Venus in fiction

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the planet. For the goddess Venus in fiction, see Venus (mythology) § Mythology and literature.

pulp science fiction stories. Seen here is the winter 1939 cover of Planet Stories
, featuring "The Golden Amazons of Venus".

The planet Venus has been used as a setting in fiction since before the 19th century. Its opaque cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface—a "cosmic Rorschach test", in the words of science fiction author Stephen L. Gillett. The planet was often depicted as warmer than Earth but still habitable by humans. Depictions of Venus as a lush, verdant paradise, an oceanic planet, or fetid swampland, often inhabited by dinosaur-like beasts or other monsters, became common in early pulp science fiction, particularly between the 1930s and 1950s. Some other stories portrayed it as a desert, or invented more exotic settings. The absence of a common vision resulted in Venus not developing a coherent fictional mythology, in contrast to the image of Mars in fiction.

When included, the native sentient inhabitants, Venusians, were often portrayed as gentle, ethereal and beautiful. The planet's associations with the Roman goddess Venus and femininity in general is reflected in many works' portrayals of Venusians. Depictions of Venusian societies have varied both in level of development and type of governance. In addition to humans visiting Venus, several stories feature Venusians coming to Earth—most often to enlighten humanity, but occasionally for warlike purposes.

From the mid-20th century on, as the reality of Venus's harsh

surface conditions became known, the early tropes of adventures in Venusian tropics mostly gave way to more realistic stories. The planet became portrayed instead as a hostile, toxic inferno, with stories changing focus to topics of the planet's colonization and terraforming, although the vision of tropical Venus is occasionally revisited in intentionally retro
stories.

Early depictions

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Some early depictions of Venus in fiction were part of tours of the Solar System. Clicking on a planet leads to the article about its depiction in fiction.

The earliest use of the planet

Lucian of Samosata to be the first appearance of Venus—or any other planet—in the genre.[3]
: 164 

Venus has

Venus exploration probes revealed the true conditions in the 1960s—Stephen L. Gillett describes the situation as a "cosmic Rorschach test".[1][4][5]: 861  Venus thus became a popular setting in early science fiction, but that same versatility meant that it did not develop a counterpart to the image of Mars in fiction made popular by Percival Lowell around the turn of the century—with supposed Martian canals and a civilization that built them—and it never reached the same level of popularity.[1][3]: 164–165 [6]: 12  On the subject, Westfahl writes that while Mars has a distinctive body of major works such as H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds (1897) and Ray Bradbury's fix-up novel The Martian Chronicles (1950), Venus largely lacks a corresponding canon.[3]
: 165–166 

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[7]

One of the many visions was of a

Solar System formation which held that the planets are older the further from the Sun they are, meaning that Venus should be younger than Earth and might resemble earlier periods in Earth's history such as the Carboniferous.[3]: 166 [5]: 860  Scientist Svante Arrhenius popularized the idea of Venus being swamp-covered with flora and fauna similar to that of prehistoric Earth in his non-fiction book The Destinies of the Stars (1918). Whereas Arrhenius assumed that Venus had unchanging climatic conditions that were similar all over the planet and concluded that a lack of adaptation to environmental variability would result only in primitive lifeforms, later writers often included various megafauna.[3]: 166 [8]: 671 [11]
: xii–xiii 

Jungle and swamp

Early treatments of a Venus covered in swamps and jungles are found in Gustavus W. Pope's Journey to Venus (1895), Fred T. Jane's To Venus in Five Seconds (1897), and Maurice Baring's "Venus" (1909).[10]: 547  Following its popularization by Arrhenius, the portrayal of the Venusian landscape as dominated by jungles and swamps recurred frequently in other works of fiction; in particular, Brian Stableford says in Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia that it became "a staple of pulp science fiction imagery".[10]: 547  Clark Ashton Smith's "The Immeasurable Horror" (1931) and Lester del Rey's "The Luck of Ignatz" (1939) depict threatening Venusian creatures in a swamp-and-jungle climate.[3]: 167–168  "In the Walls of Eryx" (1936) by H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling features an invisible maze on a jungle Venus.[12][13]: 483 

Refer to caption
Cover of Fantastic Adventures, November 1941, featuring the Amtor story "The Living Dead" from Burroughs's Escape on Venus

In the

Ralph Milne Farley and Otis Adelbert Kline wrote series in this setting starting with The Radio Man (1924) and The Planet of Peril (1929), respectively.[8]: 671 [11]: xiii [14]: 23 [15]: 232–234  These stories were inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs's Martian Barsoom series that began with A Princess of Mars (1912);[10]: 547 [14]: 23  Burroughs later wrote planetary romances set on a swampy Venus in the Amtor series, beginning with Pirates of Venus (1932).[3]: 167 [4] Other authors who wrote planetary romances in this setting include C. L. Moore with the Northwest Smith adventure "Black Thirst" (1934) and Leigh Brackett with stories like "The Moon that Vanished" (1948) and the Eric John Stark story "Enchantress of Venus" (1949).[11]: xiv [12]

