what to see on
venus

For a scenic browse, and an answer-page for Guess The World...

crash-landing on fecund venus

Beyond the sea was land; such land as none of them had ever seen before. It was a vegetable inferno. It boiled with forests; it seethed with jungle.

Jagged blue treetops beckoned.

Crackling with wild fire, the Alice Liddell plunged into the forest.

Trees, if trees they were, went down in swathes before her. Long tracts of woody sponge she gouged. Writhing groves of luminous spaghetti she sheared. Behind her, foul smoke went up, thickening the soupy air. 

Branches crazed the viewport, ripped scanners from the hull. Tabitha couldn't see anything any more. She screamed something, screamed along with her ship, which screamed as she hit.

She skidded and turned in the pulpy undergrowth, churning everything beneath her. Sap and ichor rained down on the dented hull. All around were outraged hoots and squeals of panic.

And then it was over.

Colin Greenland, Take Back Plenty (1990)

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living off the land on venus

...We moved on into the wood beneath the delicate foliage and among the strangely beautiful boles with their laquer-like bark of white and red and yellow and blue.

Presently we came in sight of a little river winding leisurely between its violet banks, and at the same instant I saw a small creature drinking.  It was about the size of a goat, but it didn't look like a goat.  Its sharply pointed ears were constantly moving, as though on the alert for the slightest sound of danger; its tufted tail switched nervously.  A collar of short horns encircled its neck just where it joined the head.  They pointed slightly forward.  There must have been a dozen of them...  That necklace of short horns would most certainly have discouraged any creature that was in the habit of swallowing its prey whole.

Very gently, I... crept forward, fitting an arrow to my bow.  As I was preparing to shoot, the creature threw up its head and turned half around.  Probably it had heard me.  I had been creeping on it from behind, but its change of position revealed its left side to me, and I planted my first arrow squarely in its heart.

So we made our camp beside the river and dined on juicy chops, delicious fruits, and the clear water from the little stream.  Our surroundings were idyllic.  Strange birds sang to us, arboreal quadrupeds swung through the trees jabbering melodiously in soft sing-song voices...

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lost on Venus (1935)

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manhunt on venus

...Forthwith he set off through the shadowy glades toward the plain, striding swiftly along and keeping watch more with his mind than with his eyes.  It was always possible to hear things lurking unseen.  They could not spy on him without radiating even their rudimentary thoughts.  Such as that pair of screech owls glowering in a dark hole two hundred feet up a tremendous tree trunk.

"Man-thing below!  Aaaargsh!"

At the fringe of trees came first evidence of the hunt.  He stood in the darkness close by a mighty bole while a copter floated over the green umbrella of top branches.  It was a big machine held up by four multi-bladed rotors and bearing a crew of ten.  Their minds could be counted as they tried to probe the maze beneath.

There were half a dozen telepaths listening, listening, eager to catch any stray mental impulse he might be careless enough to let go loose.  Also one insectivocal cuddling a cage of flying tiger-ants to be tipped over any likely spot indicated by a telepath...

Eric Frank Russell, Sentinels From Space (1951, 1953)

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electrical storm on venus

...They found him in a little clearing, and they stopped and looked at him and what he had discovered.

The rocket ship.

It was lying where they had left it.  Somehow they had circled back and were where they had started.  In the ruin of the ship green fungus was growing up out of the mouths of the two dead men.  As they watched, the fungus took flower, the petals broke away in the rain, and the fungus died.

"How did we do it?"

"An electrical story must be nearby.  Threw our compasses off.  That explains it."

"You're right."

"What'll we do now?"

"Start out again...  We've enough food for another two days if we're careful..."

And, as they stood, from a distance they heard a roar...

The monster was supported upon a thousand electric blue legs.  It walked swiftly and terribly.  It struck down a leg with a driving blow.  Everywhere a leg struck a tree fell and burned...  The monster was a half mile wide and a mile high and it felt of the ground like a great blind thing.  Sometimes, for a moment, it had no legs at all.  And then, in an instant, a thousand whips would fall out of its belly, white-blue whips, to sting the jungle.

"There's the electrical storm," said one of the men.  "There's the thing ruined our compasses.  And it's coming this way..."

