War]] started when the corrupt government of the overpopulated Earth decided to look outside the Solar System for habitable worlds to offload extra people. They sent scount ships, which returned with disturbing news. Nearly all nearby star systems already had colonies from ships sent centuries before. Realizing the colonists would object to an influx of unwanted rabble from Earth, Earth's president decides to launch a pre-emptive strike in order to put the upstart colonies in their place. What follows is a 30-year war that Earth eventually loses.
** WordOfGod is that over 7000 colony ships left Earth in the 50-year period following the invention of the hyperdrive. Only a few hundred have been re-discovered.

* Donald Kingsbury's ''Literature/CourtshipRite'' takes place on a lost colony so hostile to human life that over the centuries, times of famine have made [[ImAHumanitarian cannibalism]] socially acceptable to varying degrees.
* The planet He, in Creator/JamesBlish's ''Literature/CitiesInFlight''.
* Margolia from ''Literature/AlexBenedict''. The founder said he was going to travel so far away that not even God would be able to find them; and since no one heard from the colony over the next nine thousand years, he apparently succeeded.
* Creator/SMStirling's ''Literature/TheLordsOfCreation'' series features Venus and Mars as homes to lost colonies of both ''Homo sapiens'' and Neanderthals [[spoiler: (the two worlds having been terraformed and seeded by SufficientlyAdvancedAliens millions of years before)]].

