Venus in fiction

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In science fiction tales of about the first two thirds of 20th century the planet Venus was usually described as a hot, misty place, a planet covered by swamps full of strange life forms, often as a world resembling Earth in the Carboniferous period.

After space probes such as Mariner 2 (December 1962) sent data describing actual surface conditions of Venus (an extremely hot, dry desert with a lot of sulphuric acid in its environment), this exciting branch of the science fiction worldbuilding unfortunately seems to have gone nearly extinct, though Frederik Pohl made a valiant effort to keep it alive.

1 Venus in fiction

[edit] Venus in fiction

[edit] Literature

Presented in chronological order

[edit] Pre-Mariner

In H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1898), the narrator states in the epilogue that he believes that the Martians may have landed on Venus after the failed invasion of Earth. Ironically, the first film adaptation of the novel, The War of the Worlds, opens with an exposition on the Martian studies of all the planets in the solar system before selecting Earth, with the exception of Venus.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth stories, Venus is the Star of Eärendil. The star was created when Eärendil the Mariner was set in the sky on his ship, with a Silmaril bound to his brow. Elements of this story go back as far as 1914, though they did not appear in print until 1954. Tolkien chose the name directly from the Old English word Earendel, used as the name of a star (perhaps the morning star, Venus).
In Otis Adelbert Kline's Planet of Peril (written 1922, published 1929), hero Robert Grandon is telepathically transported into the mind of a Venusian. This was one of the first science fiction stories to send a character particularly to Venus. It was followed by two sequels set on Venus. These were innovative imitations of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars novels.
In Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men (1930), human beings fleeing a dying Earth perpetrate genocide on Venus and completely exterminate its aquatic intelligent species. Their descendants many millennia later live in the planet's oceanic idyll and evolve the power of flight.
In John W. Campbell's The Black Star Passes (1930, republished 1953), Venus is the home of an advanced civilization that creates enormous aircraft, among other things.
In Edgar Rice Burroughs' Venus series (1934-1946) Venus is a tropical world shielded from the heat of the sun by a perpetual cloud cover, home to a humanoid race whose technology is advanced in some respects and retarded in others. The native name is Amtor, and the portion depicted, largely confined to the southern hemisphere's temperate zone, is primarily oceanic, but includes two continents and a number of large islands. The series features hero Carson Napier, who discovers that Amtor is a world of sky-high trees, warring kingdoms and princesses in need of rescue. [1]
In Stanley G. Weinbaum's Parasite Planet and The Lotus Eaters (1935) Venus is tidally locked, with a barren sunside, a tropical twilight zone inhabited by parasitic life-forms, and a frozen nightside.
In H. P. Lovecraft's The Diary of Alonzo Typer (1938), part of the Cthulhu Mythos, there are mentions of the "Lords of Venus", and conflicting indications that the Serpent People originated there.
In H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling's In the Walls of Eryx (1939), the action takes place on Venus. This short story is not considered part of the Cthulhu Mythos.
In Robert A. Heinlein's Future History series (1939+), Venus is portrayed as a world covered entirely in hot, steamy swamps, which are used to explain the constant, unyielding cloud cover. Humans can live on Venus, but they find it very uncomfortable, and the few who settle there mainly are there for growing and harvesting local crops for export. The native Venusians are a primitive, yet peaceful people who tolerate humanity's presence and colonization. One story is "Logic of Empire".
In Leigh Brackett's short stories (1940-1949), including Lorelei of the Red Mist, The Moon that Vanished, and Enchantress of Venus, Venus is warm, wet, and cloudy; most of its surface is ocean or low-lying swamp, both of which are filled with exotic forms of life, including a large number of alien species.
In C.S. Lewis's Perelandra (1943), the second book in science fiction Space Trilogy, the scene is the planet Venus, described as a sort of paradise. The main character, Elwin Ransom acts as Maleldil's emissary in a second "Garden of Eden" situation. The first book in the series, Out of the Silent Planet, takes place on Mars; the third, That Hideous Strength, on Earth.
In Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore's Clash by Night (1943) and its sequel Fury (1947), military science fiction classics written under the joint pen name of Lawrence O'Donnell, underwater city-states hire mercenary companies and their battleships to fight their wars on the surface of Venus.
In Robert A. Heinlein's Space Cadet (1948) there is a confrontation with ordinarily peaceful Venerians who inhabit a steamy jungle covered Venus.
In A. E. Van Vogt's The World of Null-A (1948) and The Players of Null-A (1956), Venus in the far future is terraformed into a paradise where immigration from Earth is strictly controlled. The trees are all giants, with massive leaves to hold back the torrential rains.
In Jack Williamson's Seetee Ship (1949) and Seetee Shock (1950), Venus is colonised by China, in cooperation with some colonists from Japan and other East Asian countries, who all find the climate of Venus (as conceived here) congenial for the growing of rice. The Chinese transfer the seat of their government to Venus after the United States builds a nuclear base on the Moon, which enables the Americans to dominate the whole of Earth. The Asian-colonised Venus is one of the main powers contending for control of the mineral wealth of the Asteroid Belt.
In Ray Bradbury's Death-by-Rain (1950), a short story later published as The Long Rain in the 1951 short story collection, The Illustrated Man, four astronauts search for a man-made shelter, called a 'sun dome', on the surface of Venus, as it never stops raining. This story was adapted for the movie version; however, in the movie, the planet is not identified as Venus.
In Robert A. Heinlein's Between Planets (1951) a war for independence erupts between Earth and colonists and natives of Venus. The protagonist joins the Venus side.
In Isaac Asimov's Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954), a juvenile novel, Venus is covered by a worldwide ocean with a human colony located on the seafloor.
In Ray Bradbury's All Summer in a Day (1954), a short story later published in the 1959 collection A Medicine for Melancholy, the sun is seen for only an hour every seven year in a colony on Venus where it is constantly raining.
In Boris and Arkady Strugatsky's Noon Universe stories, Venus is depicted as an extremely harsh planet covered by strange flora and fauna but also very rich in minerals and heavy metals. The Land of Crimson Clouds (Russian: Strana Bagrovykh Tuch, 1959) describes the first successful manned mission to Venus, although a full-scaled colonization of the planet was not initiated until much later (in 2119; see Noon: 22nd Century).
In some of the early Perry Rhodan stories (1961-1962), Venus is a jungle world inhabited by dinosaurs and other monstrous creatures and is the site of a huge, ancient alien fortress.
In Robert A. Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars (November 1962) a spaceliner enroute from Mars to Earth makes a stop at Venus, which is depicted as a latter-day Las Vegas gone ultra-capitalistic. The planet is controlled by a single corporation and almost the last half of the novel takes places on Venus.

