Rolling and wheeled creatures in fiction and legend

Legends and speculative fiction reveal a longstanding human fascination with rolling and wheeled creatures. Such creatures appear in mythologies from Europe, Japan, pre-Columbian Mexico, the United States, and Australia, and in numerous modern works.

Rolling creatures

The triskelion is a motif with central symmetry used since ancient times.
A variant with three human legs appears in the medieval flag of the Isle of Man.
A variant with the head of Medusa in the union of the legs is associated with Sicily.
It is not known the meaning it had in antiquity or its original Greek name.

The hoop snake, a creature of legend in the United States and Australia, is said to grasp its tail in its mouth and roll like a wheel towards its prey. Japanese culture includes a similar mythical creature, the ''Tsuchinoko''.

Buer, a demon mentioned in the 16th-century grimoire ''Pseudomonarchia Daemonum'', was described in Collin de Plancy's 1825 edition of ''Dictionnaire Infernal'' as having "the shape of a star or wheel". The 1863 edition of this book featured an illustration by Louis Le Breton, depicting a creature with five legs radially arranged.

Neil R. Jones' 1937 story "On the Planet Fragment" features aliens dubbed the Disci, which are shaped like wheels, with limbs around the circumference. One of their methods of locomotion is a "rolling motion like that of a cartwheel."

The 1944 science fiction short story "Arena", by Fredric Brown, features a telepathic alien called an Outsider, which is roughly spherical and moves by rolling. The story was the basis for a 1967 ''Star Trek'' episode of the same name, and possibly also a 1964 episode of '' The Outer Limits'' entitled "Fun and Games", though neither television treatment included a spherical creature.

The Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher invented a creature that was capable of rolling itself forward, which he named ''Pedalternorotandomovens centroculatus articulosus''. He illustrated this creature in his 1951 lithograph (also known by the English title ''Curl-up'').

A 1956 Scrooge McDuck comic, ''Land Beneath the Ground!'', by Carl Barks, introduced Terries and Fermies (a play on the phrase '' terra firma''), creatures who move from place to place by rolling. The Terries and Fermies have made a sport of their rolling abilities, causing earthquakes in the process.

Northern Irish author James White's ''Sector General'' series features "Rollers" from the planet Drambo, doughnut-shaped aquatic organisms that do not have hearts, but which instead must roll continuously to maintain circulation by means of gravity. The Rollers are described in the short story "Spacebird" in the 1980 edition of '' Ambulance Ship'', and in other works in the series.

The 1982 puppet-animated fantasy film ''The Dark Crystal'', directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz, introduced the character Fizzgig, a dog-like companion creature that rolls from place to place. In 2015, an original film puppet of Fizzgig was put on auction with an estimated value of $12,000–$15,000.

In '' The Citadel of Chaos'' (1983) by Steve Jackson, the reader encounters Wheelies, disc-shaped creatures with four arms who move by doing cartwheels.

''Tuf Voyaging'', a 1986 science fiction novel by George R. R. Martin, features an alien called a Rolleram, described as a "berserk living cannonball of enormous size", which kills its prey by rolling over it and crushing it, before digesting it externally. Adults of the species weigh approximately six metric tons and can roll faster than .

In the ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' video game series, which first appeared in 1991, the eponymous Sonic and his sidekick Tails are capable of moving by rolling.

The 1995 short story "Microbe", by Kenyon College biologist and feminist science fiction writer Joan Slonczewski, describes an exploratory expedition to an alien world whose plant and animal life consists entirely of doughnut-shaped organisms.

Wheeled creatures

Toy animals with wheels dating from the Pre-Columbian era were uncovered by archaeologists in Veracruz, Mexico in the 1940s. The indigenous peoples of this region did not use wheels for transportation prior to the arrival of Europeans.

L. Frank Baum's 1907 children's novel ''Ozma of Oz'' features humanoid creatures with wheels instead of hands and feet, called Wheelers. Their wheels are composed of keratin, which has been suggested by biologists as a means of avoiding nutrient and waste transfer problems with living wheels. Despite moving quickly on open terrain, the Wheelers are stymied by obstacles in their path that do not hinder creatures with limbs. They also make an appearance in the 1985 film ''Return to Oz'', based partly on ''Ozma of Oz''.

The surrealist artist Remedios Varo (1908–1963) painted images of fantastical creatures with wheels as their bases, such as ''Homo rodans'' (1959), ''Fantastic animal'' (1959), and ''The Ladies at Bonhuer''.

The 1966 novella ''The Last Castle'' by Jack Vance describes "power-wagons" as creatures with a mix of biological and mechanical elements, including wheels.

The 1968 novel ''The Goblin Reservation'' by Clifford D. Simak features an intelligent alien race that uses biological wheels.

''Chorlton and the Wheelies'', a British stop-motion-animated television series that aired from 1976 to 1979, was set in "Wheelie World", which was inhabited by three-wheeled creatures called "wheelies".

Piers Anthony's 1977 book ''Cluster'' and its sequels feature aliens called Polarians, which locomote by gripping and balancing atop a large ball. The ball is a living, though temporarily separable, portion of the Polarian's body.

David Brin

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