Ray Bradbury, The Long Rain, in The Illustrated Man (1951)

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far-filtered rain on venus

...He looked up, but the foliage was impenetrable.  Standing there, gazing upward, he grew aware that the sound which had awakened him had stopped.

He shook his head in puzzlement and he was turning away when there was a whoosh above him.  A gush of water struck his head and poured over him.

The first gush was like a signal.  All around him, water rushed down.  He could hear the splashing in the shadows on every side, and twice more he was particularly engulfed.  Like a gigantic sprinkler system, the branches above were sending down torrents of water, and there was no longer any doubt what had happened.

It had rained.  Enormous leaves had taken the load in their ample, up-curved, green bosoms.  But now here, now there, the water was overweighing leaf after leaf and tumbling down into the depths, frequently into other leaves.  But always the process must have continued until some small portion of the great bulk of water actually reached the ground.  The rain must have been on a colossal scale.  He was lucky to be in a forest the leaves of which could almost support a river...

A E van Vogt, The World of Null-A (1948)

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modified terrans find their true home on venus

...The world lay stretched out as far as the eye could see.  And above.  The world was everywhere.

"My God," Frank said.  "It's not a fake."  Bending down, he snatched up a crawling snail-like insect.  "Not a robot - this is alive.  It's genuine!"

From the mist, Irma appeared.  Blood oozed over one eye; her hair was matted and tangled, her clothing was torn.  "We're home," she gasped, gripping a bulging armload of plant life she had gathered.  "Look at it - remember it?  And we can breathe.  We can live."

Off in the distance, great columns of steam rose up, geysers of boiling water forced through the rocks to the surface.  An immense ocean pounded somewhere, invisible in the drifting curtain of moisture.

"Listen," Frank said.  "You hear that?  You hear the water?"

They listened.  They heard.  They reached down and felt; they threw themselves on the ground, clutching frantically, faces pressed to the damp, warm soil.

"We're home," Irma wept.  All of them were crying and moaning, wailing in bewildered joy...

Philip K Dick, The World Jones Made (1956)

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prospecting on venus

...The sandwolves loped along at each side, moving in closer.  Overhead, a delta-winged kite found him.  It balanced on the updrafts for a day and a night, waiting for the wolves to finish him.  Then a flock of small flying scorpions sighted the waiting kite.  They drove the big creature upstairs into the cloud bank.  For a day the flying reptiles waited.  Then they in turn were driven off by a squadron of black kites.

The traces were very rich now, on the fifteenth day since he had left the sandcar.  By rights, he should be walking over goldenstone.  He should be surrounded by goldenstone.  But still he hadn't found any.

Morrison sat down and shook his last canteen.  It gave off no wet sound.  He uncapped it and turned it up over his mouth.  Two drops trickled down his parched throat...

Robert Sheckley, Prospector's Special (Galaxy, December 1959)

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going carefully on venus

..."We may be stalked," he told the boy.  "Don't forget to guard the rear."

The sand had given place to sticky whitish mud that plastered the men to their calves before a few moments had passed.  A patina of slickness seemed to overlay the ground.  The grass was coloured so much like the mud itself that it was practically invisible, except by its added slipperiness.  Scott slowly advanced keeping close to the wall of rock on his left where the tangle was not so thick.  Nevertheless he had to use his smatchet more than once to cut a passage through vines.

He stopped, raising his hand, and the squelch of Kane's feet in the mud paused.  Silently Scott pointed.  Ahead of them in the cliff base, was the mouth of a burrow.

The captain bent down, found a small stone, and threw it towards the den.  He waited, one hand lightly on his gun, ready to see something flash out of that burrow and race towards them.  In the utter silence a new sound made itself heard - tiny goblin drums, erratic and resonant...

"Lawrence O'Donnell" (Henry Kuttner and C L Moore), Clash By Night (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1943)

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a mobile carpet of venusian plant-life

..."You're sure it's quite safe?" asked Jerry, though it seemed almost a sacrilege to speak in the presence of such loveliness.

"Absolutely - it can't touch our suits even if it wants to.  Anyway, it's moving past us."

That was true.  They could see now that the entire creature - if it was a single plant, and not a colony - covered a roughly circular area about a hundred yards across.  It was sweeping over the ground, as the shadow of a cloud moves before the wind - and where it had rested, the rocks were pitted with innumerable tiny holes that might have been etched by acid.