Tom Corbett, Space Cadet depicts a crash landing in a Venusian swamp.[3]: 168  Bradbury's short story "The Long Rain" (1950) depicts Venus as a planet with incessant rain, and was later adapted to screen twice: to film in The Illustrated Man (1969) and to television in The Ray Bradbury Theater (1992)—though the latter removed all references to Venus in light of the changed scientific views on the planet's conditions.[1][3]: 168 [4][16]: 13  Bradbury revisited the rainy vision of Venus in "All Summer in a Day" (1954), where the Sun is only visible through the cloud cover once every seven years.[12][17]: 53 [18] In German science fiction, the Perry Rhodan novels (launched in 1961) used the vision of Venus as a jungle world, while the protagonist in K. H. Scheer's sixteenth ZBV [de] novel Raumpatrouille Nebelwelt (1963) is surprised to find that Venus does not have jungles—reflecting then-recent discoveries about the environmental conditions on Venus.[12][19]
: 78 

Ocean

Others envisioned Venus as a

David A. Drake.[1][10]: 548  Roger Zelazny's "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" (1965) was the last major depiction of an ocean-covered Venus, published shortly after that vision had been rendered obsolete by advances in planetary science.[8]: 672 [5]
: 860 

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.

mined for resources.[3]: 168 [5]: 860  Arthur C. Clarke's "Before Eden" (1961) portrays Venus as mostly hot and dry, but with a somewhat cooler climate habitable to extremophiles at the poles.[3]: 171 [5]: 860 [23] Dean McLaughlin's The Fury from Earth (1963) likewise features a dry, hostile Venus, this time rebelling against Earth.[5]: 860 [24]: 254  While these inhospitable portrayals more accurately reflected the emerging scientific data, they nevertheless generally underestimated the harshness of the planet's conditions.[4][5]
: 860 

Paradigm shift

The barren, cratered surface of Venus. (Magellan radar imagery)

In scientific circles, life on Venus was increasingly viewed as unlikely from the 1930s on, as more advanced methods for observing Venus suggested that its atmosphere lacked oxygen.[25]: 43  In the Space Age, space probes starting with the 1962 Mariner 2 found that Venus's surface temperature was in the range of 800–900 °F (400–500 °C), and atmospheric pressure at ground-level was many times that of Earth's.[10]: 548 [11]: xv [20]: 131  This rendered obsolete fiction that had depicted a planet with exotic but habitable settings, and writers' interest in the planet diminished when its inhospitability became better understood.[10]: 548 [11]: xv [20]: 131 Some works go so far as to portray Venus as a mostly ignored part of an otherwise thoroughly explored Solar System; examples include Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama (1973) and the novel series The Expanse (2011–2021) by James S. A. Corey (joint pseudonym of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck).[16]: 14 

Nostalgic depictions

See also: Mars in fiction § Nostalgic depictions

A romantic, habitable, pre-Mariner Venus continued to appear for a while in deliberately nostalgic and retro works such as Zelazny's "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" (1965) and Thomas M. Disch's "Come to Venus Melancholy" (1965), and Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison collected works written before the scientific advancements in the anthology Farewell Fantastic Venus (1968).[10]: 548 [11]: xv–xvii [26]: 201  The nostalgic image of Venus has also occasionally resurfaced several decades later: S. M. Stirling's The Sky People (2006) takes place in an alternate universe where the pulp version of Venus is real, and the anthology Old Venus (2015) edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois collects newly-written works in the style of older stories about the now-outdated vision of Venus.[4][11]: xv–xvii  The role-playing games Space: 1889 (1989) and Mutant Chronicles (1993) likewise use a deliberately retro depiction of Venus.[19]: 79 

Human survival

Refer to caption
Artist's impression of a hypothetical floating outpost high up in the Venusian atmosphere. Floating settlements of this kind appear in works like "The Sultan of the Clouds" by Geoffrey A. Landis.[11]: xvi 

Even before the hellish conditions on Venus were known, some authors imagined it as a place that would be hostile to humans.[3]: 168  Stories about survival in less extreme conditions had appeared in works such as John W. Campbell's "Solarite" (1930), where the surface temperature exceeds 150 °F (70 °C); Clifton B. Kruse's "Menace from Saturn" (1935), where the atmosphere is toxic; and Philip Latham's Five Against Venus (1952), a Robinsonade.[1][3]: 168  Similarly, colonization stories had been popular throughout the 1940s and 1950s, and became so again towards the end of the century in parallel to the rise in popularity of fictional terraforming projects.[1][10]: 548–549  Following the Space Age discoveries about the conditions on Venus, fiction about the planet started to mainly focus on survival in the hostile environment, as in Larry Niven's "Becalmed in Hell" (1965).[3]: 171 [5]: 860  Devices for protection against the elements in these stories include domed cities as in John Varley's "In the Bowl" (1975), environmental suits as in Brian and Frank Herbert's Man of Two Worlds (1986), floating cities as in Geoffrey A. Landis's "The Sultan of the Clouds" (2010) and Derek Künsken's The House of Styx (2020), and space stations.[11]: xvi [12][16]: 14 

