Venus in fiction

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For the goddess Venus in fiction, see Venus (mythology) § Mythology and literature.
Planet Stories, winter 1939, featuring "Gold Amazons of Venus"

Works of fiction about the planet Venus have been written since before the 19th century. Its impenetrable cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface; the more so when early observations showed that not only was it very similar in size to Earth but possessed a substantial atmosphere. Closer to the Sun than Earth, the planet was often depicted as warmer but still habitable by humans.

The genre reached its peak between the 1930s and 1950s, when science had revealed some aspects of Venus but not yet the harsh truth of its surface conditions. From the mid-20th century on, as the reality of Venus as a hostile, toxic inferno became known, the early tropes of adventures in a lush, verdant paradise gave way to more realistic stories of the planet's colonization and terraforming.

Early depictions[]

Early works of fiction touching on the planet Venus include Athanasius Kircher's Itinerarium Exstaticum (1656) and Emanuel Swedenborg's The Earths in Our Solar System (1758).[1]

The first science-fiction novel specifically about Venus was 's Voyage à Venus (Voyage to Venus, 1865).[1] In time, Venus became one of the most popular planets in early science fiction, perhaps second only to Mars.[2]: 12  It was a common setting for the scientific romance genre[1] and featured in novels such as 's A Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of Paul Aermont among the Planets (1873), Fred T. Jane's To Venus in Five Seconds (1897), Garrett Serviss' A Columbus of Space (1909), 's Between Worlds (1919), and Stanton A Coblentz's The Blue Barbarians (1931).

Venus was large enough for entire series to be set there, such as Ralph Milne Farley's that began with The Radio Man (1924), Otis Adelbert Kline's trilogy opening with The Planet of Peril (1929), and Edgar Rice Burroughs' "sword-and-planet" series beginning with Pirates of Venus (1932), set on a fictionalized version of Venus known as Amtor.[1][3]: 547 [4]: 860  More serious, solemn treatments included Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men (1930 ) and Henry Kuttner's Fury (1947).[4]: 860 

Venus was also often a setting for short stories in early science-fiction magazines. Notable stories were penned by John W Campbell Jr ("Solarite", 1930), Clark Ashton Smith ("The Immeasurable Horror", 1931), John Wyndham ("The Venus Adventure", 1932), Stanley G. Weinbaum ("The Lotus Eaters" and "Parasite Planet", 1935), Clifford D. Simak ("Hunger Death", 1931), Lester del Rey ("The Luck of Ignatz", 1939) and Robert A. Heinlein ("Logic of Empire", 1941).[1]

Early astronomers could see only the vast Venusian cloud cover, leading scholars as well as many writers to speculate that Venus was covered by a gigantic ocean, was a tropical world like prehistoric Earth (Nobel laureate chemist Svante Arrhenius wrote in 1918 that Venus was likely a "lush, steamy" planet abundant in lower life forms), or was a desert.[2]: 12 [5]: 43 [6]: 131 [7][8] Many early portrayals of Venus suggest the planet's lifeforms and scenery, with the added twist that, as Venus orbits closer than Earth to the Sun, it may resemble a younger version of Earth.[1][3]: 547 [4]: 860 

Scenery[]

A number of the earliest descriptions painted Venus as a beautiful paradisiac planet, a view that was only in time modified by scientific findings.[3]: 547 

Jungle and swamp[]

Artist's impression of ruins in an alien jungle, a common background in many early stories of adventure on Venus.

A clement twilight zone on a synchronously rotating Mercury, a swamp‐and‐jungle Venus, and a canal‐infested Mars, while all classic science‐fiction devices, are all, in fact, based upon earlier misapprehensions by planetary scientists.

— Carl Sagan, 1978[9]


Many writers and scientists thought Venus would have land masses, though not dry ones.[6]: 131 [3]: 547  Early treatments of a Venus of swamps and jungles are ’s Romances of the Planets, no 2: Journey to Venus (1895), Fred T. Jane’s To Venus in Five Seconds (1897), and Maurice Baring’s ‘‘Venus’’ (1909).[3]: 547  In 1918, Nobel-laureate chemist Svante Arrhenius, concluding that Venus' cloud cover must be water vapor, declared 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 Congo's tropical rain forests. Because of what he assumed to be uniform climatic conditions all over the planet, he supposed that the Venusian lifeforms lived under very stable conditions and did not have to adapt to changing environments as did life on Earth. Due to the absence of selective pressure, it would be covered in prehistoric swamps.