* Due to the prevalence of PsychicPowers, some of the ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'' sequels are largely concerned with finding ways to block Psychic Powers, so that colonies CAN be lost. Of course, the colonies later come back and start a war, but...
* Adumar, in the Literature/XWingSeries, has elements of this. Their technology collapsed, then was rebuilt, they re-developed spaceflight and were rediscovered by mainstream galactic society before ''Starfighters of Adumar''. They hold to some social customs that the rest of the galaxy finds weird, like still having many drastically different countries.
* The Children in ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear'' are like a very small scale of this. Their parents crashed on Dagobah and died when the oldest of the Children was seven. They were malnourished and poorly educated, having no concept of places beyond the swamp, so came off as some kind of weird tribe which revered a parent's ApocalypticLog.
* In Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/TheStarsAreColdToys'' duology, [[spoiler:Earth and the Geometers' homeworld]] are revealed to be lost colonies of [[spoiler:humans from the galactic core]]. Ditto for [[spoiler:most of the Conclave races]].
* Creator/FrancisCarsac's ''Literature/TerreEnFuite'' (''Fleeing Earth'') reveals that, at some point in the future, human civilization will be destroyed by a new Ice Age. After the Ice Age, the Second Civilization (slightly more evolved) will rebuild and make great strides in science and technology. Then they will be conquered by a race called Drums, only to be defeated by a biological weapon released by LaResistance. Their "space magnet" technology allows spaceships to reach 80% of the speed of light in short order, and humanity makes use of it to explore and settle other planets and planetoids in the Solar System. Then hyperdrive is discovered that is an extension of the space magnet technology. Colony ships are sent out, but only one manages to come back, revealing that the technology is horribly flawed. When a ship in hyperspace reaches the midpoint between two stars, it encounters a "gravity barrier" that throws it wildly off-course. The ship that returned found itself outside the galaxy after the first jump and only managed to return on the third try. Some time later, a scientist figures out that the Sun will emit an enormous solar flare that will fry anything in the inner system. The Second Civilization builds enormous space magnets on Earth and Venus in order to move the planets behind Jupiter to ride out the flare and then put them back. However, the Sun will no longer be able to support life after the flare, so the plan is amended to move the planets to another system. After reaching Alpha Centauri (it takes many years on sublight), they find it already inhabited by descendants of one of one the lost ships. They aren't blaming Earth humans for abandoning them but don't want them as neighbors. Many years later, the planets arrive to another system and find yet another LostColony, who are actively fighting them. These colonists claim that Earth lied to their ancestors, deliberately sending them into space knowing about the BlindJump nature of hyperspace. It turns out that [[spoiler:a race of aliens with PsychicPowers employs MoreThanMindControl to keep the human colonists as slaves]]. After defeating ([[spoiler:and freeing]]) them, the planets are put in proper orbits in the Goldilocks Zone.
* In ''Eater-Of-Bone'', set in the ''Literature/GreatShip'' universe, a colony ship was catastrophically damaged and flung off of its trajectory, sending it towards one of the lone stars at the periphery of the Milky Way. The [[HealingFactor nigh-immortal]] TransHuman colonists are forced to settle on a world which is [[MetalPoorPlanet extremely metal-poor]] (particularly in salts and iron), making [[LostTechnology any kind of machinery precious beyond belief]] and every drop of blood lost a tragedy. One character laments that there's metal in the world, but so far below the ground that it is unreachable to the damaged machinery of the starship. The colonists cooperated with each other for a short time, but the strains of resource shortages fractured them into dozens of small groups, who often fight each other for resources. [[ImAHumanitarian "Eater-of-bone" isn't meaningless]], either, [[HumanResources because even bone and marrow hold the metals required for metabolism]].
* Creator/CJCherryh's ''Literature/FortyThousandInGehenna'' has Gehenna. A planet colonized by the Union in secret (even from most of the Union government) in Alliance space, so that when the Alliance attempted to colonize 60 years later they'd find an entrenched population of Union citizens. In the ensuing diplomatic fiasco the planet is left to live under medieval conditions for centuries.
** And Cherryh did it again in her SharedUniverse Merovingen Nights books where the setting is Merovin, a former Union colony that was abandoned to an alien species, the Sharrh. There was an evacuation, but some of the colonists hid from it and somehow survived the planetary bombardment the Sharrh performed to ensure no human presence remained. The Sharrh haven't tried to colonize Merovin themselves, so the descendants of those recalcitrant colonists are still there at a medieval stage of technology, cut off from the rest of human civilization.
* In Elena Senyavskaya's ''Star Wanderer'', the first vision tells of a far-away world called Sevir settled by humans 300 years before the events described. However, shortly after the arrival of the colonists, all transmissions stopped. Sending another expedition was too expensive, and the colonists were written off as lost. However, they survived. Sevir is a bleak, dry world with a poisonous fauna and a green star. The colonists managed to survive and have even thrived. They themselves cut off all contact with Earth in order to save on energy but have always been afraid of someone from Earth arriving to claim their world. As such, they have formed the [[SpaceNavy Silver Squadron]] and puts the Admiral in charge in order to protect them from the "evil Thors" (as they call Earthlings due to the symbol of the Earth Star Fleet being black lightning). For their part, Earth only wants to trade with Sevir and invite it to join the Galactic Union made up of Earth and twelve other settled worlds. Any encounters by the Star Fleet and the Silver Squadron have always ended bloody. Eventually, though, a young Sevir boy crash-lands on an uninhabited planet and is picked up by an Earth ship. He learns that Earthlings are not evil and that they have no intention of conquering Sevir. He realizes that the Admiral has been keeping himself in power through fearmongering. He returns home and is summoned to meet the Admiral. Before the Admiral can order his execution, the boy knocks him out and uses the Admiral's communication override to reveal the truth to his people before the Admiral's guards kill him.
* The world of ''Shadow'' by Creator/DaveDuncan. Not necessarily lost, but has no contacts with other planets, reverted to feudalism and a bicycle is the most complex device they can make. The planet is tidally locked and the only habitable area is a former island arc and a continental slope in a dried ocean, which means very steep mountains. The only reliable fast transport are the local giant "eagles", which led to formation of military aristocracy of people small enough to ride them.
* Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's stories in the "Thousand Worlds" universe take place (for the most part) after the Double War against two alien races, the Hrangans and the Fyndii. The devastating war threw a lot of the human colonies back to a pre-industrial or even pre-feudal level of technology, with some of them rediscovering space travel and others remaining lost. This dark period was known as the Interregnum.
** "Bitterblooms" takes place on one of the primitive Interregnum planets. In it, the heroine comes upon a self-proclaimed "witch" living in an ancient starship who seems to take her to distant worlds.
** "In the House of the Worm" is another story in the same vein, in which a race of humans lives in underground dwellings carved by enormous worms, on a planet orbiting a dying sun. At some point, the protagonist comes across some high-tech gadgets left behind by a faction of ancient biological engineers.
* ''Literature/GroomOfTheTyrannosaurQueen'' takes place in a lost time colony in which humans have spent the last five millenia coexisting with dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. They're a pretty weird bunch.
* A variation in ''Literature/{{Blindfold}}''. Atlas is not technically lost, but since neither FasterThanLightTravel nor SubspaceAnsible is possible in this 'verse (or, at least, hasn't been discovered yet), it's pretty much isolated from Earth and left to its own devices. The only news from the homeworld comes in the form of a rare ship that arrives with new settlers. The first ship (after the original colony ship) was full of prisoners, who assimilated into the population, the second ship was a warship that unsuccessfully attempted to subjugate Atlas under the boot of a tyrannical government back on Earth, and the third ship was fully of pilgrims who claimed that Earth has been destroyed because it was full of sinners (naturally, few believed them). At the time the novel takes place, a fourth ship is on the way.
* In ''Cała prawda o planecie Ksi'' by Creator/JanuszZajdel a colony was not as much lost as snatched by terrorists. The protagonist's mission is to find out what happened to it.
* Parodied in ''Literature/DaveBarrySleptHere'', which has Sir Walter Raleigh going to Virginia, founding a colony there, and then losing it out of carelessness.
-->"Think!" his friends would say. "Where did you see it last?" But it was no use, and this particular colony is still missing today. Sometimes [[FaceOnAMilkCarton you see its picture on milk cartons]].
* Michael Cobley's SpaceOpera series ''Humanity's Fire'' (or the initial trilogy, at least) is based on this concept. As shown in the DistantPrologue, humanity was facing defeat and subsequent extinction in a BugWar that was devastating the solar system. In a desperate attempt to ensure survival of the species before Earth itself was overrun, several FTL sleeper ships containing cross-cultural selections of the global population were built and launched. Of the proposed fifteen, only three were completed in time. The series proper is kicked off when the planet one of those ships landed on is rediscovered in the border area between several alien {{Galactic Superpower}}s, starting a diplomatic and military crisis. The fates of the other two are revealed and become relevant as the series goes on.
* In ''Literature/EmpireFromTheAshes'' by Creator/DavidWeber Earth was settled over 50 000 years ago after a mutiny rendered a picket starship inoperable and armed mutineers took everything high-tech away from loyalists. The 1st novel ''Mutineer's Moon'' deals with overthrowing mutineers, who still secretly rule Earth. The 3rd novel ''Heirs of the Empire'' introduces another lost colony -- Pardal. [[spoiler:The rest of Imperium/Empire proves to have been killed by bio-weapon accident. Pardal survived, but outlawed science and technology. It still managed to progress from stone age to flintlock guns -- in 45 000 years.]] By the way, other Earth animals turn out to have been transplanted from human homeworld in the distant past by aliens, hence the genetic similarity. Neanderthals and other primates evolved in parallel and are not closely related to humans.
* Creator/DavidWeber likes this trope. ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' has multiple planets, including [[spoiler: Sanctuary aka Bolthole, lost since PD 45 for almost 1900 years before the PRH rediscovers it]].
** ''Literature/Safehold'' takes place on a deliberately lost colony. As does ''Literature/OldSoldiers''
* In '''Literature/ThePillarsOfReality'' Dematr [[spoiler: is itself a lost colony, originally colonized as Demeter. The end of the first series results in wide spread knowledge. The Second series deals with what happens when its no longer lost.]]

