Talk:Venus in fiction/Archive 1

Zelazny
I moved "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" from post-Mariner fiction over to pre-Mariner fiction. It's a judgement call, of course, but the story clearly features the pre-Mariner Venus, and although it appeared post-Mariner, it was written with pre-Mariner imagery. Geoffrey.landis 15:37, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Sargent, Pamela
i was looking here for brief discriptions of the venus books by Sargent, Pamela, which are listed on a nasa webpage: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/mars/ask/colony/Extensive_literature_about_terraforming.txt

seems like if someone at nasa suggests them they ought to be in wikipedia.

i never read them and i'm not a real wikipedia dude so...195.75.254.121 (talk) 16:03, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Moved text from planet article
I moved the (very nice) mini-article on Venusian fiction from Venus to here, merging it with the existing text to form a new, lengthier essay before the list of works. YLee (talk) 01:56, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

A Tenderfoot in Space
An article about venus in fiction seems incomplete without mentioning "A Tenderfoot in Space" by Robert A. Heinlein. I would add it myself, except I'm not sure what section it would fit into. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.123.208.30 (talk) 20:42, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Merge lists from Venusians
Although there is material on Venusians that isn't appropriate for this article, the lists are essentially the same topic: fictional examples of Venus and its people. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 18:35, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , I think that entire article needs merging here. And this needs a major rewrite like we did with Earth in fiction. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 06:46, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Proposed merger
Can't be merged with Venusians in my opinion, as the latter is much more specific. JMK (talk) 12:21, 26 May 2011 (UTC)


 * @JMK Can. And was done a while ago. Just saying for reference. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:13, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Venus with oceans
I've found File:Venus with conjectured oceans (4).png but the quality is not inspiring. The Ocean section could use a picture, but this... sigh. Ping User:TompaDompa. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:46, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
 * It's also utter WP:OR. Jason A. Quest (talk) 15:43, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Preparation for renomination at WP:FAC
Note: This was initially posted at User talk:Piotrus before being copied here. TompaDompa (talk) 18:08, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi! As you are probably aware, I have edited the article Venus in fiction a fair bit over the course of the last few months since the FAC closed in late October. I've tried to address the issues brought up by me and in the FAC in preparation for renomination. I've reached out to to ask them to take a look, but I see that their most recent edit was back in late November, so they might not reply in the near future. I was thinking that perhaps we could be co-nominators. What do you think? TompaDompa (talk) 15:29, 7 January 2023 (UTC)