Venus thus became, until the early 1960s, a place for science-fiction writers to put all manner of extraordinary lifeforms, from quasi-dinosaurs to intelligent carnivorous plants. Comparisons of Venus often made reference to Earth in the Carboniferous period.[7][8]

This recurred in other works of fiction and became "a staple of pulp science fiction imagery".[3]: 547  Several of Stanley G. Weinbaum's 1930s short stories are set in Venusian tropical jungles.[2]: 12  Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote several novels set on Venus' "swampy landscapes", beginning with Pirates of Venus (1934) and followed by several sequels.[10]: 64-65 [4]: 860  Kline's trilogy likewise is set on swampy Venus.[4]: 860  Robert A. Heinlein's "The Green Hills of Earth" (1947), Space Cadet (1948), Between Planets (1951) and Podkayne of Mars (1963) portray the fungal, fetid Venusian swamps.[1][4]: 860 

Venusian jungles are also featured in Ray Bradbury's "Death-by-Rain" (1950).[1] Bradbury's short stories "The Long Rain" and "All Summer in a Day" also depicted Venus as a habitable planet with incessant rain. In Germany, the Perry Rhodan novels used the vision of Venus as a jungle world.[11]

Ocean[]

Others envisioned Venus as a Panthalassa (All-Ocean), with perhaps a few islands. Large land masses could not exist, they said, because they would have generated atmospheric updrafts that would have broken up the planet's solid cloud layer.[6]: 131 [3]: 547 

An early treatment of an oceanic Venus is Harl Vincent’s ‘‘Venus Liberated’’ (1929).[3]: 548  In Olaf Stapledon’s 1930 science-fiction novel Last and First Men, humanity is forced to migrate to Venus, hundreds of millions of years in the future, when astronomical calculations show that the Moon will soon spiral down to crash into Earth. Stapledon describes a Venus, populated by aquatic descendants of Homo sapiens, as mostly oceanic, with fierce tropical storms.[1][12]

Works such as Clifford D. Simak’s ‘‘Rim of the Deep’’ (1940), C. S. Lewis's 1943 Perelandra, and Isaac Asimov's 1954 Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus drew from a vision of a Cambrian-like Venus covered by a near-planet-wide ocean filled with exotic aquatic life. Isaac Asmov's The Oceans of Venus (1954) and Poul Anderson's "Sister Planet" (1959) likewise portray an ocean-covered Venus.[1][2]: 12 [3]: 548 [4]: 860  Henry Kuttner's and C. L. Moore "Clash by Night" (1943), called in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction "the most enduring pulp image" of an oceanic Venus, describes human survivors from a devastated Earth as living in Venusian submarines, and inspired a 1991 sequel, The Jungle by David A. Drake.[1][3]: 548 

Desert[]

A third group of early theories about conditions on Venus explained the cloud cover with a hot, dry planet where the atmosphere holds water vapor and the surface has dust storms.[6]: 131 [4]: 860  In 1922 Charles Edward 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, and in 1940 Rubert Wildt discussed how a greenhouse effect might result in a similar outcome.[4]: 860 [7][13]: 79–81 

The vision of a desert Venus was never as popular as that of a swampy or jungle one, but featured in several notable stories such as Poul Anderson's The Big Rain (1954), in Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth's novel The Space Merchants (1953), in Robert Sheckley's "Prospector Planet" (1959), in Dean McLaughlin's The Fury from Earth (1964), and in Arthur C. Clarke's "Before Eden" (1961).[4]: 860–861 

Other[]

For some writers, Venus was merely a warmer, cloudier Earth.[3]: 548  However, Venus' cloud cover, in preventing observation from outside, gave some writers license for exotic natural or fanciful scenery. As a result, according to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, "some of the gaudiest romances of Genre SF are set on Venus".[1] Among the more original visions of Venus is an early novel, Garrett Serviss' A Columbus of Space, depicting a tidal-locked Venus.[2]: 12 

