Ceres (dwarf planet) in fiction

Ceres

As the largest body in the asteroid belt, the dwarf planet Ceres (formally "1 Ceres") frequently appears in science fiction:

Literature

19th century

• In Garrett P. Serviss' Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898), the Martians from H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1897) are engaged in a war with giant beings from Ceres.

20th century

Comics

• "Mummies of Ceres" is a 1936 storyline in the Buck Rogers comic strip.

Literature

• Ceres is mentioned in some of the stories of Isaac Asimov, who usually situates an observatory on Ceres, as for example in the juvenile novel Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953) and the Wendell Urth mystery "The Dying Night" (1956).
• In Alfred Bester's book The Stars My Destination (1956), the main character claims to be a wealthy lord from Ceres.
• Ceres is mentioned in passing in Robert A. Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Podkayne of Mars, Red Planet, Time for the Stars and The Rolling Stones.^[1]
• Ceres is a prison planet in the A. Bertram Chandler's novelette "Raiders of the Solar Frontier" (1950) published in Donald A. Wollheim's pulp magazine Out of This World Adventures
• In The Dune Encyclopedia (1984), Ceres becomes the "Seat of the Empire" (i.e., capital) after Earth is hit by an asteroid.
• In Joe Haldeman's novel Buying Time (1989; U.K. title The Long Habit of Living), Ceres is the home of a stateless society, which becomes important because of a secret research project to reinvent the Stileman rejuvenation process.
• In Larry Niven's Known Space stories (1964 onward), the asteroid belt has a government based on Ceres. It is also the site of the narrow but deciding victory against the Kzin Fourth Fleet during the First Man-Kzin War.
• In The Killing Star (1995) by Charles R. Pellegrino and George Zebrowski, some of the few humans who survive the initial alien attempt to exterminate the species hide out inside of Ceres.
• In Jerry Pournelle's Exiles to Glory (1974, republished 2007) Ceres is the site of an interplanetary mystery involving the theft of asteroid-mined super-heavy metals.
• In Bob Shaw's book The Ceres Solution (1981), extraterrestrials attempt to use Ceres to destroy Earth's moon thereby removing the effect of "third-order forces" that have been stunting human development since the dawn of civilization.
• In L. Neil Smith's novel The Venus Belt (1981), Ceres contains a large underground city and several small settlements and stations, connected by a network of inverted highways.
• In Bruce Sterling's novel Schismatrix (1985), Ceres Datacom News is a quasi-national entity networking the communications of the cybernetically enhanced inhabitants of the asteroids.
• In S. M. Stirling's Draka novel The Stone Dogs (1990), the Alliance for Democracy has a large base on Ceres.
• In Marooned in Realtime (1986) by Vernor Vinge, one of the murder suspects is the holder of a PhD in Mayan archaeology from the Universidad Polytecnica de Ceres.
• In The Doomsday Effect (1986) by Thomas Wren, Ceres is used to capture a small black hole which was slowly devouring the Earth.
• It is the focus of L. Neil Smith's novel Ceres (2009)^[2]
• It is home base to an advanced Human culture come to bootstrap Earth in order to fight an Alien threat in the local Galaxy in Raymond L. Weil's^[3] 'Slaver Wars' series.

Manga

• In the Sailor Moon metaseries (1995), a subset of villains called the "Amazoness Quartet" appear in the fourth arc of the manga and its anime counterpart, Sailor Moon SuperS. The leader of the Amazoness Quartet is CereCere, who is later revealed to be a Sailor Senshi named Sailor Ceres.

