Uranus in fiction

Uranus has been used as a setting in works of fiction since shortly after its 1781 discovery, albeit infrequently. The earliest depictions portrayed it as having a solid surface, whereas later stories portrayed it more accurately as a gaseous planet. Its moons have also appeared in a handful of works. Both the planet and its moons have experienced a slight trend of increased representation in fiction over time.

"Life on Uranus" by Frank R. Paul. Back cover of Fantastic Adventures, April 1940.

Uranus

 

Uranus appears infrequently in fiction compared to other locations in the Solar System. Clicking on a planet leads to the article about its depiction in fiction.

Uranus was discovered in 1781 and has comparatively rarely been featured in fiction since then;^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]} in the catalogue of early science fiction works compiled by E. F. Bleiler and Richard Bleiler in the reference works Science-Fiction: The Early Years from 1990 and Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years from 1998, Uranus only appears in 6 (out of 2,475) and 9 (out of 1,835) works respectively,^[7][8] compared to 194 for Mars in fiction and 131 for Venus in fiction in The Gernsback Years alone.^[9] Various explanations for this lack of representation have been proposed, including the planet's relatively late date of discovery,^[2][4] its remote location,^[1][6] its presumed hostile environmental conditions,^[3] and its featureless appearance in telescopes.^[4]

Early depictions

The planet's first appearance in a work of fiction was in the pseudonymous "Monsieur Vivenair"'s 1784 novel A Journey Lately Performed Through the Air, in an Aerostatic Globe, Commonly Called an Air Balloon, from this Terraqueous Globe to the Newly Discovered Planet, Georgium Sidus, a satire of the then-reigning British monarch George III and his court.^[1][5][10] In the subgenre of works visiting multiple locations in the Solar System that appeared throughout the 19th century, Uranus was rarely included,^[1] one exception being the anonymously published 1837 novel Journeys into the Moon, Several Planets and the Sun.^[2]

Early works about Uranus incorrectly envisioned it as a solid planet. Human colonization of the planet and alien lifeforms living on the surface thus became recurring themes.^[3] In Stanley G. Weinbaum's 1935 short story "The Planet of Doubt", humans landing on Uranus encounter various seemingly-hostile aliens.^{[1][3][11][12]} Clifton B. Kruse's 1936 short story "Code of the Spaceways" likewise portrays the planet as having a solid surface, where space pirates with a paralysis ray have taken over a military base.^[3][13][14] In Raymond Z. Gallun's 1940 short story "The Long Winter", methane snow falls on the Uranian surface during the decades-long winter.^[1][15] Other early depictions of Uranus include Russell R. Winterbotham's 1937 short story "Clouds over Uranus" and the Buck Rogers series.^[1][4]

Later depictions

Once more became known about Uranus through advances in planetary science, fiction writers started depicting it more accurately as a gaseous planet.^[3] Thus Donald A. Wollheim's 1942 short story "Planet Passage" depicts a spaceship flying through Uranus,^[5] Fritz Leiber's 1962 short story "The Snowbank Orbit" features the atmosphere of Uranus being used for aerobraking,^[5] and Cecelia Holland's 1976 novel Floating Worlds portrays floating cities in the Uranian atmosphere as well as that of Saturn.^[2][3] Uranus also appears in Barry N. Malzberg's 1971 short story "Ah, Fair Uranus" where it hosts aliens in conflict with humanity, the television series Doctor Who, the works of Mark Brandis, and various comic books.^[3][4]

Towards the end of the century, there was a slight uptick in appearances by Uranus in science fiction, including Charles Sheffield's 1985 short story "Dies Irae" about life in the atmosphere, Geoffrey A. Landis' 1999 short story "Into the Blue Abyss" where there is life in the ocean below, and G. David Nordley's 1999 short story "Mustardseed".^[1][11] The planet appears briefly in Kim Stanley Robinson's 1985 novel The Memory of Whiteness. In games, Uranus appears as a source of deuterium and helium-3 in the tabletop role-playing game Transhuman Space and the video game series Mass Effect.^[4]