The absence of a common vision of Venus resulted in the absence of a coherent mythology of Venus, particularly compared with the image of Mars in fiction).[1] Stephen L. Gillet describes the situation as a writers' "cosmic Rorschach test", with numerous authors populating the land beneath Venus' featureless clouds with exotic but usually habitable settings, and producing stories ranging from adventure to satire.[4]: 861 

Later depictions: hostile inferno[]

Even before the era of space probes, scientific discourse on the prospects for life on Venus dimmed from the 1930s on, as advanced methods for observing Venus suggested that its atmosphere lacks oxygen.[5]: 43  After the onset of the space race in the early second half of the 20th century, space probes such as Mariner 2, in 1962, which found that Venus' surface temperature was 800 °F (427 °C), and ground atmospheric pressure was many times that of Earth's, rendered obsolete fiction that had depicted a planet with exotic but habitable settings.[1][3]: 548 [6]: 131 [4]: 860 

The theme occasionally resurfaces in deliberately nostalgic "retro-sf" such as Roger Zelazny’s ‘‘The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth’’ (1965), Thomas M. Disch’s ‘‘Come to Venus Melancholy’’ (1965), and the 1968 anthology, Farewell Fantastic Venus, edited by Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison.[3]: 548 

Artist's impression of a hypothetical floating outpost studying colonization of Venus, around 40 km above Venus' surface, supported by tori full of hydrogen and oxygen

Some new tropes that emerged with the developing scientific understanding of Venus include exploration of, and survival in, the hostile environment of Venus, as pictured in Larry Niven’s ‘‘Becalmed in Hell’’ (1965), ’s ‘‘Crazy Oil’’ (1975), Bob Buckley’s ‘‘Chimera’’ (1976), and Ben Bova’s Venus (2001). Other enduring concepts include colonization and terraforming of Venus.[1][3]: 548-549 

Colonization[]

While the idea of colonizing Venus was penned as early as J. B. S. Haldane’s ‘‘The Last Judgment’’ (1927) and John Wyndham's "The Venus Adventure" (1932), it grew in popularity in subsequent decades.[1][3]: 547  Following emerging scientific evidence of Venus' harsh conditions, colonization of Venus was increasingly portrayed as more challenging than colonization of Mars.[3]: 548 

It became a major theme in Robert A. Heinlein’s ‘‘Logic of Empire’’ (1941), Frederik Pohl's and C. M. Kornbluth's The Space Merchants (1952) and Pohl's The Merchants' War (1984), 's trilogy (beginning with Resurgent Dust, 1953), and Philip Latham's Robinsonade Five Against Venus (1952).[1][3]: 548  Sarah Zettel's The Quiet Invasion (2000) features colonization of Venus by extraterrestrials.[4]: 860 

Terraforming[]

As scientific knowledge of Venus advanced, so science-fiction authors endeavored to keep pace,[9] particularly by conjecturing about possible human attempts to terraform Venus.[14]: 134–135 [4]: 861  An early treatment of the concept is Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men (1930).[3]: 524, 548  Terraforming of Venus subsequently featured in Henry Kuttner's Fury (1950) and Poul Anderson's "The Big Rain" (1954).[14]: 135  Pamela Sargent's Venus of Dreams (1986) and Venus of Shadows (1988) discuss terraforming Venus into a more Earthlike world.[2]: 12 [14]: 136 [4]: 861 

Other recent writings on the topic include 's "World in the Clouds" (1980), Raymond Harris’ Shadows of the White Sun (1988), and G. David Nordley's "The Snow of Venus" (1991).[4]: 861 [3]: 549  Marta Randall's "Big Dome" (1985), featuring a rediscovered domed colony abandoned during a prior terraforming project, has been described as an hommage to the "traditional" science-fictional Venus.[4]: 861 Nordley's "Dawn Venus" (1995) features a terraformed, Earth-like Venus.[4]: 861 

