Was also a major plot point in one of my favorite Star Trek TNG episodes, where Scotty and Geordi have to figure out a way to escape a Dyson sphere: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relics_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relics_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Gen...</a><p>One neat small thing in the episode is that a Dyson sphere is such a massive, almost incomprehensibly large and complex creation that even the people of Star Trek's 24th century were in awe of whatever civilization created it. See: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECLvFLkvY7Y" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECLvFLkvY7Y</a>
Also see RingWorld (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld</a>), a classic Sci-Fi novel about a structure that is an intermediate stage to a Dyson Sphere (a ring instead of a sphere).
Just a step on the ladder:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale</a>