 * @TompaDompa Impressive progress, I certainly would support a renomination. Do let me know how can I be of assistance. Btw, I'd nitpick the super rare word filmatized, maybe reword this? Also, a quick glance shows we lost mentions of Cowboy Bebop and Pathfinders to Venus? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 15:49, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I changed "filmatized" to "adapted to film". I couldn't find a good spot to include Cowboy Bebop and Pathfinders to Venus, but anime and television are at least represented in the article by Venus Wars and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, respectively. TompaDompa (talk) 15:58, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @TompaDompa See, that's the problem of restructuring that removed 'by media'. I'll think about how to restore the mention of these works; I think mentioning them is valuable to the reader. I'll also see what else went missing, I noticed the Venusian sidekick example (Tommy Tommorrow's) is gone too. I don't mind the restructuring, but the examples (information) should not be lost. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  16:03, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I've tried to make the examples serve the analysis, rather than including them just because they exist. There are way more works featuring Venus than we can reasonably include without turning this into what is functionally a list of examples. I've re-added Lon Vurian as an example of a basically-human Venusian. TompaDompa (talk) 16:19, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Found a way to include Pathfinders to Venus. TompaDompa (talk) 16:43, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I gave including Cowboy Bebop a shot. It's not ideal since Anime News Network is not a great source, but it should be reliable enough for basic plot details. Take a look and see what you think. TompaDompa (talk) 20:46, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you, that's all great. Note that I believe that if a work, any work, is worth mentioning in any reliable reference work, in particular, one that is about Venus in fiction, I think it should be discussed in the article. Here are my other thoughts:
 * a mention of some of the most prominent authors, if not works, in the lead, would be good
 * general comment: WP:RED is good, but assuming all works are notable, even essays and short stories, I am unsure about.
 * I see you shortened the chronological listing of earliest works, most are mentioned later. I am not sure if this shortening is good - the earlier version collected in one place some of the earlierst works in the genre, which might be of interest to some readers. I refer to the second paragraph in 'Early depictions: exotic tropics' in the version linked below
 * works which were mentioned in this version but aren't in our current one:
 * Clifford D. Simak ("Hunger Death", 1938)
 * Campbell's "The Black Star Passes" (1930)
 * A. E. van Vogt's The World of Null-A (1949)
 * Simak's "Rim of the Deep" (1940)
 * Asimov's Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954) is no longer mentioned in the Ocean... section, despite the obvious relevance of the title (it is mentioned elsewhere).
 * Bradury's "All Summer in a Day" (1954) was removed, and it even had some description of the story. If this is because it didn't mention jungle and swamps, this can be easily remedied by being moved to the paragraph about "A common assumption was that the Venusian clouds were made of water".
 * Heinlein's Between Planets was removed from the sentence about "Robert A. Heinlein portrayed Venusian swamps in several unrelated stories " (it is mentioned elsewhere in the article)
 * mention of Anderson's "The Big Rain" (1954) which revolves around an attempt to bring about rain on a desert Venus was removed from the Desert section (it is mentioned in the terraforming). Again, if a work is relevant here and there, I think it should be mentioned in both; with the first mention providing more detail and second, being just a mention. WP:NOTPAPER, however.
 * Robert Sheckley's "Prospector Planet" (1959) also gone from that section, not mentioned anywhere else
 * Dean McLaughlin's The Fury from Earth (1963) ditto
 * Bob Buckley's "Chimera" (1976) is gone entirely and Pearce and Bova's examples are removed from the list of examples of hard environment works where Chimera was present
 * example of Kuttner's Fury is no longer present in the terraforming section
 * removed example: "while Marvel Comic's Sub-Mariner defended Earth from an invasion by amphibious Venusians"
 * removed another example: The Green Lantern story "Summons from Space" (1959) feature the heroes protecting human-like inhabitants of Venus from the dinosaurs - which could totally fit in the place we discuss dinosaurs on Venus
 * removed "In addition to original comic plotlines, classic works such as Burroughs' stories featuring Carson Napier, the protagonist of the Pirates of Venus series, were published by DC Comics in the 1970s, and Dark Horse Comics in the 1990s." This could be mentioned somewhere in shortened version, where we discuss Burrough's stories, noting that they also received comic book adaptations (or this entire sentence could be copied to article about his works/series I guess).
 * you removed the mention of "Treatments described sometimes as more "cerebral" or "mainline" included", which served to show that there were "more serious" works in addition to the pulp sword-and-planet/planetary romance
 * this sentence was removed: "While individual visits tend to be peaceful, some authors have depicted large scale conflicts, including warfare, between Venusians and humans (or in some cases, Martians)" and only partially rewritten as "Visits like this are typically peaceful and for the enlightenment of humanity. Occasionally, Venusians come to Earth intent on conquering it, as in". I thought you like examples - why remove mention of warfare, including conflict with Mars?
 * gone is " Venusians invade Earth in Target Earth! (1954)", why? Totally could be another example for the invasion part, discussed above
 * last missing example: " a flight to Venus is also featured in Doomsday Machine (1972)."
 * you removed the sentence "While the earliest works about Venus tended to be written in French or English, science fiction writers from other countries also tackled this topic" although I am prepared to entertain that this was a bit ORish and probably represents my annoyance/bias on such topics being heavily anglo-centric... (I know, I know, we are limited to what is in the sources and these are biased in coverage)
 * PS. I suggest moving (copying) our discussion to Talk:Venus in fiction, so that future historians (:>) studying the development of this article can find it more easily... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:57, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The copy-move has been done. I think that while including every work that appears in reliable reference works is at first glance an admirable ambition, it is not feasible without sacrificing overall article quality. There are simply way too many works that get mentioned by those sources (by my count, the sources currently cited in the article contain an additional 70–80 works that are not mentioned in the article at present). We would end up with an index of works rather than a prose article. For the same reason, I've tried to reduce redundancy by not mentioning the same work over and over again if there are other examples that work equally well. That way, we get a more diverse set of examples without bloating the article too much by creating an excessive WP:EXAMPLEFARM. As for some of the specific points you brought up:
 * I replaced Campbell's "The Black Star Passes" with "Solarite" since there was more to say about it. Both are included in The Black Star Passes.
 * The World of Null-A is still mentioned, but I moved it to the "Terraforming" section.
 * I removed "All Summer in a Day" because "Sources on the overarching topic really only cover one of these works to any significant degree." (the other one being "The Long Rain"; this one is just mentioned in passing by Dozois and Vaas). That being said, I re-added it.
 * "Prospector Planet" is now mentioned as "Prospector's Special". This was changed by somebody else, but a quick Google search seems to suggest that the latter is actually the correct title (the former does not even appear to be an alternative title).
 * Dozois' "mainline" explicitly just means "not planetary romance", and Gillett's "more cerebral" is a bit too "review-y" for my taste. I think devoting a paragraph to planetary romance depictions makes the point that it appeared in that genre among others just as well.
