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In science fiction stories of the 1920s-1960s, the planet Venus was frequently described as a tropical planet, hot and misty, covered with jungle, swamps, and oceans. In 1918, chemist Svante Arrhenius, deciding that Venus' cloud cover was necessarily water, decreed in The Destinies of the Stars that "A very great part of the surface of Venus is no doubt covered with swamps" and compared Venus' humidity to the tropical rain forests of the Congo. Venus thus became, until the early 1960s, a place for science fiction writers to place all manner of unusual life forms, from quasi-dinosaurs to intelligent carnivorous plants. Comparisons often referred to Earth in the Carboniferous period.
Although these descriptions were already considered scientifically doubtful as early as 1922, when Charles E. St. John and Seth B. Nicholson, failing to detect the spectroscopic signs of oxygen or water in the atmosphere, proposed a dusty, windy desert Venus. However, the more optimistic notions of Venus were not definitely disproven until the first space probes were sent to Venus. Data from the fly-by of Mariner 2 (December 1962) as well as radio astronomy from the same time pointed to a hot, dry Venus, but as late as 1964, Soviet scientists were still designing Venus probes for the possibility of landing in liquid water [1].
It was not until Venera 4 and Mariner 5 reached Venus (October 18-19, 1967) that it was confirmed beyond doubt that Venus was actually an extremely hot, dry desert with a lot of sulfuric acid in its atmosphere. Stories about wet tropical Venus vanished at that point, except for intentionally nostalgic "retro-sf". The following list divides stories about Venus into those which reflect the older view of Venus, and the more accurate ones reflecting Venus science since the mid-1960s.
[edit] Stories set on Venus
[edit] "Old Venus"
- In John Munro's A Trip to Venus (1897), the narrator, an engineer, an astronomer and his daughter travel by a newly-invented flying machine to Venus and Mercury. On Venus they find a utopian civilization, and the narrator falls in love.
- 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 (The Prince of Peril, 1930 and The Port of Peril, 1932). 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 forested continents and a number of large islands. The series features hero Carson Napier, who engages in derring-do and the rescue of princesses amid vicious political struggles. [2].
- 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.
- H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling's "In the Walls of Eryx" (1939) takes place on a muddy jungle Venus inhabited by lizard-men. (Unlike many other Lovecraft stories, it is not part of the Cthulhu Mythos.)
- 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 Robert A. Heinlein's Future History series, 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.
- Logic of Empire (1941). An Earthman is enslaved on Venus.
- Space Cadet (1948). Depicts a confrontation with ordinarily peaceful Venerians who inhabit a steamy, jungle-covered Venus.
- Between Planets (1951). A war for independence erupts between Earth and colonists and natives of Venus. The protagonist joins the Venus side.
- Podkayne of Mars (1962), a spaceliner en route from Mars to Earth makes a stop at Venus, which is depicted as a latter-day Las Vegas gone ultra-capitalistic, controlled by a single corporation. Almost the last half of the novel takes place on Venus.
- 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.
- 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.
- Venus and the Seven Sexes (1947) by William Tenn.
- 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. In a film adaptation, the planet is not identified as Venus.
- In Frederick Pohl and C.N. Kornbluth's The Space Merchants (1953), Venus is portrayed as a steamy jungle world, on which a former executive is enslaved on a Chlorella plantation.
- In Isaac Asimov's Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954), a juvenile novel, Venus is covered by a worldwide ocean with human colonies 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 years in a colony on Venus where it is constantly raining.
- In Poul Anderson's 1954 novella "The Big Rain", published in the 1981 collection The Psychotechnic League, Venus is a harsh, waterless world under a brutal dictatorship.
- 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.
- Roger Zelazny's The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth (1965), describes an oceanic Venus complete with monstrous fish-like creatures is invoked, despite then-recent evidence contradicting this image of Venus.
- The short story anthology Farewell Fantastic Venus (1968) responded to the recent discoveries with fiction from a time when men still believed Venus could host life.
- S. M. Stirling's Sky People (2006) restores the traditional oceanic and Mesozoic Venus by postulating an alternate universe in which Venus was terraformed and given a shorter solar day 200 million years ago by an unknown alien intelligence; Venus was then populated with wave after wave of terrestrial species ranging from dinosaurs to Neanderthals and several different populations of humans. Discovery of the Earthlike conditions prevailing on Venus led to a speeded-up Space-Race and Terran settlements by the second half of the 20th century.