Stephen L. Gillet suggests that the theme of terraforming Venus reflects both the scientific aspect of science fiction, particularly popular in hard science-fiction, as well as a desire to recapture the simpler, traditional fantasy of early prose about the planet.[4]: 861 

Lifeforms[]

1950 Avon comic-book adaptation of The Radio Man, titled An Earth Man on Venus

Beasts[]

Early writings, in which Venus was often depicted as a younger Earth, often populated it with large beasts. 's Journey to Venus (1895) depicted a tropical world featuring dinosaurs and other creatures similar to those known from Earth's history.[2]: 12  Roger Zelazny’s ‘‘The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth’’ (1965) revolves around an encounter with a giant Venusian sea monster.[4]: 860  In the second half of the 20th century, as the hellish conditions of Venus became better known, depictions of life on Venus became more nuanced, with ideas such as the "living petroleum" of Brenda Pearce’s ‘‘Crazy Oil’’ (1975) and the telepathic jewels of John Varley's "In the Bowl" (1975), and the more mundane cloud-borne microbes of Ben Bova's Venus (2000).[4]: 860 

Venusians[]

Perhaps due to an association of the planet Venus with the Roman goddess of love, intelligent Venusians have often been portrayed as gentle, ethereal, and beautiful – an enduring image first presented in 's Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes habités (1686; translated into English by J Glanvill in 1929 as A Plurality of Worlds).[1][9][3]: 547  This trope was repeated in George Griffith's A Honeymoon in Space (1900).[1]

Another early depiction of Venusians is found in W. Lach-Szyrma's A Voice from Another World (1874), whose winged, angel-like Venusian arrives on Earth and is later the protagonist of an interplanetary tour described in nine Letters from the Planets (1887-1893). A similar trope, of a Venusian visitor to Earth, is seen in 's Loma, a Citizen of Venus (1897).

and John Munro penned detailed descriptions of Venusian civilizations, respectively, in A History of a Race of Immortals without a God (1891) and A Trip to Venus (1897).[1]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t "SFE: Venus". sf-encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2021-12-17.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Miller, Ron (2002-01-01). Venus. Twenty-First Century Books. ISBN 978-0-7613-2359-4.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Stableford, Brian M. (2006). Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-415-97460-8.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Gillet, Stephen L. (2005). "Venus". In Westfahl, Gary (ed.). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-32951-7.
  5. ^ a b Dick, Steven (2001), Life on Other Worlds: The 20th-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-79912-0
  6. ^ a b c d e Ley, Willy (April 1966). "The Re-Designed Solar System". For Your Information. Galaxy Science Fiction.
  7. ^ a b c Launius, Roger D. (2012-09-19). "Venus-Earth-Mars: Comparative Climatology and the Search for Life in the Solar System". Life (Basel). 2 (3): 255–273. Bibcode:2012Life....2..255L. doi:10.3390/life2030255. ISSN 2075-1729. PMC 4187128. PMID 25371106.
  8. ^ a b Taylor, F.; Grinspoon, D. (2009). "Climate evolution of Venus". Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. 114 (E9). Bibcode:2009JGRE..114.0B40T. doi:10.1029/2008JE003316. ISSN 2156-2202.
  9. ^ a b c Sagan, Carl (1978-05-28). "Growing up with Science Fiction". The New York Times. p. SM7. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-12-12.
  10. ^ D'Ammassa, Don (2005). Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Facts On File. ISBN 978-0-8160-5924-9.
  11. ^ Freistetter, Florian (2021-04-15). A History of the Universe in 100 Stars. Quercus. p. 74. ISBN 978-1-5294-1013-6.
  12. ^ Maslen, Rob (September 2018). "Towards an Iconography of the Twentieth Century: C. S. Lewis and the Scientific Humanists, Part 1". The City of Lost Books. Retrieved 2022-01-19.
  13. ^ Woszczyk, A.; Iwaniszewska, C. (2012-12-06). Exploration of the Planetary System. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-94-010-2206-4.
  14. ^ a b c Seed, David (2005), A Companion to Science Fiction, Blackwell Publishing, ISBN 1-4051-1218-2
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