"Yes," said Hutchins, when Jerry remarked about this.  "That's how some lichens feed; they secrete acids that dissolve rock.  But no question, please - not till we get back to the ship.  I've several lifetimes' work here, and a couple of hours to do it in."

This was botany on the run...  The sensitive edge of the huge plant-thing could move with surprising speed when it tried to evade them.  It was as if they were dealing with an animated flapjack, an acre in extent.  There was no reaction - apart from the automatic avoidance of their exhaust heat - when Hutchins snipped samples or took probes.  The creature flowed steadily onward over hills and valleys, guided by some strange vegetable instinct.  Perhaps it was following some vein of mineral; the geologists could decide that, when they analyzed the rock samples that Hutchins had collected both before and after the passage of the living tapestry...

Arthur C Clarke, Before Eden (Amazing Stories, June 1961)

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a unique venusian

...Another muffled boom followed.

"Here it comes," Elliott murmured.

The natives stepped back reverently, and the doors of the temple swung slowly outward.

The Dragonbird appeared.

Blayne's astonished gasp was so loud that Elliot looked around apprehensively.  "It's beautiful," the fat man exclaimed.  "More lovely than I'd ever dreamed."

"It is," said Elliott grimly.  He took the glasses from Blayne's trembling fingers and focused them on the island.

The Dragonbird was walking with dignity across the little square before the altar.  It stood almost the height of a man, half-bird, half-reptile, walking on powerful claws tipped with diamond-sharp, gleaming talons.  The brilliant sunlight glinted off its metallic feathers, played over its shining plumage, lent brightness to the shimmering row of scales that covered its long, swan-like neck...

Robert Silverberg, Lair of the Dragonbird (Imagination, December 1956)

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sighting land on venus

...The dawn came like a sifting of fire-opals through the layers of pearl-gray cloud.  Harker heard the yelling dimly in his sleep.  He felt dull and tired, and his eyelids stuck together.  The yelling gradually took shape and became the word "Land!" repeated over and over.  Harker kicked himself awake and got up.

The tideless sea glimmered with opaline colors under the mist.  Flocks of little jewel-scaled sea-dragons rose up from the ever-present floating islands of weed, and the weed itself, part of it, writhed and stretched with sentient life. 

Ahead there was a long low hummock of muddy ground fading into a tangled swamp.  Beyond it, rising sheer into the clouds, was a granite cliff, a sweeping escarpment that stood like a wall against the hopeful gaze of the exiles...

Leigh Brackett, The Vanishing Venusians (Planet Stories, Spring 1944)

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search for the last venusians

...We didn't find anything.  Nothing but a few big lizards that crashed off into the brush.  We didn't even find any tracks, though the rains could have washed those out.

I looked at him.  "Now what?"

"We'll look through the nearby hummocks, Wimer."

I didn't like this.  He acted as though we'd keep searching till we found something.  And I was dead sure now we wouldn't - I was sure now it was only lizards I'd glimpsed.

But we had to bump over to the next hummock, and look around in it.  It was late afternoon, Blaine dripping with sweat and me almost as bad.  Back at Base, the guys would be lounging around the barracks by now, and -

Blaine said, "Look here, Wimer."

He said it so flatly, I didn't realize what it was until I went over to him.  Then I saw.  It was a little shelter of dry fronds, a sort of wretched tumble-down hut, almost like an animal's den...

Edmond Hamilton, The Unforgiven (Startling Stories, October 1953)

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venusian rite of passage

...He could remember the great day of his testing.

When he shut his eyes, he seemed to kneel on the sloping riverbank again, a long spear shining in his clasp.

On both sides of him, a dozen native warriors crouched, armed with spears five times the height of their squat blue bodies.  Directly behind him stood a silent group of five, his "pledge wraiths".  It was a tribal tradition among the gnomelike folk that every great warrior had to have "pledge wraiths" who would stand behind him in the hour of his testing.

A bubbling, a churning far out in the muddy brown river, and his five little sponsors leaped up and down.  As he stared at the uneasy current it broke into white froth, and there arose from the winding water-course a shape that whitened his lips and drove the blood from his heart...