[edit] Post-Mariner

In Roger Zelazny's The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth (1965), a deliberately nostalgic image of an oceanic Venus complete with monstrous fish-like creatures is invoked, despite then-recent evidence contradicting this image of Venus.
In Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama (1972), the UP (United Planets) organization includes Mercury, Earth, Luna, Ganymede, Titan and Triton and conspicuously excludes Venus, which would have certainly been included in such a list in books written before the true conditions on Venus were discovered. Later the book's protagonist William Norton is described as having "distinguished himself during the fifteenth attempt to establish a base on Venus".
In Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972), Willy Wonka says that Venus used to be home to an alien race before they were "gobbled up" by vermicious knids.
In Frederik Pohl's The Merchants of Venus (1972), Pohl made a meticulous effort to present a plausible way for human colonization of Venus, under the conditions revealed by probes. In this story, Venus had been settled in the distant past by mysterious aliens which humans called Heechee (no-one knew what they called themselves). They left behind various artifacts as well as tunnels and underground chambers which could be adapted to human use, which both considerably reduced the price of colonization and provided a strong economic incentive as Heecheee artifacts fetched high prices. This led to the growth of a culture of prospectors and adventurers, somewhat reminiscent of the California and Klondike gold rush (which more often inspires stories set in the asteroids). This became the basis for Pohl's celebrated Heechee Series, where the search for Heecheee artifacts and the Heecheee themselves goes deeper and deeper into space, and meanwhile human-settled Venus has become a sovereign state and a major power.
In Jacqueline Susann's Yargo (1979), Venus is inhabited by bees that are as big as horses.
In L. Neil Smith's The Venus Belt (1980), part of alternative history series, an unrestrained capitalist free enterprise culture makes a huge success of colonising the Asteroid Belt and decides to blow up and smash to pieces the "utterly useless planet" Venus so as to create a new Asteroid Belt (hence the book's name). The narrator, originating from our own world, gloats over the outrage which conservationists would have expressed over this act. (The planet-smashers evidently did not make a very thorough survey of how the rest of Solar System would be affected by such a far-reaching step, nor did they try to find if Venus might have life fitted for its own conditions.)
In Pamela Sargent's Venus series, Venus of Dreams (1986), Venus of Shadows (1988), and Children of Venus (2001), the setting is provided by the terraforming of Venus.
In Frank Herbert's Man of Two Worlds (1986), part of the story takes place on Venus, with a war occurring on the planet between the French (and their Foreign Legion) and the Chinese. Foot soldiers on both sides wear armored suits made of inceram, an incredibly heat-resistant material, to protect them from the planet's surface temperatures. Any damage to a soldier's armor which allows the Venusian atmosphere inside results in his body literally boiling into vapor.
In Arthur C. Clarke's 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997), Venus is briefly mentioned.
In Ben Bova's novel Venus (2000, ISBN 0-312-87216-X), a more scientifically accurate depiction of the planet is offered. Two competing manned expeditions are send there to recover the body of an astronaut whose previous mission failed for unknown reasons. See also: Grand Tour (novel series).
In Mark Brandis' "space partisans" universe, mankind in the late 21st century has managed to terraform Venus to host a colony of cities each covered by massive transparent domes containing the atmosphere and protecting from the heat. The colony had been a former Gulag type penitentiary and the domes had been built by the prisoners.
In Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, a prefunctory comment is made that a parasol will be used to diffuse or outright block the sunlight from Venus, causing the atmosphere to condense to the surface as dry ice where nano-machines will encase it under the oceans under a blanket of nano-engineered diamond. Mettalic drivers are being used to increase the spin of Venus to something like a terran week per rotation.

