# I'm looking for sci-fi/fantasy stories set on non-spherical worlds. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 5, 2012, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963 "2012-11-05T15:58:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/1 "2012-11-05T15:58:39Z")
A few quick stipulations: 1. I’m only interested in stories set on a planet inhabited by living, mortal creatures. Tales set in Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and so forth are irrelevant. 2. I’ve already thought of Niven’s Ringworld, Abbot’s Flatworld, Tolkien’s Arda (pre-Change of the World), and Lewis’s Narnia. 3. Speaking of those last two, while they both qualify I hope no one feels restricted to stories in which the Earth is a plane rather than a globe. Has anybody read anything in which the world is shaped like a Moebius strip, for instace? 4. I also just now thought of Pellucidar, but I’m not going to admit that just yet. What novels and short stories can you think of that are set in a world whose shape is not that of a sphere? (Okay, an oblate spheroid). What about these settings was most memorable or striking to you? ---
**Author:** ![Reno\_Nevada](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Reno\_Nevada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reno_Nevada)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/2 "2012-11-05T16:10:29Z")
You know about _Mission of Gravity_, right? Hal Clement? Planet with rotational speed great enough to significantly distort it from spherical. Not sure if that is what you have in mind or not. There was an enjoyable fantasy novel called \*The Shattered World \*by Micheal Reaves that was set on a world where a spherical planet had been shattered into an asteroid belt, where the asteroids were kept habitable by magic. I liked it a lot–the notion of all these mini-worlds that could be reached by magical flying ships. There is also Niven’s _Smoke Ring_, about a habitable zone in orbit around either a neutron star or black hole–I forget which. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/3 "2012-11-05T16:13:29Z")
> [@Reno\_Nevada](#): > > You know about _Mission of Gravity_, right? Hal Clement? Planet with rotational speed great enough to significantly distort it from spherical. Not sure if that is what you have in mind or not. > > There was an enjoyable fantasy novel called \*The Shattered World \*by Micheal Reaves that was set on a world where a spherical planet had been shattered into an asteroid belt, where the asteroids were kept habitable by magic. I liked it a lot–the notion of all these mini-worlds that could be reached by magical flying ships. > > There is also Niven’s _Smoke Ring_, about a habitable zone in orbit around either a neutron star or black hole–I forget which. “Mission of Gravity” is pretty much the gold standard re this. ---
**Author:** ![BrassyPhrase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea666f/32.png) [@BrassyPhrase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrassyPhrase)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/4 "2012-11-05T16:17:01Z")
John Varley’s Titan. Donut shaped/toroidal, if I remember correctly ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/5 "2012-11-05T16:20:37Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Has anybody read anything in which the world is shaped like a Moebius strip, for instace? Yes. It’s a short story. Called The Wall or something similar. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/6 "2012-11-05T16:23:09Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Yes. It’s a short story. Called The Wall or something similar. I started to include a request in the OP that everybody name the author of whatever stories they were citing, then decided that was so obvious as to be unnecessary. Apparently I was wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Seamack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/46a35a/32.png) [@Seamack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seamack)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/7 "2012-11-05T16:36:55Z")
I imagine the Discworld stories would qualify? A disc shaped planet supported by 4 elephants standing on the back of a giant tortoise (or is Atuin a turtle?). ---
**Author:** ![cher3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/8 "2012-11-05T16:38:28Z")
A’Tuin is a sea turtle. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/9 "2012-11-05T16:46:18Z")
Robert L. Forward’s _Rocheworld_ consists of a pair of gravcitationally-deformed non-spherical worlds. Besides Ringworld, Larry Niven had a toroidal miniplanet in _Protector_. It’s on the 1970s cover. [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?26853](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?26853) Lots of places have depicted Dyson Spheres as siolid places you can live on (rather than simply methods of gathering all the energy emanating from a star). This requires magical engineering to keep the thing stable and to let it have gravity. See, for instance, Bob Shaw’s _Orbitsville_ and _Orbitsville Departure_. Tony Rothman’s _The World is Round_ depicts a spherical world, but it’s not a normal spherical world. Its structure is very different. Larry Niven’s \*The Smoke Ring \* and _The Integral Trees_ are set in a Gas Torus: [The Smoke Ring (novel) - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smoke_Ring_(novel)) There are, of course, plenty of stories set aboard rotating cylinders, either generation starships, or at Lagrage points, as well as stories set aboard space stations of various shapes (generally wheels) ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/10 "2012-11-05T17:02:32Z")
[Strata](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strata_(novel)) by Terry Pratchett is an SF version of the discworld, predating that fantasy series. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/11 "2012-11-05T17:11:27Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Yes. It’s a short story. Called The Wall or something similar. Theodore Cogswell’s [i]The Wall Around the World\*. They use a Moebius strip to explain the concept, but the world isn’t obviously shaped like a Moebius strip – it’s just that you end up coming back to where you started. Along the lines of Abbot’s _Flatland_ , you have several sequels, including most notably Dionys Burger’s _Sphereland_. There lots of others (see here: [Flatland - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland) ) A.K. Dewdney took the idea of a flat world and re-imagined it much more scientifically. He had a newsletter going for many years, with many contributors, and eventually took the best ideas and turned it into a book, _The Planiverse_, which is not a sequel to Flatland (with its talkiing geometrical shapes), but a completely differrent work, with realistically-imagined two-dimensional beings, with 2-D physics, chemistry, and engineering. Their world is still a circle, though. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/12 "2012-11-05T17:13:38Z")