Frank Belknap Long, The Shadow Dwellers (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Summer 1945)

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steamy venus

...The plateau on which we had landed was far up in a range which we named the Purple Mountains because they were covered from base to summit with enormous two-foot lichens of a rich Tyrian hue.  There were similarly covered areas in the plateau, where the soil was too thin for the sustenance of more elaborate plant-forms.  Here, among the multitudinous geysers, and the horned, fantastic peaks that were intermittently visible through a steam-charged atmosphere, we had established ourselves in a lichen-field.  Even here we had to wear our refrigerating suits and carry oxygen whenever we stepped out of the ether-ship; for otherwise the heat would have parboiled us in a few minutes, and the ultra-terrestrial gases in the air would have speedily overpowered us.  It was a weird business, putting the coaster together under such circumstances.  With out huge inflated suits and masks of green vitrolium, we must have looked like a crew of demons toiling in the fumes of Gehenna...

Clark Ashton Smith, The Immeasurable Horror (Weird Tales, September 1931)

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venusian floating islands

...He rose and got a second shower from a bubble tree.  This made him feel so fresh and alert that he began to think of food.  He had forgotten whereabouts on the island the yellow gourds were to be found, and as he set out to look for them he discovered that it was difficult to walk.  For a moment he wondered whether the liquid in the bubbles had some intoxicating quality, but a glance around assured him of the real reason.  The plain of copper-coloured heather before him, even as he watched, swelled into a low hill and the low hill moved in his direction.  Spellbound anew at the sight of land rolling towards him, like water, in a wave, he forgot to adjust himself to the movement and lost his feet.  Picking himself up, he proceeded more carefully.  This time there was no doubt about it.  The sea was rising...

C S Lewis, Perelandra (1944)

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venusian titanosaurs

...It was hard to estimate just where the tree trunk legs were going to come down, and close up, the walking walls of flesh gave you a vertiginous sense that they were always toppling over on you.  The sound of their footfalls filled the world, like rumbling thunder on a hot summer day or batteries of heavy artillery...

Taldi threw himself aside with a yell as a foot with hundreds of tons of weight behind it slammed down not four feet from him.  That and the miniature earthquake tossed him off his feet and onto his shoulders and neck; half-stunned, he doggedly began to gather the scattered arrows that had spilled from his quiver and snatch up the leather sack of torches.  The next time the rear foot came down it would be on top of him...

rainy swampy fecund venus

...It was raining when they set out the next day, warm rain that came down in sudden, smothering deluges that lasted a few minutes before easing off, only to deliver another barrage ten or fifteen minutes later. Within a few hours, they were in the swamp proper, and finding a way with ground solid enough and water not too deep for the lizard became a full-time task for Vinnie, even with the tall bronze way markers that had been hammered deep into the ground to show the path to the Lepers’ territory.

    Only a few kilometers into the Swamp, the treelike green caps gave way to a profusion of clusters of smaller fungi, in many different colors, some of them mobile. There were also rabbit-sized lizard-things, and insectoid critters that swam and jumped and chattered, and early on the afternoon of the first day, something shadowy and huge loomed ahead in the fog. Vinnie backed the lizard off and all three of them readied their heat-beams before it continued on its way…

Garth Nix, By Frogsled and Lizardback to Outcast Venusian Lepers (ed. Martin and Dozois, Old Venus (2015))

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scaly besiegers on venus

Behind the battlements and bastions atop the city’s walls crouched the Golden Amazons of the garrison, loosing their storms of arrows at the swarming besiegers below them.  Other tawny-skinned crews worked the alta-ray tubes that belched blasts of blue flame at regular intervals.  Wherever the blue beams struck, the ground was blackened while the twisted and charred shapes of Scaly Ones writhed in brief agony.  The myriad brazen trumpets of Larr sounded hasty rallying calls, or else tossed staccato signals from one part of the defences to another.

