Wells' Martians went not only to Earth but also to Venus although we do not know what they found there. Olaf Stapledon's future men colonized Venus and some flew there.
CS Lewis found Venus a suitable setting for a replay of the temptation of Eve whereas James Blish knew enough to put his sinless planet in another system. Lewis reversed the interplanetary invasion idea. Evil invades Venus from Earth.
Poul Anderson's "The Big Rain" is set on a desert Venus where men from Earth simply survive and work at terraforming.
Next someone thought of retro-sf. SM Stirling imagines that the probes found versions of Mars and Venus that really were as they had been imagined: not only habitable but already humanly inhabited. But that turned out to have resulted from earlier terraforming which is what Anderson's characters are trying to do.
Later in the Psychotechnic History, Venus has been terraformed and its inhabitants are organized into clans.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I want to eventually reread Stirling's THE SKY PEOPLE. I would love it Venus, Mars, and Luna were all terraformed! For the latter see Anderson's "Strange Bedfellows." One scientist or engineer to whom I quoted some relevant bit from "Strange," even said terraforming the Moon just MIGHT be doable!
Ad astra! Sean
A Lunarian atmosphere would eventually diffuse into space... but "eventually" in cosmological terms can be "forever" in human ones. Literate civilization is only 5000 years old.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, what you said about a terraformed Luna eventually losing its atmosphere. But the POV character in "Strange Bedfellows" talked about that atmosphere lasting half a million years, which is plenty long enough for human beings!
Ad astra! Sean
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