And, of course, in the Silver Age DC comics, there was the cubical Bizarro World. [http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view;\_ylt=A0PDoQ2085dQL0oAzZeJzbkF;\_ylu=X3oDMTBlMTQ4cGxyBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDaW1n?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3F\_adv\_prop%3Dimage%26va%3Dbizarro%2Bworld%26fr%3Dyfp-t-701%26tab%3Dorganic%26ri%3D4&w=300&h=294&imgurl=prairiefirenews.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F04%2Fbizarro-world-300x294.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fprairiefirenews.com%2Fwelcome-to-bizarro-world%2F&size=39.4+KB&name=bizarro+world&p=bizarro+world&oid=223bb239b99914701603d85abdd182b3&fr2=&fr=yfp-t-701&tt=bizarro%2Bworld&b=0&ni=190&no=4&ts=&tab=organic&sigr=11klma0ch&sigb=13bn2dnfn&sigi=128ebhn4u&.crumb=G.kSrW0OssH](http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view;_ylt=A0PDoQ2085dQL0oAzZeJzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTBlMTQ4cGxyBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDaW1n?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3F_adv_prop%3Dimage%26va%3Dbizarro%2Bworld%26fr%3Dyfp-t-701%26tab%3Dorganic%26ri%3D4&w=300&h=294&imgurl=prairiefirenews.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F04%2Fbizarro-world-300x294.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fprairiefirenews.com%2Fwelcome-to-bizarro-world%2F&size=39.4+KB&name=bizarro+world&p=bizarro+world&oid=223bb239b99914701603d85abdd182b3&fr2=&fr=yfp-t-701&tt=bizarro%2Bworld&b=0&ni=190&no=4&ts=&tab=organic&sigr=11klma0ch&sigb=13bn2dnfn&sigi=128ebhn4u&.crumb=G.kSrW0OssH) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/13 "2012-11-05T17:15:20Z")
And Philip Jose Farmer’s _World of Tiers_: > [@](#): > > The overall series title comes from the main ‘pocket universe’ featured in the books. This consists of a single planet with a green sky, shaped in the form of a huge stepped pyramid on five stages, with each stage being a disk or squat cylinder. A small sun and a single moon orbit around this planet (thus, in this universe Geocentrism is a correct description of astronomical reality). There are no other stars or astronomical bodies. This world was created by a Lord named Jadawin. > **[World of Tiers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Tiers)** > > The World of Tiers is a series of science fiction novels by American writer Philip José Farmer. They are set within a series of artificially constructed universes, created and ruled by decadent beings who are genetically identical to humans, but regard themselves as superior, and are the inheritors of an advanced technology they no longer understand. This technology enables the "Lords" (or "Thoans", as described by Farmer in his introduction to a role-playing video game) to create novel lifefo Th... ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/14 "2012-11-05T17:18:55Z")
There’s a whole class of stories dealing with a “Hollow Earth”, the idea of John Symmes. Lotsa fiction from the late 19th century featured a hollow earth with definitely un-physical outward-directed gravity. Novels like _Symzonia_ and _A Goddess of Atvatabar_ are set in these places, as was the later Edgar Rice Burroughs _Pellucidar_ series. Cyrus Teed and his Koreshans believed that we lived in a spherical buble of air inside an infinity of dirt, but I don’t know of anyone who wrote a story based on this arrangement > **[Koreshanity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koreshanity)** > > Koreshanity is the set of religious pseudoscientific beliefs put forth by Cyrus Teed (also known as Koresh). Followers of this belief were called "Koreshans", and most of them formed a utopian communal society called the Koreshan Unity. > The main beliefs of Koreshanity, or Koreshan Universalogy, are put forth in the many writings of Cyrus Teed and his followers. They are: > The sun is an invisible electromagnetic battery revolving in the universe's center on a 24-year cycle. Our visible sun is onl... ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/15 "2012-11-05T17:24:09Z")
The world of China Mieville’s Bas Lag stories (_Perdidio Street Station_ and two sequels) apparently has some very bizarre geography/topography, but he only hints at it. Ted Chiang’s short story _Tower of Babylon_ covers the construction of the Tower of Babel in a world that follows the Old Testament understanding of cosmology. Technically, it’s not a non-spherical world, but _Celestial Matters_ by Richard Garfinkle is a space travel story set in a Ptolmaic geocentric universe. ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/16 "2012-11-05T17:32:40Z")
> [@cher3](#): > > A’Tuin is a sea turtle. Well, she’s (he’s?) a Giant Star Turtle (_Chelys galactica_), but I know what you mean. Flippers, not legs. ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/17 "2012-11-05T17:38:45Z")
[Matter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_%28novel%29), a Culture novel by Iain Banks is set on an artificial shell world, massive ships and orbitals. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/18 "2012-11-05T18:00:15Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Theodore Cogswell’s [i]The Wall Around the World\*. They use a Moebius strip to explain the concept, but the world isn’t obviously shaped like a Moebius strip – it’s just that you end up coming back to where you started. Also Arthur Clarke - “Wall of Darkness” For a donut-shaped world, see “Moonbow” by J. P. Boyd There’s also Stephen Baxter’s “Vacuum Diagrams” with a cubical world. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/19 "2012-11-05T18:04:27Z")
> [@BrassyPhrase](#): > > John Varley’s Titan. Donut shaped/toroidal, if I remember correctly It’s been a LOOOONG time, but I remember it being a sphere. Just that all the interesting stuff was going on _inside_ it. But I may be misremembering. ---
**Author:** ![Hogfather65](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/7bcc69/32.png) [@Hogfather65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hogfather65)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963/20 "2012-11-05T18:06:09Z")
Terry Prachet has done a few - Diskworld, Strata and [the Carpet People](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carpet_People) (yes in a carpet not quite the same but…) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-looking-for-sci-fi-fantasy-stories-set-on-non-spherical-worlds/639963.md?page=2)