Let's Go To Venus

Venus gets less fictional coverage than Mars but more than any other planet. The fiction of Venus is probably adequately covered or summarized in Farewell, Fantastic Venus.

(i) Venus and Mars are the nearest planets apart from the Moon.

(ii) Mythologically, Venus and Mars are linked as opposites: goddess of love; god of war.

(iii) CS Lewis wrote a Mars-Venus-Earth Trilogy whereas SM Stirling wrote a Venus-Mars diptych.

(iv) HG Wells' Martians attacked Venus after Earth but Wells does not show us events on the Venerian surface.

(v) Olaf Stapledon's Terrestrials colonized Venus, exterminated the Venerians (after being attacked by them), adapted to Venus and became Venerians.

(vi) Otis Adelbert Kline competed with ERB's Mars books by writing both Mars and Venus books so ERB retaliated with Venus books.

(vii) Ray Bradbury, famous for his Mars, has a rainy Venus in one story in The Illustrated Man.

(viii) Robert Heinlein has a swampy Venus with frog-like natives both in a Future History short story and in a Scribner juvenile novel.

(ix) Poul Anderson has a desert Venus in a Psychotechnic History story, an oceanic Venus in an independent story and an incompletely terraformed Venus off-stage in his Technic History.

(x) Larry Niven's Known Space future history opens with short stories about exploration of Solar planets, including Venus.

(xi) Isaac Asimov's Lucky Starr juvenile novels are set on successive Solar planets, including Venus.

(xii) Dan Dare's first interplanetary voyage was to Venus where he encountered his recurring enemy, the Mekon.

Marses II

We might as well discuss fictional versions of Mars and Martians in general but that is an enormous topic. This blog has already, in diverse posts, addressed Poul Anderson's several Martian races which seem to be sui generis, except that Anderson borrowed Wells' title with just a slight variation. See here.

I think that the main writers about fictional Martians are:

British
Wells
Stapledon
Lewis

American
Burroughs
Heinlein
Bradbury

The Brits form a perfect triad:

Wells writes separately both a future history and a novel about a Martian invasion of Earth;
Stapledon describes Martian invasions of Earth among many other events in a future history text book;
Lewis, disagreeing with Wellsian and Stapledonian visions of the future, locates evil only on Earth and tells us that Wells' Martians are very unlike the real Martians!

However, there are many other writers about Mars:

relevant to Burroughs
Edwin Arnold
Otis Adelbert Kline
Michael Moorcock

authors of composite Marses
Larry Niven
Alan Moore

James Blish incorporated Mars into his Haertel histories by putting the seminal character, Adolph Haertel, on Mars. Professor Quatermass thought that one group of alien invaders had come from Mars and Quatermass' successor on British television, Doctor Who, has his version of Martians, the Ice Warriors.

And that is as comprehensive as I feel like getting at present.