 * I found the "While individual visits tend to be peaceful [...]" passage too ORish since it was sourced to Bleiler's indices. I'm of the opinion that the indices should only be cited with WP:INTEXT attribution ("Bleiler lists examples such as [...]"). I did manage to cover the main points while citing a different source.
 * Fair enough about Target Earth. I re-added it.
 * I did indeed find the language thing too ORish. Regardless, I think interspersing examples is a better way to combat WP:Systemic bias in cases like this. Devoting a separate paragraph or section to the "non-standard" examples (whether in terms of language or medium) runs the risk of coming across as ghettoizing (for lack of a better term).
 * TompaDompa (talk) 21:47, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @TompaDompa EXAMPLEFARM is an essay, WP:NOTPAPER is a policy, so I'll disagree with this. If article size becomes an issue, content can be split into subarticles and then shortened in the main article, but I don't think we are at that point yet. Given the requirement that FA-level articles should be comprehensive, I stand by my view that we should try to list every single example in the sources cited. Of course, considering some sources (Bleiler...), I can see major style issues, and I totally support trying to justify each and every example with some description/analysis. My solution is to treat catalogue-listings like Bleiler as too detailed to worry about, but if an example is given in another encylopedia-like treatment of the topic, I think we should add it here. I would not call the article not comprehensive enough at FA if some examples didn't make it, it's a minor point, but I do think that if we added something, it should not be removed. Eventually this article should list every example mentioned in other encyclopedias (not catalogues like Bleiler...), because the logic is - those other entries were written by experts, and they thought that story A by author Z is a good example, well, who are we do say "meh, pass on this one"? Hence, forgive me for using a strong term, but I do insist on restoring all examples, including repeating them in various sections if they have been used as examples of different themes we discuss. Again, I don't believe removing examples due to worry about EXAMPLEFARM can overrule NOTPAPER/comprehensive counterarguments, and in fact, removing some examples one things are "not important" can be argued to be an OR-ish/editorializing appproach. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 05:10, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It's not an issue of article size but of writing quality; WP:FA-level articles are supposed to be well-written. If the article were hypothetically expanded to 10,000 words that would not be an issue in itself as long as the prose is strong, but if it's 90% titles of examples it would be a bad article. Sometimes, less is more. WP:NOTEVERYTHING is also policy: A Wikipedia article should not be a complete exposition of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject. That's not original research or editorializing, it's just encyclopedic writing. I can see the argument that if all the experts use a particular example we should probably include it, but one could equally well say that if we give equal weight to an example mentioned by one expert and one mentioned by all of them then we are giving the former undue weight by overemphasizing a WP:MINORASPECT. Likewise if we give equal weight to an example discussed in-depth and one name-checked. I could also see reusing examples for multiple sections being viewed as unduly emphasizing those works. This is not a black-and-white issue of course, it's a balancing act. TompaDompa (talk) 10:32, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It indeed is. Which is why for me I draw the line at not insisting we use all examples, but I object to removal to the ones that have been added before. There is no reason to remove such content, particularly when we are talking about literally "a few" examples. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 16:24, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm all for expanding the article with quality content. A lack of available sources to write quality content that would fit this article is a major reason some of these examples were removed. Another important reason is that some aspects—the desert vision of Venus and appearances in comic books in particular—are only covered fairly briefly and by a minority of sources and I am wary of their potential overrepresentation in this article. TompaDompa (talk) 04:36, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
 * We can both agree that discussing things in depth, with sources, is superior. And we have both shown this is often possible. Let's focus on positives, check the newly expanded content on Simak I've added and feel free to split it/move it around. I'll see what else can be expanded. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 05:52, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I've went through few more examples, I stopped now at Bob Buckley's "Chimera" (1976). I can't find much about it (it's just mentioned in passing in "Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia", p.549. I can't find the work discussed anywhere else, it's just a short story, and the author does not appear very notable (no entry in SFE). ISFDb entry for the record. Grudgingly, this seems like a minor work by a minor author, mentioned in passing in just one of our soruces, I think we can leave it out... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 06:33, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The Simak paragraph is way excessive and out of WP:PROPORTION, bordering on WP:COATRACK. I'll see what I can do to address that. The article currently mentions three different works by Simak, which doesn't seem entirely necessary. TompaDompa (talk) 07:10, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
 * While I don't mind splitting the paragraph and moving the contents around, I object to the removal of any work. They are all important enough to be mentioned an encyclopedic treatment of Venus and have further discussion about them in other works. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 11:18, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Like I said, we have well over 60 additional works that are mentioned in our sources but not included in the article. It is completely unreasonable to expect to include all of them, and trying to do so would be detrimental to the overall article quality. At some point we have to "kill our darlings", as it were. It's better to try to find the best examples than to try (and inevitably fail) to use all of them. TompaDompa (talk) 12:32, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Honestly, this may require a WP:3O or an WP:RFC], as I disagree per NOTPAPER etc. Now, I don't intend to add any new examples right now, but I am certainly not opposed to this (and as before, I object to removal of the ones that have been added in the past, except BB's "Chimera". However, as currently I don't think anything has been removed (please correct me if I am wrong, since you are the one doing the occasional removals), I am fine with the article as it stands. I'd also ask you to clearly note in the edit summary if you remove any work. TIA. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 05:43, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Image map
Sorry for my sloppy edit, forgeting to reinsert the image map at different part, wasnt my intention. Nsae Comp (talk) 05:27, 16 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I moved it now to the see also section since it is for navigating to fiction of the other planets. Nsae Comp (talk) 20:27, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * That is not its only purpose, as the caption (Some early depictions of Venus in fiction were part of tours of the Solar System. [...]) is meant to show. It serves the purpose of putting Venus in the broader context of Solar System bodies in fiction, mainly in terms of appearing in "planetary tours" but also with Mars in fiction as a point of comparison (which the paragraph it appeared next to goes into some detail about). I have put it back. TompaDompa (talk) 22:00, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Chapter names
Hi, I still dont feel comfortable with the chapter names. Mainly because it tries to draw a line betweem two historical distinct eras of depiction, but then has somewhat contradicting sub-chapters. So I would suggest just to take the characterizing elements of the headline away and just leave "early depiction"/"later depiction" (or pre/post space age, or something like that). This confines less the spectrum of the times described.