The hordes of Lansa had invested the city on three sides, the marsh-land on the far border of the city protecting that side from direct assault.  Groups of Scaly Ones took shelter behind tree trunks and mounds of earth and any other possible cover, firing their gas-guns up at the battlements in an effort to lessen the arrow fire.  Others crept forward behind movable metal shields.  Heavy-caliber gas-guns inched slowly forward behind wooden mantlets that bristled with arrows, and hurled their larger explosive bullets up at the walls.  Wherever they struck there was a puff of yellow dust and a scarred place on the stones.  Reptilian trumpets beat with a staccato thunder as Lansa kept in touch with his various divisions.  Not all the advantage was with the besiegers, however.  Even as Gerry watched, a blue heat-ray struck full on one of the big gas-guns and blew it up with a shattering crash.

John Murray Reynolds, The Golden Amazons of Venus (Planet Stories, Winter 1939)

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marine venusian giants

He made himself breathe slowly and evenly, counting.  One, two.  In, out.  The weed waved with gentle grace along the edges of the light.  His body waved too, giving itself to the massive rhythm of the sea.  One, two.  In, out.  And nothing came, nothing showed itself.

Then he saw them.

There were two of them.  There must have been a third one with the light, unless it was resting on a ledge of rock, but two were all that Kerrick saw.  They swam toward him through the brilliant water, their bodies all shining gold.  They were man-shaped except that their hands and feet were modified for swimming, and except that they must have been fully nine feet tall, slender, sleek, and terribly strong.  They were obviously air-breathers, and warm-blooded.  They looked at Kerrick with great black luminous eyes, full of a quick but quite alien intelligence, and Kerrick shuddered a little where he stood, as though something cold had brushed across him...

Edmond Hamilton, Men of the Morning Star (Imaginative Tales, March 1958)

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placid, enigmatic venusians

...The day that it all happened, he and Terza were outside the dome.  They had been pushing loudies around.

Loudies were not dangerous unless you killed them.  You could knock them down, push them out of the way, or tie them up; after a while, they slipped away and went about their business.  It took a very special kind of ecologist to figure out what their business was.  They floated two meters high, ninety centimeters in diameter, gently just above the land of Venus, eating microscopically.  For a long time, people thought there was radiation on which they subsisted.  They simply multiplied in tremendous numbers.  In a silly sort of way, it was fun to push them around, but that was about all there was to do.

They never responded with intelligence.

Once, long before, a loudie taken into the laboratory for experimental purposes had typed a perfectly clear message on the typewriter.  The message had read, "Why don't you Earth people go back to Earth and leave us alone?  We are getting on all - "

And that was all the message that anybody had ever got out of them in three hundred years.  The best conclusion was that they had very high intelligence if they ever chose to use it, but that their volitional mechanism was so profoundly different from the psychology of human beings that it was impossible to force a loudie to respond to stress as people did on Earth.

The name loudie was some kind of word in the old Chinesian language.  It meant the "ancient ones"...

Cordwainer Smith, When the People Fell (Galaxy, April 1959)

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a living venusian atmosphere

Without warning the darkness flickered into grey twilight.  He struggled to reach the observation window so that he could see the Citadel colony from the air, but it was already too late; the gyrojet was immersed in the impenetrable bacterial cloud mass - but only for a few minutes.  They emerged into intense blazing sunshine reflecting with almost incandescent violence from the cloud surface - an immense field of dazzling white snow receding on all sides to the horizon.

It was impossible to estimate speed, for there were no landmarks on which the eye could fix.  All he could see was the slender dart-shaped shadow of the plane apparently motionless on the clouds - now far below - like some hovering insect, or a black-ink stain.  The pilot was evidently navigating by instruments, or flying on a radar beam; indeed, Macklin could see no other way in which point-to-point air transport would be possible over terrain permanently obscured by dense living fog...

Charles Eric Maine, Timeliner (1955)

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dragonville on venus

Don climbed aboard and settled himself just abaft the last pair of eyestalks; they turned around and surveyed him.  He found that Sir Isaac had thoughtfully had two rings riveted to his neck plates to let him hold on.  "All set?"

"Yes, indeed."

The dragon reared himself up again and they set out, with Don feeling like Toomai-of-the-Elephants.

They went up a crowded dragon path so old that it was impossible to tell whether it was an engineering feat or a natural conformation.  The path paralleled the shore for a mile or so; they passed dragons at work in their watery fields, then the path swung inland.  Shortly, in the dry uplands, his party turned out of the traffic into a tunnel.  This was definitely art, not nature; it was one of the sort the floor of which slides quietly and rapidly away in the direction one walks (provided the walker is a dragon or weighs as much as a dragon); their ambling gait was multiplied by a considerable factor.  Don could not judge the true speed nor the distance covered.