Moons

Uranus' moons have appeared in a handful of works, and this has become more common as more has become known about them.^[1][4] The moons are preserved in their natural state in some works such as Kim Stanley Robinson's 1996 novel Blue Mars, and subject to resource extraction by way of space mining in others such as the video game Descent.^[4] In Neil R. Jones' Durna Rangue series that started with the 1936 short story "Little Hercules", the titular cult is exiled to one of the moons of Uranus.^[1][16] Ariel was discovered in 1851 and appears in J. Harvey Haggard's 1933 short story "Evolution Satellite", where evolution on the moon is so rapid as to take place across the timeframe of an individual organism's lifespan.^{[1][17][18][19]} Miranda was discovered in 1948 and appears in G. David Nordley's 1993 short story "Into the Miranda Rift", where explorers are stranded on the surface.^[1][11][20] Titania, which was discovered a few years after Uranus itself in 1787, appears in the tabletop role-playing game Eclipse Phase, where its canyon system Messina Chasmata is a tourist attraction.^[4]

References

1. Stableford, Brian M. (2006). "Uranus". Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 540–541. ISBN 978-0-415-97460-8.
2. Langford, David; Stableford, Brian (2021). "Outer Planets". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 2023-04-15. For a long while, relatively little attention was paid in sf to the planets beyond Jupiter. Of them only Saturn was known to the ancients – Uranus was discovered in 1781, Neptune in 1846 and Pluto in 1930 – and it is therefore the only outer planet featured in Athanasius Kircher's and Emanuel Swedenborg's interplanetary tours. Uranus, however, is included in the anonymous Journeys into the Moon, Several Planets and the Sun: History of a Female Somnambulist (1837).
   [...]
   Uranus is little discussed in traditional sf. Stanley G Weinbaum's "The Planet of Doubt" (October 1935 Astounding) is one of the rare stories set on this world. The titular Cities of Cecelia Holland's Floating Worlds (1976) float above Saturn and Uranus.
3. Westfahl, Gary (2021). "Outer Planets". Science Fiction Literature through History: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. pp. 485–487. ISBN 978-1-4408-6617-3. since these worlds have reasonably been viewed as cold and inhospitable, they have generally been underutilized as settings for science fiction stories.
4. Caryad; Römer, Thomas; Zingsem, Vera (2014). "Ura... wer?" [Ura... Who?]. Wanderer am Himmel: Die Welt der Planeten in Astronomie und Mythologie [Wanderers in the Sky: The World of the Planets in Astronomy and Mythology] (in German). Springer-Verlag. pp. 265–266. ISBN 978-3-642-55343-1.
5. Ash, Brian, ed. (1977). "Exploration and Colonies". The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Harmony Books. p. 83. ISBN 0-517-53174-7. OCLC 2984418. Beyond Saturn lies Uranus, first featured in fiction in an obscure pamphlet written in 1784, three years after its discovery. In general, it has been ignored by most sf writers [...]
6. Stableford, Brian (1999). "Uranus". The Dictionary of Science Fiction Places. New York : Wonderland Press. pp. 320–321. ISBN 978-0-684-84958-4. Due to its remoteness, very few reports of its alternativersal variants have been placed on the record.
7. Bleiler, Everett Franklin (1990). "Motif and Theme Index". Science-fiction, the Early Years: A Full Description of More Than 3,000 Science-fiction Stories from Earliest Times to the Appearance of the Genre Magazines in 1930: with Author, Title, and Motif Indexes. With the assistance of Richard J. Bleiler. Kent State University Press. p. 921. ISBN 978-0-87338-416-2.