21st century

Comics

• In Sandy Sandfort's, Scott Bieser's and Lee Oaks's Webcomic Escape from Terra, Terran forces attempt to conquer the free human colony on Ceres.^[4]

Literature

• Mundus Cerialis (2012), by Andy Frankham-Allen & Sharon Bidwell, a novella in the second series of Space 1889 & Beyond, is set on and within Ceres, in an alternative history in which mankind are in space during the Victorian Era.
• In Ben Bova's series Asteroid Wars (2001–2007), a small mining base is established on Ceres.
• In James S.A. Corey's Expanse series, Ceres is the largest colony in the asteroid belt, housing six million people. Ceres' rotational speed had been artificially increased prior to the events of the novels, providing its inhabitants with a weak artificial gravity. Inhabitants of Ceres, and the asteroid belt in general, are referred to as "Belters" and are much taller and thinner than the inhabitants of the inner planets due to the low gravity.
• In The Unincorporated War (2010) by Dani & Eytan Kollin, Ceres is the capital and command base of the newly formed Alliance headed by Justin Cord.
• In Higher Reality (2015) by Alexander Janzer, Ceres in the year 2177 is the home of 30.000 people who live in magnetically rotating buildings for a gravitational effect.

Films

• In the movie The American Astronaut (2001) Ceres has a bar called the Ceres Crossroads, where a dance contest is held.

Games

• In the PC role-playing game Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (1990), Ceres is the location of an abandoned RAM (enemy) research base.
• In the tabletop card-and-dice game Champions of the Galaxy, Ceres is home to futuristic wrestling superstars Massif and Earthquake (later known as Chopper Mattock and Powerhouse).
• In the PC Game Descent (1995), one of the secret levels takes place on Ceres.
• In the PC Game Descent 3 (1999), one of the missions requires the player to extract virus data samples from an underground research laboratory.
• In the FPS/RPG Destiny, Ceres was colonized by an alien race called the Fallen following the cataclysmic end of humanity's Golden Age. Ceres was later totally destroyed by the forces of the Reef, a civilization of post-human "Awoken" who inhabit the Asteroid Belt, to prevent the Fallen there from joining their brethren on Earth in an attack on humanity's Last City.
• In the RPG Mutant Chronicles, Ceres is the homeworld of Cybertronic Megacorporation.
• In the PC Star Control series, Ceres Base is the place where formal contact with an alien species (the Chenjesu) is first made. Following the Ur-Quan war, the destruction of Ceres Station by the invading Ur-Quan fleet signifies the defeat of the human race, leading to their subsequent enslavement.
• In the SNES video game Super Metroid, a Space colony named "Ceres" appears as the first playable area. It is unknown if it is related to the actual dwarf planet, though it appears to be surrounded by asteroids, implying that it too is in an asteroid belt.
• In the PC game Terminal Velocity (1995), one of the missions involves the player destroying a machine that would cause Ceres to crash into Earth.
• In the RPG Transhuman Space, it is the largest colony in the asteroid belt and is an independent state living in functional anarchy.
• In the PC Game Warframe, Ceres is a space system and planet controlled by the Grineer Empire, a race of cloned humans.
• In the fictional Warhammer 40,000 universe, the Adeptus Mechanicus renews its alliance with the Imperium of Man with the Treaty of Ceres, following the Age of Apostasy.
• In the computer game Zone of the Enders, there is a space colony on Ceres.^[5]

Television

• In the TV series Exosquad (1993–5), Ceres is the assumed location of the first Neo Mega breeding facility.
• In the TV series The Expanse (2015–), Ceres is inhabited by humans.

See also

• Ceres
• Mining of Ceres

Notes

Astronomical locations in fiction
Solar System	Mercury Venus Earth Moon Mars moons Ceres other asteroids Jupiter moons Saturn Titan other moons Uranus Neptune Pluto other TNOs comets Fictional planets of the Solar System
Other systems	Aldebaran Alpha Centauri Altair Betelgeuse Deneb Epsilon Eridani Fomalhaut Rigel Sirius Tau Ceti Vega Stars and planetary systems Fictional planets (general) Fictional planets (by medium)
Other astronomical objects	Binary stars Black holes Galaxies Nebulae Supernovae Wormholes
Inhabitants	Earthlings Jovians Martians Neptunians Venusians