# Sci Fi with solar-system counterfactuals **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 27, 2013, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871 "2013-11-27T01:29:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/21 "2013-11-28T00:47:07Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > In John Varley’s _Titan_ series, several of the moons (_e.g.,_ Titan) of the gas giants turn out to be living space habitats. That’s not the case. One main “character”/antagonist in those books is Gaia, a self-aware, living habitat, shaped like a torus, 1300km in diameter. Gaia isn’t one of the moons we’re aware of today around Jupiter, but is discovered during exploration of Jupiter at the start of the first novel. Almost all of the three Varley novels then take place within Gaia. It’s stated that one of the actual moons of Jupiter, Iapetus, is home to one of Gaia’s offspring, still an “infant”, that will one day boost itself from the surface to become a torus habitat like Gaia. Iapetus’ mention in the novel is a callout to a mystery of the day of why Iapetus was darker on side than the other – it’s because Gaia’s kid is occupying half of the surface. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/22 "2013-11-28T00:58:29Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And as it happens, the discovery of this fact came after Niven’s story was sold, but before it actually saw print. He frantically wrote up the editor, saying that the story had to be pulled, since it was now out of date. That’s kind of adorable. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/23 "2013-11-28T00:59:57Z")
> [@squeegee](#): > > That’s not the case. One main “character”/antagonist in those books is Gaia, a self-aware, living habitat, shaped like a torus, 1300km in diameter. Gaia isn’t one of the moons we’re aware of today around Jupiter, but is discovered during exploration of Jupiter at the start of the first novel. Almost all of the three Varley novels then take place within Gaia. It’s stated that one of the actual moons of Jupiter, Iapetus, is home to one of Gaia’s offspring, still an “infant”, that will one day boost itself from the surface to become a torus habitat like Gaia. Iapetus’ mention in the novel is a callout to a mystery of the day of why Iapetus was darker on side than the other – it’s because Gaia’s kid is occupying half of the surface. Ugh, I meant Saturn, not Jupiter. Apologies. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/24 "2013-11-28T01:24:15Z")
The Guardians of the Galaxy (Marvel Comics) includes members from Pluto, Jupiter, and Mercury. How a humanoid would live on a gas giant like Jupiter, I dunno. Not that Pluto or Mercury are believable (for us at the moment, anyway, maybe in a 1000 years when GotG is set) but at least they’re basically just big rocks. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/25 "2013-11-28T01:42:07Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > S.M. Stirling’s _The Sky People_ and _In the Courts of the Crimson Kings_ take place in a Solar System where Venus anTHEY d Mars are both habitable and inhabited, and where the Soviet Union survives into the 21st Century. Called the \*Lords of Creation \*series, although there are only 2 books so far–the first published in 2006. Definitely a tribute to Old Time SF. They would make good movies or, even better, TV series. If only there was a network dedicated to that sort of thing. [Oh, look!](http://smstirling.com/) > [@](#): > > Stirling will have a short story set in the LOC universe in the anthology “Old Mars”, to be published by Bantam Books ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/26 "2013-11-28T02:26:24Z")
Quite a few old-time SF stories presumed that Jupiter was what we’d now call a super-Earth; a massive rocky planet with an atmosphere that was very deep by Earth standards- several hundred miles- but only a small fraction of the planet’s size. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/27 "2013-11-28T02:30:42Z")
C.S. Lewis’s **Out of the Silent Planet** postulates a Mars that wasn’t even accurate by 1938 SF cliche. It was a Earthlike world – no deserts. The sequel, **Perelandra** , was set on Venus and was closer to the then-current standard, but postulated the Venus was a temperate water-covered world. These worlds did not affect the quality of the book. The first was a classic, and the second is rather cliched (though Lewis said he was more interested in the water world than in the story). ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/28 "2013-11-28T13:16:11Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > C.S. Lewis’s **Out of the Silent Planet** postulates a Mars that wasn’t even accurate by 1938 SF cliche. It was a Earthlike world – no deserts. Nitpick: Lewis’s protagonist Ransom spends most of his time on Thulcandra in the “canals”- artificial rift valleys miles deeper than the nominal surface of the rest of the planet. Only there is there enough air and geothermal heat to support life. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/29 "2013-11-28T15:40:45Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Nitpick: Lewis’s protagonist Ransom spends most of his time on Thulcandra in the “canals”- artificial rift valleys miles deeper than the nominal surface of the rest of the planet. Only there is there enough air and geothermal heat to support life. Nitpick nitpicked: Ransom spends most of his time on _Thulcandra_ in a college… you mean _Malacandra_. Otherwise yes - the majority of the Martian landscape is _harandra_, nearly airless and very cold; it is marginally survivable with breathing apparatus. The rift valleys or _handramit_ are no worse than a fine day in early winter. Sulva, Earth’s Moon, is inhabited by a strange race where the sexes use sexbots instead of having sex with each other. The far side of Sulva is not as desertified as the near side, which was cursed by Satan (the Bent Oyarsa) when he was confined to Earth. _Rip Foster Rides The Gray Planet_ is set “five minutes in the future” from the 1950s in a Solar System which has intelligent humanoids on Mars, a habitable Venus with some amusing native species, a Mercury with silicon-based life-forms that make a nuisance of themselves by stealing oxygen from Earth scientists, and several habitable moons of Jupiter. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/30 "2013-11-28T16:01:39Z")