Colonization

Colonization of Venus appeared as early as J. B. S. Haldane's essay "The Last Judgment" (1927) and John Wyndham's "The Venus Adventure" (1932), and grew in popularity in subsequent decades.[1][10]: 547–548  Following emerging scientific evidence of Venus's harsh conditions, colonization of Venus was increasingly portrayed as more challenging than colonization of Mars.[10]: 548  Several writers have suggested that colonists on the surface of Venus might have to lead a nomadic life to stay in a favourable position relative to the Sun.[27]: 96 

Colonizing Venus is a major theme in

Soviet science fiction writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's The Land of Crimson Clouds (1959).[1][12] In Simak's "Hunger Death" (1938) colonists on Venus contend with a plague deliberately introduced by Martians,[12][22]: 27  Heinlein's "Logic of Empire" has the colonies rely upon exploiting workers trapped in indentured servitude,[8]: 671 [10]: 548 [28]: 66–67  and S. Makepeace Lott's Escape to Venus (1956) depicts a colony that has turned into a dystopia.[3]: 171  Marta Randall's "Big Dome" (1985) features a rediscovered domed colony abandoned during a prior terraforming project; Gillett describes the story's jungle-like setting as an homage to the image of Venus found in early science fiction.[5]: 861  Sarah Zettel's The Quiet Invasion (2000) features colonization of Venus by extraterrestrials better adapted to the planet's conditions.[3]: 171 [5]
: 860 

Terraforming

Further information: Terraforming in popular culture
Refer to caption
Artist's impression of a terraformed Venus

As scientific knowledge of Venus advanced, science fiction authors endeavored to keep pace, particularly by focusing on the concept of terraforming Venus.[5]: 861 [7] An early treatment of the concept is found in Stapledon's Last and First Men, where the process destroys the lifeforms that already existed on the planet.[3]: 167  While Venus has since come to be regarded as the most promising candidate for terraforming,[3]: 171, 173  before the 1960s science fiction writers were more optimistic about the prospects of terraforming Mars, and early depictions, such as Kuttner and Moore's Fury, consequently portrayed terraforming Venus as more challenging.[29]: 135  Anderson's "The Big Rain" (1954) revolves around an attempt to bring about rain on a dry Venus,[8]: 672 [5]: 861 [30]: 81  and in his "To Build A World" (1964), a terraformed Venus becomes the site of countless wars for the more desirable parts of the surface.[27]: 97  Other early depictions of terraforming Venus include A. E. van Vogt's The World of Null-A (1948) and James E. Gunn's The Naked Sky (1955).[12]

The terraforming of Venus has remained comparatively rare in fiction,

introduced plant life creating a breathable atmosphere.[19]: 79 [23][32][33] Gillett suggests that the theme of terraforming Venus reflects a desire to recapture the simpler, traditional fantasy of early prose about the planet.[5]
: 861 

Lifeforms

Refer to caption
Cover of 1950 Avon comic-book adaptation of The Radio Man, titled An Earth Man on Venus, with the cover featuring exotic Venusian life in the form of gigantic ants

Beasts

Early writings, in which Venus was often depicted as a younger Earth, often populated it with large beasts. Pope's Journey to Venus (1895) depicted a tropical world featuring

Three Stooges short Space Ship Sappy (1957), while a Venusian monster brought to Earth by a space probe attacks humans in the film 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).[3]: 168 [8]: 672 [34]
: 248 

Prehistoric creatures sometimes coexist with primitive humanoids in depictions of Venus.

pterodactyls and "apemen".[35]: 249  The Soviet film Planeta Bur (1962) features an American–Soviet joint scientific expedition to Venus, which finds the planet teeming with various lifeforms, many resembling terrestrial species, including sentient if primitive Venusians.[36]: 448 [37]
: 179–182 