[edit] "New Venus"
- In Larry Niven's "Becalmed in Hell" (1965), a spaceship exploring the atmosphere of Venus lands to fix a problem. One of the earliest stories to reflect the newer understanding of Venus' high surface temperatures.
- 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 Heechee artifacts and the Heechee themselves goes deeper and deeper into space, and meanwhile human-settled Venus has become a sovereign state and a major power.
- In John Varley's "In the Bowl", humans use advanced technology to live on Venus.
- 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.
- Paul Preuss' Venus Prime second book Maëlström (1988), is set on Venus.
- In Ben Bova's novel Venus (2000, ISBN 0-312-87216-X), a scientifically accurate depiction of the planet is offered. Two competing manned expeditions are sent 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 a breathable atmosphere and protecting from the heat. The colony had been a former Gulag-type penitentiary and the domes had been built by the prisoners.
- Stephen King's short story The Cursed Expedition detailed a Venus that was alive and ate spaceships.
[edit] Other fictional references to Venus
- 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 Hugh Walters' young reader's novel Expedition Venus (1962), an unmanned probe returning from Venus crashes in Africa, accidentally releasing a dangerous spore that flourishes in terrestrial conditions.
- 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 L. Neil Smith's The Venus Belt (1980), part of an alternative history series, an unrestrained capitalist free enterprise culture makes a huge success of colonizing 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 Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, a perfunctory comment is made to the effect that a parasol will be used to diffuse or 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. Metallic drivers are being used to increase the spin of Venus to something like a terran week per rotation.
- In Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Space, Venus is found to have been purposely slowed down through the use of planet-covering superconducting cable.
[edit] Comics and manga
- Venus features prominently in the British comic Dan Dare (original run 1950-1967). Dan Dare's Venus was divided into two hemispheres, north and south, separated by a "flamebelt" of burning gases. North Venus was the home planet of the hyperintelligent, dictatorial Mekon, Dare's arch-enemy, as well as his people, the Treens. South Venus is inhabited by a different people, the Therons.
- In the DC Comics universe, Venus is home to millions of mind-controlling worms, such as Mister Mind (1943-), an enemy of Captain Marvel. It is also the homeworld to the villain Cosmic King (1961-). As shown in the Wonder Woman 1,000,000 special, it is also the potential future home to the Amazons in that universe.
- In the manga Venus Wars, an ice asteroid designated Apollon collides with Venus in 2003. This has the effect of dispersing much of the planet's atmosphere, adding enough moisture to form (acidic)seas, and speeding up its rotation to give it a day that matches its year. Simply put, due to an unlikely yet scientifically sound accident, it takes amazingly little effort for humans to make the planet marginally habitable - the first manned ship lands in 2007, colonization begins in 2012.
- In the popular metaseries Sailor Moon, Minako Aino is known as Sailor Venus, and has powers over love, light and metal, which is considered to be connected to planet Venus in Eastern Astrology.
[edit] Film and television
- Many science-fiction movies and serials of the 1950s 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).
- Space Patrol (1962) puppet television series:
- "Time Stands Still" episode. 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.
- "The Human Fish" episode. 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 dumped in the ocean, may be the cause of the Tula's accelerated evolution.
- Der Schweigende Stern (1960). In this German-language film, based on Stanisław Lem's book Astronauci, 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. The film was released in English as "First Spaceship on Venus".
- The Russian film Planeta Bur (Storm Planet, 1962) is about an expedition to Venus that discovers dinosaurs. This movie may set the record for number of bastardized fix-up versions it has spawned, including Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet.
- "Cold Hands, Warm Heart" (1964), episode of The Outer Limits television series starring William Shatner as an astronaut who returns from a voyage to Venus suffering from unexplained mutations.
- 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.
- In the BBC miniseries Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets (2004), Venus is the first destination of the interplanetary science vessel Pegasus. Cosmonaut Yvan Grigorev becomes the first human to set foot on the planet during a short manned landing, which due to the hostile environment, only has a planned duration of one hour.
[edit] Animated
- Venus Wars (1989) animated film. Takes place on a terraformed Venus.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 computer game Descent, levels 4 and 5 take place in a Venus atmospheric lab, and a nickel-iron mine.
- In the game Golden Sun, Venus represents the earth element and has its correspondent lighthouse.
- In the PC game Battlezone, Venus is featured in several missions and multiplayer maps with a brown atmosphere, constant lightning and thunder, and fog. The heat does not affect the gameplay.
- In the Mutant Chronicles game universe, Venus is an important setting, following the pulp era jungle description.
[edit] See also