8. Bleiler, Everett Franklin; Bleiler, Richard (1998). "Motif and Theme Index". Science-fiction: The Gernsback Years : a Complete Coverage of the Genre Magazines ... from 1926 Through 1936. Kent State University Press. p. 694. ISBN 978-0-87338-604-3.
9. Westfahl, Gary (2022). "Venus—Venus of Dreams ... and Nightmares: Changing Images of Earth's Sister Planet". The Stuff of Science Fiction: Hardware, Settings, Characters. McFarland. p. 165. ISBN 978-1-4766-8659-2.
10. Clute, John (2022). "Vivenair, Monsieur". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 2023-04-16.
11. McKinney, Richard L. (2005). "Jupiter and the Outer Planets". In Westfahl, Gary (ed.). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 449. ISBN 978-0-313-32951-7. Among stories dealing with Uranus are Stanley G. Weinbaum's "The Planet of Doubt" (1935), involving strange aliens on its surface; Charles Sheffield's "Dies Irae" (1985), about adapting life to survive in the planet's atmosphere; and Geoffrey Landis's "Into the Blue Abyss" (1999), in which alien lifeforms are found in the Uranian ocean. G. David Nordley's "Into the Miranda Rift" (1993) is about human explorers trapped on the mysterious, jigsaw-puzzle moon, Miranda.
12. Bleiler, Everett Franklin; Bleiler, Richard (1998). "Weinbaum, Stanley G[rauman] (1902–1935)". Science-fiction: The Gernsback Years : a Complete Coverage of the Genre Magazines ... from 1926 Through 1936. Kent State University Press. p. 481. ISBN 978-0-87338-604-3.
13. Bleiler, Everett Franklin; Bleiler, Richard (1998). "Kruse, Clifton B[ryan] (1905–present)". Science-fiction: The Gernsback Years : a Complete Coverage of the Genre Magazines ... from 1926 Through 1936. Kent State University Press. p. 241. ISBN 978-0-87338-604-3.
14. Westfahl, Gary (2022). "Weapons—Fifty Ways to Kill Your Lover: The Weapons of Science Fiction". The Stuff of Science Fiction: Hardware, Settings, Characters. McFarland. p. 16. ISBN 978-1-4766-8659-2.
15. Rubin, Jamie Todd (2011-04-04). "Vacation in the Golden Age, Episode 11: May 1940". Jamie Todd Rubin. from the original on 2022-05-23. Retrieved 2023-04-16.
16. Page, Gerald W. (1996). "Jones, Neil R(onald)". In Pederson, Jay P. (ed.). St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers. Preface by H. Bruce Franklin. (4th ed.). Detroit, Mich.: St. James Press. pp. 490–491. ISBN 1-55862-179-2. OCLC 33101750.
17. Ashley, Mike (2022). "Haggard, J Harvey". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 2023-04-16. Haggard had included them in a previously-written novella, "Evolution Satellite" (December 1933-January 1934 Wonder Stories), which Gernsback had rejected but later published and praised for its downbeat ending. It is set on Ariel, the satellite of Uranus (see Outer Planets), which has not hitherto been explored but turns out to be a world where lifeforms are infinitely adaptable and soon absorb the explorers.
18. Bleiler, Everett Franklin; Bleiler, Richard (1998). "Haggard, J[ames] Harvey (1913–present)". Science-fiction: The Gernsback Years : a Complete Coverage of the Genre Magazines ... from 1926 Through 1936. Kent State University Press. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-87338-604-3.
19. • Ashley, Mike (2004). "The Year of the Great Change". In Ashley, Mike; Lowndes, Robert A. W. (eds.). The Gernsback Days: A Study of the Evolution of Modern Science Fiction from 1911 to 1936. Wildside Press LLC. p. 225. ISBN 978-0-8095-1055-9.
    • Lowndes, Robert A. W. (2004). "The Dark Days, 1933". In Ashley, Mike; Lowndes, Robert A. W. (eds.). The Gernsback Days: A Study of the Evolution of Modern Science Fiction from 1911 to 1936. Wildside Press LLC. p. 356. ISBN 978-0-8095-1055-9.
20. Fraknoi, Andrew (2019). "Science Fiction Stories with Good Astronomy & Physics: A Topical Index" (PDF). Astronomical Society of the Pacific. p. 21. (PDF) from the original on 2023-03-21. Retrieved 2023-04-16.