* "Bitterblooms", one of Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's short stories from his "Thousand Worlds" universe, takes place on a planet that has regressed to pre-feudal levels. The heroine comes upon a self-proclaimed "witch" living in an ancient starship who seems to take her to distant worlds.

** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' had the crew visiting one that was mysteriously lost, at the time Earth didn't have fast enough ships to check up on it and they didn't ask the Vulcans because of, um, reasons. A natural disaster occurred but the colonists assumed it was a revenge attack from Earth after they separated; only the children survived living a primitive life in caves shielded from the radiation. They believe themselves to be aliens, and that humans attacked them all those years ago, so are mistrustful when the Enterprise crew turn up.

** In ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' the ''Hugo Gernsback'' crashes onto a planet with plants that degrade the human mind. The crew decides that only those able to repair the ship/get a message out are allowed to eat the food they brought with them with the rest forced to eat and become "like children". Shortly afterwards the guys in charge decide this colony life isn't that bad and decide to stay. Wehn Shepard and his/her fire team make landfall they quickly learn that while plant life makes human women "like children" it makes the men who eat it turn extremely violent and what happened to the guys in charge including [[spoiler:Jacob's dad]].

* The AdventurerArchaeologist Aurel Stein found a Chinese outpost dating to the end of the Han dynasty that had been cut off by the collapse of the dynasty (as detailed in {{Romance of the Three Kingdoms}}). Ancient Bureaucratic red-tape indicated that the outpost continued to function after it had been cut off, still keeping up Imperial forms as if the dynasty still held the throne.

* ''Series/StargateVerse'':

* A popular theory was that [[GearsOfWar Sera]] was a Lost Colony and that the humans were alien invaders, though ''Gears of War 3'' more or less {{Jossed}} this one.

* Niven's ''Literature/TheIntegralTrees'' series has a lost colony without a planet: they live in a torus of gas that encircles a dwarf star, where the closest thing to solid ground is the enormous, kilometers-long Tress.

* Niven's ''Literature/TheIntegralTrees'' series has a lost colony without a planet: they live a torus of gas that orbits encircles a dwarf star, where the closest thing to solid ground is the enormous, kilometers-long Tress.

* Niven's ''The Integral Trees'' series has a lost colony without a planet.

* In Creator/LarryNiven's ''[[Literature/KnownSpace Protector]]'', Earth is actually a LostColony of a species called the Pak, who start life as a larval form (unintelligent hominids) and, in their thirties, are irresistibly drawn to eat a certain tuber which is host to a virus that transforms them into ageless hyper-intelligent killing machines (Protectors of their descendants). The colony failed because the tuber can't incubate the virus in soil deficient in thallium oxide (A later protector finds that the virus will grow in a sweet potato), and the humans developed intelligence on their own. One Pak comes looking for the lost colony, kidnaps a human and turns him into a Protector, who is even smarter than the original variety ([[TranshumanTreachery and acts very different]]). Eventually we learn that the Literature/{{Ringworld}} was built by Pak.

* In ''Spartan Planet'' by A. Bertram Chandler, the lost colony is founded by a raging misogynist. Again, reproduction is artificial. As in ancient Sparta, babies with birth defects are left in the wilderness to die; here, lack of male parts is considered a defect.

* ''LightNovel/ScrappedPrincess''.

* ''Anime/LastExile''.

* In Creator/UrsulaKLeGuin's Hainish sequence, Earth (and probably Gethen, too) were lost colonies of the oldest known inhabited world, Hain. Both may have started off as rather ethically suspect experiments, although the Hainish are very ethical these days. It's subtly implied that all the inhabited worlds may be Hainish in origin.