Featured Article Summary #18

Authors have been using the planet Venus as a setting in their fiction since the 19th century. The planet's cloud cover allowed for a lot of speculation on what its surface conditions may be like. Early depictions of Venus were often as a warm and habitable place, sometimes portrayed as a paradise or an oceanic planet filled with dinosaurs and monsters. However, there was no consistent portrayal of Venus in fiction, unlike Mars. Venusians, if included in the stories, were depicted as gentle and beautiful, often with ties to the Roman goddess Venus. As the realities of Venus's harsh conditions were discovered, stories began to portray it as a hostile and toxic place. However, there are still occasional retro stories that revisit the concept of a tropical Venus. The planet Venus has been featured in fiction for centuries, with early works including Voyage à Venus and Itinerarium Exstaticum. Venus was a popular setting in science fiction due to its mysterious nature and lack of knowledge about its true conditions. However, it did not gain the same level of popularity as Mars. Different visions of Venus included a tidally locked planet and a wet climate with swamps and jungles. Some writers also imagined the presence of megafauna on the planet. Early fiction about Venus often depicted the planet as covered in swamps and jungles. This portrayal became popular and was frequently used in science fiction stories. Authors like Clark Ashton Smith, Lester del Rey, H.P. Lovecraft, and Robert A. Heinlein all wrote stories that featured threatening creatures in a swampy and jungle-like Venus. Edgar Rice Burroughs also wrote stories set on a swampy Venus in his Amtor series. However, later scientific discoveries about Venus led to a shift in how the planet was portrayed in fiction. Various books and stories have depicted Venus as a planet covered by a massive ocean with a few islands. Some of these include "Venus Liberated" (1929) by Harl Vincent, "Perelandra" (1943) by C. S. Lewis, and "Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus" (1954) by Isaac Asimov. However, the image of an oceanic Venus became outdated with advancements in our understanding of the planet. Early theories about Venus suggested that it could be a hot, dry planet with dust storms and a water-rich atmosphere. However, this idea was controversial and the concept of a swampy or jungle Venus was more popular. By the 1950s, the idea of a desert Venus started to appear in works of fiction, depicting it as a hostile environment that was mined for resources. These portrayals often underestimated the harsh conditions of the planet.