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The planetary systems of stars other than the Sun and the Solar System are a staple element in many works of the science fiction genre.
The notion that there might be inhabited extrasolar planets can be traced at least as far back as Giordano Bruno who, in his De l'infinito, universo e mondi (On the Infinite, Universe and Worlds, 1584), declared that "There are then innumerable suns, and an infinite number of earths revolve around those suns, [These worlds are inhabited] if not exactly as our own, and if not more nobly, at least no less inhabited and no less nobly." [1] Allusions to inhabitants of other stars' planetary systems remained rare in literature for some centuries thereafter. One of these is found in Voltaire's Micromégas (1752), which features a traveller from Sirius. [2]
As science fiction became established in the early 20th century, destinations such as the Moon, Mars, Venus, and other bodies within the Solar System began to seem stale. [3] Authors invoked a variety of mechanisms for superluminal travel (or generation starships) and placed their stories on worlds in planetary systems around other stars, an innovation that gave them the freedom to construct exotic fictional planets and themes. This tendency became predominant once the exploration of the Solar System was complete enough to conclusively demonstrate the unlikelihood of any highly developed form of extraterrestrial life here, aside from humans on Earth.
Although most of the stars named in works of science fiction are purely imaginary, many authors and artists have preferred to use the names of real stars that are well known to astronomers, and indeed the lay public, either because they are notably bright in the sky, because they are relatively close to Earth, or because they have been mentioned in the media in relation to the exoplanets orbiting them being found to be strange or similar to Earth.
The multiple fictional genres that appear in the list below include films, television serials, interactive games, and print (among others). Of all these, the print medium, specifically novels and novellas, are of note because they are often planetary romances.
Any science fiction tale whose primary venue is a planet and whose plot turns on the nature of the planet can be described as a planetary romance. It is not enough that the story simply be set on a world. For example, James Blish's A Case of Conscience (1958) is set on the planet Lithia, but it is not a planetary romance because the nature or description of this world has little bearing on the story being told. And in the hard science fiction novels by Hal Clement (see 61 Cygni: A Mission of Gravity below) and Robert L. Forward (see Barnard's Star: Rocheworld below), the worlds on which they are set amount to little more than the sum of the physical and logical problems that they illustrate, and that their protagonists solve. In the true planetary romance, the world itself encompasses—and survives—the tale that temporarily illuminates it. [4]
One early practitioner of the planetary romance was Edgar Rice Burroughs, as for example in his Barsoom (Mars) series (1912–1943). However, as with most writers of his era, his settings did not extend beyond the Solar System, and so his work is not found in this article. [5]
Planetary systems (mostly hypothetical or imaginary) of real stars appearing in fiction are:
In 2011 three Super-Earths were confirmed in orbit around 82 Eridani (HD20794). [28]
Barnard's Star is a red dwarf of apparent magnitude 9 and is thus too dim to be seen with the unaided eye. However, at approximately 6 light-years away it is the second-closest stellar system to the Sun; only the Alpha Centauri system is known to be closer. Intense stellar flares were observed in 1998 and 2019, so in reality habitation may be difficult.
The 1968 science fiction novel Satan's World, by Poul Anderson, deals with the consequences of a rogue planet encountering Beta Crucis. The 2002 science fiction novel Schild's Ladder, by Greg Egan in its prologue depicts the huge scientific lab located in outer space in 6 light months from Mimosa.
The Seer and the Silverman, a short story in the Xeelee Sequence by Stephen Baxter, is set in the Reef, a collection of abandoned spaceships near OB2#12.
This star appears as a physical character in the 2007 animated film, Nocturna, as the main character Tim's favourite star. [122]
In Star Trek: Enterprise, this system is the home of Denobulans.
In Star Trek canon, the fourth planet orbiting Iota Geminorum is the homeworld of the Tribbles.
In Star Trek: The Next Generation (episode "Firstborn") and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (episode "The Forsaken"), according to Star Trek: Star Charts, on the star chart labeled United Federation of Planets I, the Dopterians (an unscrupulous humanoid species found throughout the Alpha Quadrant) were from the Dopteria (Kappa Coronae Borealis) system. This system was located in the Alpha Quadrant.
Lalande 21185 is a red dwarf of apparent magnitude 7 and is thus too dim to be seen with the unaided eye. However, at approximately 8.3 light-years away it is the fifth-closest stellar system to the Sun; only the Alpha Centauri system, Barnard's Star, Luhman 16 and Wolf 359 are known to be closer. thus the star has attracted the attention of science fiction authors and game developers. A number of claims have been made for the discovery by astrometry of one or more extrasolar planets in the Lalande 21185 system, but these are now in doubt.
