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HISTORY Before Galileo turned his Telescope to the heavens, the planets of the Solar System were not recognized as potential locations or worlds. They were visible to observers merely as bright points of light, only distinguishable from stars by their motion. In the System of Claudius Ptolemy (''fl. c.'' 150), the Alexandrian astronomer whose works were the basis of all Astronomy throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance , the planets were lights set into a series of transparent spheres turning around the Earth, which was the center of the one and only universe. Dante (1265-1321), in his Paradiso , describes the ascent of his narrator through the spheres of the Moon , the planets (from Mercury to Saturn , and thence to the sphere of the fixed stars and the heavens of the Angel s. Dante implies that the light of the planets is a combination of light imparted by Divine will and the radiance of the blessed souls that inhabit the spheres. These planets are, however, entirely ethereal; they have light but no physical form and no geography. Ludovico Ariosto , in his epic Orlando Furioso (1513), jestingly sent his hero to a Moon where everything lost on Earth eventually turns up; but it was not until Galileo discovered (1609-1610) that the Moon had surface features, and that the other planets could, at least, be resolved into disks, that the concept that the planets were real physical bodies came to be taken seriously. In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus had already posited that the planets orbited the Sun as the Earth does; combined, these two concepts led to the thought that the planets might be "worlds" similar to the Earth. Public expression of such concepts could be dangerous, however; Giordano Bruno was martyred in 1600 for, among other things, imagining an infinite number of other worlds, and claiming that "Innumerable suns exist; innumerable Earths revolve about these suns ... Living beings inhabit these worlds" in ''De l'infinito universo e mondi'' ("Concerning the Infinite Universe and Worlds", 1584). At the time, such speculation was of a rather rarefied sort, and was limited to astronomers like , who wrote in defense of Galileo. The concept of life on distant planets was not, however, much utilized in fiction. The most popular target of 17th century "science fiction" was the Moon ("visited" in fiction by Kepler , Godwin , and Cyrano ). Oddly, none of these fictions made use of the lunar maps contemporaneously created by Hevelius , Riccioli and others. It was quite some time before such "extraordinary voyages" went beyond the lunar sphere. Eberhard Kindermann sent an airship to the planets in 1744 in ''Die Geschwinde Reise auf dem Lufft-schiff nach der obern Welt'' ("The Airship's Speedy Journey to the Upper World"); while a traveller from the star Sirius passes inward through the Solar System, stopping at various planets in Voltaire 's '' Micromégas '' (1752); followed by another outward voyage in Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert's ''Voyage de Milord Céton dans les Sept Planètes'' ("Lord Seton's Voyage Among the Seven Planets", 1765). These stories were generally unscientific and tended towards the satirical rather than the purely entertaining; their subject-matter was probably inspired by the popular writings of Fontenelle , notably his ''Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes'' ("Conversations on the Multiplicity of Worlds", 1686). With the rapid developments in the magnifying and resolving power of telescopes in the course of the 19th century, it finally became possible to distinguish surface features on other planets and even to draw maps of some of them, notably Mars . In 1877, Asaph Hall reported two moons of Mars and Giovanni Schiaparelli found the surface of Mars to be adorned with continents, seas, and canals, and a very suitable habitat for life. From the beginning of the 1880s, fictions – some more, some less scientific – involving travels to and from Mars began to be produced in great quantities, even though the observations of Percival Lowell required reassessment of Mars as a more marginal Desert Planet . Mars remained a favored destination for fictional travellers down to the early 1960s (see Mars In Fiction ). Since probes revealed the absence of any indications of intelligent life on Mars, the science fictional Mars has changed to a possible future home for the human race, e.g. through Terraforming . Venus was never quite so popular as Mars, probably because it obdurately refused to display any surface features (it is covered with sulfuric acid clouds only dimly translucent to visible light), making any statement about its nature disturbingly speculative. 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 Forest s 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, and where hostile interactions with Venusian natives were reminiscent of European Colonial projects in Africa and Asia (see Venus In Fiction ). In fact Venus's surface is hot enough to melt lead, and it is extremely hostile to life. Various other planets of the Solar System were used as settings for science fiction stories in the first half of the 20th century; but dissatisfaction with the limits imposed by science led many writers early on to forsake the Solar System for fictional planets around distant stars. As increasing knowledge of the Solar System made the prospects of life in the vicinity of Earth marginal at best, the Extrasolar Planet has become almost the only venue for contemporary science fiction. In many works of science fiction, planets are only described casually, as points of origin and departure, or as interchangeable backdrops for space battles. This is particularly true of Space Opera . In other works, the planet takes center stage as the primary scene of events, and particular attention is paid to its environment and any culture that may exist on it. Adventure stories that stick to a single, well-described planet are sometimes called Planetary Romance s; some of these planets are not very realistic and are effectively Fantasy World s. Planets may be treated in different ways depending both on the interests of the author and the genre he or she is writing in. In some stories, a planet is mainly considered as an object in space: the interest of the fiction depends upon its astronomical characteristics, such as its mass, its geological composition, its atmosphere, how many moons it has and what size they are, how close it is to its sun (or suns) and how hot they are. Such considerations are found prominently though not exclusively in the Hard Science Fiction genre. In other stories, a planet is considered as a world or setting. Such a planet will be described from the point of view of a person dwelling on it, rather than from the point of view of an outside observer: the fiction may describe its geography, its history, and the social and cultural characteristics of its civilizations. Since authors usually adopt human protagonists, such planets are typically described as very hospitable to human life and, other than in geography, nearly indistinguishable from Earth; Brian Stableford calls such planets "Earth-Clones". Other planets appear in humorous or comical settings, sometimes spoofing more conventional science fiction. Such planets are often described with no pretense to scientific accuracy; their strange characteristics are primarily intended to amuse. For the '' has been devised; it is not actually used by scientists. PLANET LISTS For planets from specific fictional milieux, use the following lists and categories, or use Wikipedia's search box on this page: Literature
Comics
Film and television
RPGs and miniature games
Computer and video games
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Fictional planets in comedy These planets are not so much carefully constructed worlds as they are humorous backgrounds or gag references in various comedy shows and games:
Fictional variants of real planets Several planets of the solar system have, at various times, been the basis for fictional worlds with characteristics more or less distinct from those of the actual planet, as presently understood.
Fictional artificial planets In addition, some writers, scientists and artists have speculated about Artificial World s or planet-equivalents; these planets include:
Fantastic planets Some invented planets have physically impossible shapes, and may be regarded as Fantasy World s:
BOOKS
SEE ALSO
Solar system planets in fiction
Similar fictions
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