Venus And Prosperity

Many fictional Venuses, including Burroughs', Kline's, Heinlein's and Lewis', are humanly habitable;

in Poul Anderson's "Delenda Est," Venus, presumably habitable, has been colonized;

in Anderson's "The Big Rain," a desert Venus has been colonized but has yet to be terraformed;

in his "Sister Planet," an oceanic Venus has yet to be terraformed and colonized;

in his Technic History, Venus has been colonized despite incomplete terraforming;

in SM Stirling's "A Slip in Time," we retroactively learn that the colonized Venus of "Delenda Est" had been paradisally terraformed - lawns, gardens, vines, flowers, trees, a canal, bioengineered colorful singing birds and a cat-dog-chimp hybrid companion-nurse.

Surely a civilization with the power and wealth to effect this transformation would be able to solve all socioeconomic problems? Despite this, conflicts and wars continue for many millennia - although not indefinitely.

In "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks," we learn that the Time Patrol suppresses the Trazon matter transmuter, able to transform any material object into any other...

Terraforming Venus

In Poul Anderson's "The Big Rain," more than a million complicated airmaker machines on the Venusian surface break down paraform, yielding water. The formaldehyde reacts with ammonia and methane to produce hydrocarbons, carbohydrates etc for food, fuel and fertilizer. Carbon dioxide is broken down into soot and oxygen, the latter to be bottled for industrial use. Other substances are separated and collected to be processed in cities.

When seven million airmakers have been built, the atmosphere will be changed in twenty Earth years plus another decade due to factors like the law of diminishing returns and stratospheric gas never reaching the surface.

Artificially mutated, solar powered bacteria, living off carbon and silicon, release oxygen from rocks and ores. Pulverized stone and sand mixed with fertilizer become soil. Other engineered organisms will provide an ecology. Water brought to the surface by volcanoes is extracted from magma and hydrated minerals.

Hydrogen bombs exploded at selected locations will ignite the volcanoes while platinum catalyst sown by aircraft and Venusian lightning will attack the remaining poisonous gasses that will then fall as compounds in "the Big Rain," lasting ten Earth years to yield rivers, lakes and seas. With soil spread, bacteria, plants and animals released and heavy rain falling for centuries, reclaimed sections will get close to Terrestrial conditions in a hundred years and Venus might become a Paradise in five hundred.

On Venus

In Latin, it is necessary to know both the nominative and the genitive cases of a noun in order to know the root of the noun. Thus, the genitive of Mars is Martis so the root is Mart-, from which are derived the English adjectives, "martial" and "Martian."

The genitive of Jupiter is Jovis, hence "jovial" and "Jovian." The genitive of Venus is Veneris, hence "venerate," "venerable," "venereal" and, I argue "Venerian," not "Venusian." Wells, Stapledon and Lewis all write "Venerian." However, Poul Anderson writes "Venusian" so it is necessary to use this adjective when referring to his story, "The Big Rain," about the colonization of Venus.

In "The Big Rain," a Venusian city is a single metal and concrete unit, armored against a powerful, endless wind. Hundreds of large Hilsch tubes:

swivel to face the wind;
extract dust and sand for cement;
extract slow air molecules to refrigerate the city against Venusian heat;
extract fast molecules to help run pumps and generators.

There are:

nearly a thousand windmills;
many hectares of hydroponic plants providing oxygen and food;
chemical purifiers and blowers.

The twenty thousand city-dwellers comprise miners, engineers, laborers and technicians with three doctors, a few teachers, librarians, policemen and administrators and fifteen staff for brewing, distilling, tavern-running, movie-operation etc. The Technic Board, or city government, combining legislature, executive and judiciary, owns everything. Every Venusian city has a Board and a federal board in the city of New America decides planetary policy. Entry to the government requires rigid tests, years of apprenticeship, study of history, psychotechnics and physical science and gradual promotion on the recommendation of seniors. The boards comprise just two thousand people governing two million with the help of computers.

Colonists, sent to mine fissionables, included convicts, arbitrarily assigned personnel, the unemployed or those displaced by war. The Venusian colonies were made self-sufficient of necessity and have now declared their independence from Earth.