Mira is a binary star system that consists of a red giant (Mira A) losing mass to its partner, the high temperature white dwarf companion (Mira B) steadily accreting substance from the primary. Mira A, a variable star, would actually be a poor candidate for the home sun of any of the "habitable" planets described below, since its brightness fluctuates over the long run by a total factor of around 1700, with each individual cycle lasting about 300 days. In 2007, observations showed a protoplanetary disc around the companion, Mira B. This disc is being accreted from material in the solar wind from Mira and could eventually form new planets.
According to Star Trek: Star Charts, in Star Trek: The Motion Picture , Zaran (Mu Capricorni) was the name of a star in the Alpha Quadrant and it was the home of the Zaranites (a humanoid species known to the Federation during the mid-23rd century). The primary was a Class F star. Magnitude of this star was +5, which was the same brightness as Sol. This was a Federation system, with at least one planet being an affiliate.
Proxima Centauri, part of a triple star system with Alpha Centauri A and B, is the nearest-known star to the Solar System. Even though habitation may be difficult because it is a flare star, a disproportionate number of early fiction titles are dedicated to Proxima Centauri, as the destination of humanity's first interstellar voyage. A planet in Proxima Centauri's habitable zone was detected in Aug 2016, and a ringed super-earth in 2019, far further away.
The Ross stars in this list (but not all stars in the Ross catalog) are red dwarfs, and they are among the closest stars to the Solar System. They were catalogued beginning in 1926 by the American astronomer Frank Elmore Ross, and some of them are still widely known by the catalog number he gave them (for one that is not, see Gliese 876). The stars listed below, despite their faint magnitudes (all numerically greater than 10), have attracted the attention of authors and game developers interested in fiction depicting the earliest stages of humanity's expansion into the galaxy.
Beta Lyrae is an eclipsing binary system (see animation) in which mass is being transferred from the brighter primary to the more massive secondary star in a presumably spectacular accretion disc. Because of this, it has inspired the imaginations of artists and authors alike across the years; Chesley Bonestell (1964), for example, painted a famously evocative, influential (and imaginative) canvas depicting Beta Lyrae as it traces a vast fiery spiral across the black sky of some jagged airless world. [198] [199]
Referenced in the fictional short story "Three-legged Joe" by author Jack Vance as being orbited by 14 planets, the outermost of which was named Odfars and inhabited by a single alien for which the story is named.[ citation needed ]
In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (episodes "The Nagus", "Prophet Motive" and "Profit and Lace"), according to the Star Trek: Star Charts, on the star chart United Federation of Planets I, the Hupyrians (a humanoid species native to either the Alpha or Beta Quadrant) were from the Hupyria (Tau Coronae Borealis) system. Both the primary and the secondary were K-type stars. This system was located in the Alpha Quadrant.
Luyten 726–8 is a binary star system: The component Luyten 726-8A is a red dwarf star with the variable designation BL Ceti, and Luyten 726-8B is a red dwarf with the alternate designation UV Ceti. The latter is the prototype for the class of flare stars, and it goes through fairly extreme changes of brightness: For instance, in 1952, its brightness increased by 75 times in only 20 seconds. None of the items below pretend that UV Ceti is orbited by habitable worlds.
Wolf 359 is a red dwarf of apparent magnitude 13.5 and thus can only be seen with a large telescope. However, at approximately 7.8 light-years away it is the seventh-closest stellar system to the Sun; only the brown dwarfs WISE 0855−0714 and Luhman 16, as well as Barnard's Star and the three components of the Alpha Centauri system are known to be closer. It is a flare star, so in reality habitation may be difficult.
Alpha Centauri is a triple star system in the southern constellation of Centaurus. It consists of three stars: Rigil Kentaurus, Toliman (B) and Proxima Centauri (C). Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun at 4.2465 light-years.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a 4X video game, considered a spiritual sequel to the Civilization series. Set in a science fiction depiction of the 22nd century, the game begins as seven competing ideological factions land on the planet Chiron ("Planet") in the Alpha Centauri star system. As the game progresses, Planet's growing sentience becomes a formidable obstacle to the human colonists.
In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the United Federation of Planets (UFP) is the interstellar government with which, as part of its space force Starfleet, most of the characters and starships of the franchise are affiliated. Commonly referred to as "the Federation", it was introduced in the original Star Trek television series. The survival, success, and growth of the Federation and its principles of freedom have become some of the Star Trek franchise's central themes.