Science fiction author Jerry Pournelle noted that early science fiction was rife with images of exotic Venusian life: "thick fungus that ate men alive; a world populated with strange animals, dragons and dinosaurs and swamp creatures resembling the beastie from the Black Lagoon".[27]: 90  Sentient plant life appears in several stories including Weinbaum's "Parasite Planet" sequel "The Lotus Eaters" (1935), the Superman comic book story "The Three Tough Teen-Agers" (1962) by Jerry Siegel and Al Plastino, and The Outer Limits episode "Cold Hands, Warm Heart" (1964).[3]: 170–171 A sentient Venusian worm called Mister Mind appears as a supervillain in the Fawcett Comics stories about Captain Marvel.[8]: 673  In the second half of the 20th century, as the hellish conditions of Venus became better known, depictions of life on Venus became more exotic, with ideas such as the "living petroleum" of Brenda Pearce's "Crazy Oil" (1975), the telepathic jewels of Varley's "In the Bowl", and the more mundane cloud-borne microbes of Ben Bova's Venus (2000; part of Bova's Grand Tour series).[5]: 860 

Venusians

"Venusians" redirects here. For other uses, see Venusian.

In contrast to the diversity of visions of the Venusian environment, the inhabitants of Venus are most commonly portrayed as human, or human-like.

Polish science fiction writer Władysław Umiński's Zaziemskie światy [pl] (1948) or Ancient Egypt in Jeffery Lloyd Castle [de]'s Vanguard to Venus (1957),[3]: 169 [39] while the Treens in the Dan Dare comics that launched in 1950 are kidnapped humans that have been genetically engineered to survive on Venus.[40]: 73  Comics superhero Tommy Tomorrow in "Frame-Up at Planeteer Academy" (1962) has a blue-skinned but otherwise humanoid Venusian sidekick called Lon Vurian.[3]: 167 [8]: 673  The Bleilers also list a number of more bizarre portrayals of Venusians, such as squid-like; four-legged elephantine beings; intelligent giant bees, beetles, ants and worm larvae; giant monstrous insects; and even "living colors".[15]: 921–922 [38]: 694–695  In Simak's "Tools" (1942), a native Venusian is portrayed as "a blob of disembodied radon gas captured in a lead jar".[1][12][22]
: 29 

Refer to caption
Associations of the planet Venus with the Roman goddess of love may have influenced fictional portrayals of Venusians. Seen here is the 1879 painting The Birth of Venus by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Perhaps due to an association of the planet Venus with the

Bernard le Bovyer de Fontenelle's Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (1686).[1][7][10]: 547  This trope was repeated in W. Lach-Szyrma's A Voice from Another World (1874) and Letters from the Planets (1887–1893), about an interplanetary tour of a winged, angel-like Venusian, as well as in George Griffith's A Honeymoon in Space (1900), where human visitors to Venus encounter flying Venusians communicating through music.[1][8]: 671 [10]: 547  The anonymously published A Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of Paul Aermont among the Planets (1873) depicts one Venusian race like this and another which is primitive and violent.[3]: 170  Primitive Venusians also appear in Donald Horner's By Aeroplane to the Sun (1910) and Frank Brueckel's The War Lord of Venus (1930),[3]: 168  while more advanced yet malicious ones are depicted in works such as Landell Bartlett's "The Vanguard of Venus" (1928) and Roy Rockwood's By Air Express to Venus; or, Captives of a Strange People (1929).[3]
: 170 

Venusian civilizations have most commonly been depicted as being comparable to Earth's level of development, slightly less frequently as being more advanced, and only occasionally less advanced.

First Spaceship on Venus (1962)—an expedition to Venus discovers a barren environment and the ruins of a civilization, deducing that the cause was nuclear holocaust.[3]: 169 [36]: 448 [42][43] Conversely, in Clarke's "History Lesson" (1949) Venusians come to Earth and find humanity already extinct from environmental causes.[3]: 169 [8]
: 672 

The association of Venus with women manifests in different ways in many works.[3]: 169  The planet is inhabited solely or mostly by women in works like "What John Smith Saw in the Moon: A Christmas Story for Parties Who Were Children Twenty Years Ago" (1893) by Fred Harvey Brown and ruled by women in Stone's "The Conquest of Gola" (1931) among others.[3]: 169  In comic books, several of DC Comics' Wonder Woman stories in the 1940s featured the superheroine's female allies from Venus.[8]: 673  The films Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953) and Queen of Outer Space (1958) feature the trope of Venus being populated by beautiful women,[1][36]: 448  and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968), the second of two English-language adaptations of Planeta Bur (the first being Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, 1965), portrays the Venusians as "half-naked sex-appealing blond sirens" with supernatural or psychic powers.[36]: 448 [44]: 2042, 2046 

A theme of a Venusian visitor to Earth is seen in some works, such as Lach-Szyrma's A Voice from Another World and

Sub-Mariner defended Earth from an invasion by amphibious Venusians in a story arc from the Golden Age of Comic Books.[8]: 673  Venusians infiltrating Earth by posing as humans appear in several works including Eric Frank Russell's Three to Conquer (1956) and Windsor's Loma, a Citizen of Venus.[2]: 5 [45]
: 51 

See also

References

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