Fictional planet
The exploration of other worlds is one of the most enduring themes of science fiction.
During the first decades of science fiction, Mars was the most common planet and the most romanticized of our solar system whose surface conditions seemed closest to being amenable to life. Percival Lowell's idea about canals of Mars was taken at face value then.
Currently Mars is depicted mainly as a target of terraforming. See Mars in fiction for more details on the red planet's numerous roles.
During the early-to-mid 20th century, Venus was also a popular subject. Venus is very similar to Earth in its size and surface gravity, and its surface is hidden by a thick cloud layer. Venus was usually depicted as a warm, wet, jungle- and marsh-covered world where life was plentiful, with often thinly-veiled allegories of the European colonization of Africa. Venus is in fact an inhospitable world — the clouds are sulfuric acid, the atmosphere is hundreds of times thicker than Earth's, and the surface temperature could melt lead. See Venus in fiction for more details and particular works.
Fictional planets
Authors have created thousands of fictional planets.
Most of them are nearly indistinguishable from Earth, which is why Brian M. Stableford calls them "Earth-Clones".
In these, differences with Earth life are mostly social (like Barrayar in the science fiction of Lois McMaster Bujold).
More physically unusual planets have been in the hard science fiction books.
Unusual social environment
Typical examples are prison planets, primitive cultures, political or religious extremes and pseudo-medieval societies.
- See: Utopia, Dystopia.
Some Fantasy Worlds are also depicted as alien planets.
Unusual physical environment
Typical examples are one-climate planets — deserts, waterworlds, arctic conditions and especially jungles.
- Abyormen — Hal Clement's Cycle of Fire (temperature extremes)
- Acid — Total Annihilation (Corresive oceans with forests of explosive gasbag plants)
- Arrakis — Frank Herbert's Dune (desert world, sole source of Melange)
- Atlantis — Peter F. Hamilton's The Night's Dawn Trilogy (waterworld)
- Ballybran — Anne McCaffrey's Crystal Singer
- Bespin — Star Wars (gas giant with habitable atmospheric layer)
- Big Planet — Jack Vance
- Core Prime — Total Annihilation (metallic with a gigantic computer at its core and a landfill-covered satellite)
- Cybertron — Transformers (Metallic/Mechanical)
- Dagobah — Star Wars (jungle, Yoda's hideout)
- Dhrawn — Hal Clement's Star Light (high gravity)
- Dragon's Egg — Robert Forward (life on neutron star)
- Echronedal — Iain M. Banks' The Player of Games (a fire storm forever sweeping round an unbroken equatorial continent)
- Erna — C. S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy (psychically malleable quasi-sentient natural forces)
- Far Away — Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star (triangle of stratospheric mountains, sterilized by solar flare, Starflyer alien)
- Garth — David Brin's Uplift War (weird biology)
- God's Grove — Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos (forest world,Worldtree)
- Hekla — Hal Clement's Cold Front (ice age aliens)
- Helliconia — Brian Aldiss (seasons last millennia)
- Hoth — The Empire Strikes Back (arctic)
- Hydros — Robert Silverberg's Face of the Waters (waterworld)
- Hyperion — Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos (one of 9 labyrinth planets, Time Tombs)
- Ishtar — Poul Anderson's Fire Time (periods of intense heat)
- Kharak — Homeworld (desert planet)
- Kithrup — David Brin's Startide Rising (waterworld)
- LV-426 — Aliens
- Lamarckia — Greg Bear's Legacy (Lamarckian evolution)
- Manaan — Star Wars (ocean)
- Majipoor — Robert Silverberg (large planet)
- Mare Infinitus — Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos (waterworld)
- Maui-Covenant — Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos (motile isles)
- Medea — Harlan Ellison's worldbuilding project
- Mesklin — Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity (superjovian)
- Nacre — Piers Anthony's Omnivore
- Placet — Fredric Brown's Placet is a Crazy Place
- Poseidon — Blue Planet Roleplaying game (ocean world)
- Pyrrus — Harry Harrison's Deathworld (high gravity and psychic animals)
- Regis III — Stanislaw Lem's Invincible (inorganic evolution)
- Rocheworld — Robert Forward (double planet)
- Smoke Ring — Larry Niven's Integral Trees & Smoke Ring (gas ring around a neutron star)
- Sol Draconi Septem — Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos (glacier covered)
- Solaris — Stanislaw Lem's Solaris (living planet)
- Star One. A star with a single planet holding the Federation's main computers in Blakes Seven, situated between our galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy. Planet destroyed in an intergalactic war.
- Tatooine — Star Wars movies (desert world)
- Tenebra — Hal Clement's Close to Critical (high gravity and corrosive atmosphere)
- Terminal — an artificial planet displaying extreme polar flattening in Blakes Seven.
- Thalassa — Arthur C. Clarke's Songs of Distant Earth (waterworld)
- T'ien Shan — Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos (mountain world, toxic surface clouds)
- Well World — Jack L. Chalker's Well of Souls series (surface divided in thousands of different ecosystems, each one with a different sentient race)
- World of Tiers — Philip José Farmer's book series of the same name (world-sized stepped pyramid with a different environment on each step)
- Yavin 4 — Fourth moon of the gas giant, Yavin; Rebel Alliance stronghold located in the ruins of an ancient Massassi temple (abandoned long ago) from "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope"
- Zahir — Valerian series (hollow planet)
Other
In addition, some writers and scientists have speculated about artificial planets or planet-equivalents; see Larry Niven's Ringworld or Freeman Dyson's Dyson sphere.
Books