Foundation and Earth is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, the fifth novel of the Foundation series and chronologically the last in the series. It was published in 1986, four years after the first sequel to the Foundation trilogy, which is titled Foundation's Edge.
Zefram Cochrane is a fictional character in the Star Trek universe. Created by writer Gene L. Coon, the character first appeared in the 1967 Star Trek episode "Metamorphosis", in which he was played by Glenn Corbett. James Cromwell later played Cochrane in the 1996 feature film Star Trek: First Contact, the 2001 Star Trek: Enterprise pilot, "Broken Bow", and the 2022 Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3 premiere episode, "Grounded". Footage of Cromwell from Star Trek: First Contact was used in the Enterprise episode "In a Mirror, Darkly Part I".
An overwhelming majority of fiction is set on or features the Earth, as the only planet home to humans. This also holds true of science fiction, despite perceptions to the contrary. Works that focus specifically on Earth may do so holistically, treating the planet as one semi-biological entity. Counterfactual depictions of the shape of the Earth, be it flat or hollow, are occasionally featured. A personified, living Earth appears in a handful of works. In works set in the far future, Earth can be a center of space-faring human civilization, or just one of many inhabited planets of a galactic empire, and sometimes destroyed by ecological disaster or nuclear war or otherwise forgotten or lost.
The Hyperion Cantos is a series of science fiction novels by Dan Simmons. The title was originally used for the collection of the first pair of books in the series, Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, and later came to refer to the overall storyline, including Endymion, The Rise of Endymion, and a number of short stories. More narrowly, inside the fictional storyline, after the first volume, the Hyperion Cantos is an epic poem written by the character Martin Silenus covering in verse form the events of the first two books.
CoDominium is a series of future history novels written by American writer Jerry Pournelle, along with several co-authors, primarily Larry Niven.
Planetary romance is a subgenre of science fiction in which the bulk of the action consists of adventures on one or more exotic alien planets, characterized by distinctive physical and cultural backgrounds. Some planetary romances take place against the background of a future culture where travel between worlds by spaceship is commonplace; others, particularly the earliest examples of the genre, do not, and invoke flying carpets, astral projection, or other methods of getting between planets. In either case, it is the planetside adventures which are the focus of the story, not the mode of travel.
In both science fiction and utopia/dystopian fiction, authors have made frequent use of the age-old idea of a global state and, accordingly, of world government.
This is a list of occurrences of space elevators in fiction. Some depictions were made before the space elevator concept became fully established.
Asteroids have appeared in fiction since at least the late 1800s, the first one—Ceres—having been discovered in 1801. They were initially only used infrequently as writers preferred the planets as settings. The once-popular Phaëton hypothesis, which states that the asteroid belt consists of the remnants of the former fifth planet that existed in an orbit between Mars and Jupiter before somehow being destroyed, has been a recurring theme with various explanations for the planet's destruction proposed. This hypothetical former planet is in science fiction often called "Bodia" in reference to Johann Elert Bode, for whom the since-discredited Titius–Bode law that predicts the planet's existence is named.
The Viagens Interplanetarias series is a sequence of science fiction stories by L. Sprague de Camp, begun in the late 1940s and written under the influence of contemporary space opera and sword and planet stories, particularly Edgar Rice Burroughs's Martian novels. Set in the future in the 21st and 22nd centuries, the series is named for the quasi-public Terran agency portrayed as monopolizing interstellar travel, the Brazilian-dominated Viagens Interplanetarias. It is also known as the Krishna series, as the majority of the stories belong to a sequence set on a fictional planet of that name. While de Camp started out as a science fiction writer and his early reputation was based on his short stories in the genre, the Viagens tales represent his only extended science fiction series.
"The Colorful Character" is a science fiction short story by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, part of his Viagens Interplanetarias series. It was first published in the magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories in the issue for December, 1949. It first appeared in book form in the collection Sprague de Camp's New Anthology of Science Fiction, published simultaneously in hardcover by Hamilton and in paperback by Panther Books in 1953.
Alien Legacy is a sci-fi strategy game developed by Ybarra Productions and published by Sierra On-Line in 1994 for MS-DOS.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Star Trek:
Starship Through Space is a science-fiction novel written by G. Harry Stine under the pseudonym Lee Correy. It was published in 1954 by Henry Holt and Company. The book tells the story of the building of the first starship and of its flight to Alpha Centauri.
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