That said I must say this has all been done with lots of love and effort. Awesome work!

So I hope I can gove some constructive input. Nsae Comp (talk) 20:32, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you mean by somewhat contradicting sub-chapters, but I think plain "Early depictions"/"Later depictions" could work, so let's try that. TompaDompa (talk) 22:01, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Great. PS: contradicting since e.g. tropical has desert and ocean, which both do not need to be tropical. Nsae Comp (talk) 23:48, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Re: this headings change. I think the previous name were more interesting to the reader. We could change tropics to environment, perhaps? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:57, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
 * If we are to have some kind of additional information in the headings, I'd be more inclined to go with something like "habitable". That's really the key thing that distinguishes the early depictions from the later ones. TompaDompa (talk) 10:25, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
 * "Early depictions: Exotic and habitable" vs "Later depictions: extreme inhospitality"? IIRC my old subheading was "hostile inferno", I still think it sounds better. Our headings don't always have to be super dry. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:28, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't know about "exotic and habitable", it sounds kind of weird to me. I think the point above about "tropics" is a fair one. I don't mind "hostile inferno". TompaDompa (talk) 10:34, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I understand that you want it more catchy, but the main change/turn was the knowledge gained about the actual environment through spaceflight. That is what these two chapters do for me. I personally would call them "before/after spaceflight" and leave out the traping specification, especially since it narrows the chapter. But you could then have, like it allready is sub-chapters that are called after the focus of a group of fiction which focus on the exotic but habitable vision of Venus VS later stories that focus on the infernal ground level environment or the greenhouse effects, or also a sub-chapter about stories which focus on the lofty cloud life/environments, etc. (which would be contradictive to me if they are under a chapter that is called inhospital inferno, because that is just not true, stories set in the clouds are stories in environments more friendly than on any other planet and deteched from thw rightly infernal environment below). Nsae Comp (talk) 18:44, 18 April 2023 (UTC)