> [@](#): > > Sulva, Earth’s Moon, is inhabited by a strange race where the sexes use sexbots instead of having sex with each other. The far side of Sulva is not as desertified as the near side, which was cursed by Satan (the Bent Oyarsa) when he was confined to Earth. Wait, I don’t remember anything about that. Was there another story in addition to the three novels, or did I just overlook something in one of them? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/31 "2013-11-28T16:42:48Z")
In the _Empire From the Ashes_ trilogy, the Moon is a disguised AI-controlled warship named _Dahak;_ it camouflaged itself in pre-history by stripping off the surface of the real Moon to form a false surface for itself, then threw the rest of the Moon into the Sun to hide the evidence. > [@TBG](#): > > The Guardians of the Galaxy (Marvel Comics) includes members from Pluto, Jupiter, and Mercury. How a humanoid would live on a gas giant like Jupiter, I dunno. Floating enclosed settlements. Think the Cloud City from _The Empire Strikes Back,_ except that you suffocate if you go outside like Luke & Vader did. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/32 "2013-11-28T16:54:53Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > Nitpick nitpicked: Ransom spends most of his time on _Thulcandra_ in a college… you mean _Malacandra_. I _did_ Google that but somehow got the two reversed. :o > [@Chronos](#): > > Wait, I don’t remember anything about that. Was there another story in addition to the three novels, or did I just overlook something in one of them? From _That Hideous Strength_, when Merlin is quizzing Ransom to see if he’s really in the know: > [@](#): > > The Stranger mused for a few seconds; then, speaking in a slightly sing-song voice, he asked the following question: > > “Who is called Sulva? What road does she walk ? Why is the womb barren on one side? Where are the cold marriages?” > > Ransom replied, “Sulva is she whom mortals call the Moon. She walks in the lowest sphere. Half of her orb is turned towards us and shares our curse. On this side the womb is barren and the marriages cold. There dwell an accursed people, full of pride and lust. There when a man takes a maiden in marriage they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty (delicate) in their dreams of lust. Their real children they fabricate by vile arts in a secret place.” ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/33 "2013-11-28T17:04:22Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Floating enclosed settlements. Think the Cloud City from _The Empire Strikes Back,_ except that you suffocate if you go outside like Luke & Vader did. Doesn’t appear to be the case. Charlie-27 (the one from Jupiter) was a human genetically adapted to operate in high gravity (the comic says Jupiter’s is 3x Earth’s). You wouldn’t need that on an orbital station. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/34 "2013-11-28T20:08:57Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > I _did_ Google that but somehow got the two reversed. :o > > From _That Hideous Strength_, when Merlin is quizzing Ransom to see if he’s really in the know: Outstanding answer! It’s stated, though (in _Perelandra_) that Jupiter and Saturn and (what seems from context to be) Uranus are uninhabited: “No feet have walked, nor shall, on the ice of Glund; no eye looked up from beneath on the Ring of Lurga, and Iron-plain in Neruval is chaste and empty.” ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/35 "2013-11-28T20:51:11Z")
The \*Twilight Zone \*episode, “The Lonely,” takes place on an asteroid that’s something like 9 million miles from Earth. Only 9 million miles? Shouldn’t we have discovered it by now? And oh yeah, the asteroid apparently has the same gravity as Earth and a totally breathable atmosphere. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/36 "2013-11-28T21:19:14Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > Outstanding answer! > > It’s stated, though (in _Perelandra_) that Jupiter and Saturn and (what seems from context to be) Uranus are uninhabited: “No feet have walked, nor shall, on the ice of Glund; no eye looked up from beneath on the Ring of Lurga, and Iron-plain in Neruval is chaste and empty.” Interestingly enough, in the first book of the trilogy the native inhabitants of Mars add the -andra suffix to the outer planets’ names, perhaps in the misapprehension that they are “andra”- lands, or solid planets. But the more well informed Oyéresu know better. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/37 "2013-11-28T22:11:15Z")
Only Glundandra, I think. And it’s just too, too far for me to walk all the way into the next room and check on what that _oyarsa_ is called when he and his chums descend upon St Anne’s. But of course Viritrilbia, though definitely solid (and never AFAIK imagined to be anything else in the history of astronomy) isn’t an -andra either. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/38 "2013-11-28T23:53:14Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > The \*Twilight Zone \*episode, “The Lonely,” takes place on an asteroid that’s something like 9 million miles from Earth. Only 9 million miles? Shouldn’t we have discovered it by now? And oh yeah, the asteroid apparently has the same gravity as Earth and a totally breathable atmosphere. IIRC an episode of **Earth: Final Conflict** was set on a asteroid like that. The difference being the Taelons deliberately added a force field & artificial gravity to simulate Earth like conditions. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2013, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/39 "2013-11-29T00:41:34Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > The \*Twilight Zone \*episode, “The Lonely,” takes place on an asteroid that’s something like 9 million miles from Earth. Only 9 million miles? Shouldn’t we have discovered it by now? And oh yeah, the asteroid apparently has the same gravity as Earth and a totally breathable atmosphere. Reminds me of this dumb song. song: OH Written in the stars A million miles away me: So these stars are closer to Earth than the Sun? 93 times closer? And we’re somehow still alive? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2013, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871/40 "2013-11-29T01:54:35Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > Doesn’t appear to be the case. Charlie-27 (the one from Jupiter) was a human genetically adapted to operate in high gravity (the comic says Jupiter’s is 3x Earth’s). You wouldn’t need that on an orbital station. Not _orbital;_ something floating in the atmosphere. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-with-solar-system-counterfactuals/674871.md?page=3)