[edit] Comics and manga

Venus was the home planet of the Mekon, arch-enemy of the 1950s comic book hero Dan Dare.
In the manga Venus Wars, in the year 2003, the giant asteroid Apolion collides with Venus, slowing the planet rotation, throwing great of part of the atmosphere in space, and filling the planet with water. after that the humans terraform Venus.
In the DC Comics universe, Venus is home to millions of mind-controlling worms, such as Mister Mind, an enemy of Captain Marvel. It is also the homeworld to the villain Cosmic King. As shown in the Wonder Woman 1,000,000 special, it is also the potential future home to the Amazons in that universe.
Venus appears in the OKEY-DOKEY comic book series as The Princess of Chaos.

[edit] Film and television

Many science-fiction movies and serials of the '50s and '60s, such as Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, Space Ship Sappy, Queen of Outer Space (with Zsa Zsa Gabor), and Space Patrol, have used the concept of the namesake goddess Venus and her domain to contrive planetary populations of nubile Amazonian women welcoming (or attacking) all-male astronaut crews (even though the goddess Venus - or Aphrodite for that matter - had absolutely nothing to do with the Amazons; that role belonged to Ares, or to Artemis).
In Space Patrol - episode Time Stands Still - Stolen art treasures are being transported into space. Raeburn suspects that Venusian millionaire Tara is behind the thefts, but his palace is too well guarded. Professor Heggarty develops a watch that speeds up the wearer's reaction sixty times which enables Dart to sneak into the palace unnoticed.
In Space Patrol - episode The Human Fish - The Tula Fish in the Venusian Magda Ocean are evolving at an extraordinary rate and attack fishermen. The Galasphere crew are sent to help and discover that building materials, routinely sumped may be the cause of the Tula's accelerated evolution.
The creature in It Conquered the World (1956) is from Venus. It resembles a large carrot with teeth and a nasty grin.
20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) deals with the crash near Sicily of a spaceship returning from an expedition to Venus and the rampage by a creature brought back. (There are no scenes of Venus, and we are told very little about it.) The creature (called in production, but not in the film, a "Ymir") is a reptilian humanoid with perhaps the intelligence of a chimpanzee. The film was animated by Ray Harryhausen.
In First Spaceship on Venus, it is discovered that the Tunguska Event in 1908 was the crash of a spaceship from Venus and a multi-national crew is sent to the planet. They find the Venusians to have destroyed themselves (probably in a nuclear war) and the environment to be hostile. We never see the actual Venusians, but in an eerie scene humanoid flash shadows are shown on a wall. [This is probably the first movie to have incorporated the Mariner 2 findings.] It is based on Stanislaw Lem's book, Astronauci.
The Russian film Planet Bura (Storm Planet) is about an expedition to Venus, where they find dinosaurs. This movie may set the record for number of bastardized fix-up versions it has spawned, including Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet.
Venus is the location of several Starfleet Academy training facilities and terraforming stations in the fictional Star Trek universe (1966–).
In Doctor Who, the Third Doctor purports to be an expert in Venusian aikido and sings Venusian lullabies. The Missing Adventures novel Venusian Lullaby elaborates on this, depicting the First Doctor visiting a dying Venus three billion years in the past.

[edit] Animated

In the television series Exosquad, a terraformed Venus was one of the three Homeworlds. Prior to the war between Terrans and Neosapiens, Venusian human population was the second largest in the solar system, which made the planet itself a source of constant trouble for the Neosapien regime.
In the Japanese anime series, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon (1992), Sailor Venus is a soldier representing the planet of the same name (she is also the princess, Princess Venus). In mythology, Venus is the Roman goddess of love (Aphrodite in Greek), therefore, Sailor Venus's attacks and weapons (e.g. Venus Love Me Chain and Venus Love and Beauty Shock) represent the idea of love and femininity. Her image colours are gold and orange -- similar to the colour of the planet. Also, on her forehead is the planet's symbol.
A presumably terraformed Venus was the setting of one episode of the anime Cowboy Bebop (1998). In the show, Venus was revealed to be an arid but habitable world. Much of the population lived in floating cities in the sky.

[edit] Games

In the role-playing game Transhuman Space, a scientific colony of a few thousand people has been established on Venus. The European Union has also begun construction of a sunshade as a first step toward terraforming Venus.
In the "Golden Sun" role-playing game series for the Game Boy Advance, Venus is the ruling planet for earth-element-based Psynergy and Djinn.
In Final Fantasy X, a role-playing game for PS2, the Celestial Weapon of Lulu, Onion Knight, is powered by two rare items called the Venus Crest and Venus Sigil.