They came at last out into a great hall, large even for dragons; the flowing floor merged into the floor of the hall imperceptibly and stopped...

Robert A Heinlein, Between Planets (1951)

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matriarchal amphibians on venus

The mother-of-many had Thurlow carried up to the dais on which she sat.  Several of the little folk gathered round him and examined him, speaking to each other in high, lisping whispers.  Presently the matriarch herself joined the consultation, then spoke again, "Thy mother sleeps."

"It is a sickly sleep.  'Her' head was injured by a blow."  Oscar joined the group and showed them the lump on the back of Thurlow's head.  They compared it with Oscar's own head, running gentle, inquisitive little hands through his blond hair.  There was more lisping chatter; Matt found himself unable to follow even what he could hear; most of the words were strange.

"My learned sisters tell me that they dare not take thy mother's head apart for fear that they could not get it back together," announced the mother-of-many.

"Well, that's a relief!" Tex said out of the corner of his mouth.

"Old Oz wouldn't let them anyhow," Matt whispered.

The leader gave instructions and four of her "daughters" picked up the unconscious officer and started carrying him out of the room.  Tex called out, "Hey, Oz - do you think that's safe?"

"It's all right," Oscar called back, then explained to the matriarch, "My 'sister' feared for the safety of our 'mother'."

The creature made a gesture that reminded Matt suddenly of his great-aunt Dora - she positively sniffed.  "Tell her that her nose need not twitch!"

Robert A Heinlein, Space Cadet (1948)

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a future, open-skied venus

Greaves walked to the window in the chamber's far wall and looked down.  But it was dark below; nothing to mark the outlines of a city as cities had been in the time he remembered.  The temple apparently stood atop a high hill, with the city in a great valley at its foot, but again all Greaves could see were three glowing mountaintops across the way, and, beyond them, the night sky.

Then suddenly one of the volcanoes flared for an instant, and the few overhead clouds reflected redly down into the valley.

Greaves caught his breath.  The city had emerged black and immense, extending for miles, its lightless towers like the spine-bones of a beast half-eaten and rotting in a tidal pool.  Then the light was gone and once again there was nothing visible down there - if the undead beast had chosen to bestir itself and stealthily move on some errand of the night, no one standing here could have known until it was too late.

"So that's the city of the Shadows," Greaves said.

"The city that was once the First City of Man," Vigil said bitterly.  "That Mayron has made into an outpost of Hell..."

Algis Budrys, Die, Shadow! (Worlds of If, May 1963)

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on guard against the chameleon folk of venus

...I recalled Poincaré's advice: "Always keep your guard up."  So I did.  And my mental arm began to weary.

When all the guests had gone at last, I beckoned Benny into his private office, locked the door and searched the room.  Thoroughly.  There couldn't have been a Vester there or I should have walked into him at least twice.

Benny watched, puzzled.  He was even more puzzled when I whispered: "Do you still keep up that do-it-yourself fad?"

He nodded.

"Then lend me your paint spray-gun - loaded."

"Why, for pete's sake?"

"There are Vesters at the bottom of my garden," I said.

We stalked them together, for nearly an hour.

Upon every shadow which seemed to move, every patch of room or passageway which didn't look quite right somehow, every object which Benny suspected may [sic] have shifted a trifle from its original position - we bestowed a squirt of bright red paint.  My idea.  If we hit a Vester, we should nullify an area of his working skin surface.  Then, when he moved, he would be detectable.

If we hit a Vester...

Benny suddenly reached the end of his tether.

"Stop it, Dave, this is ridiculous.  Hell, what a mess we've made!  It looks like a slaughterhouse.  How am I going to live with this?"

"It's preferable to having Vesters about the place."

"There aren't any Vesters.  There can't be.  Stat/Suda's making a fool of you and you're making a fool of me.  It's all part of their game.  It's how they drive all of our agents nuts in the end."

"Could be that the Vester who was here left with him," I said, stubbornly...

William F Temple, Coco-Talk (1966) in New Writings in SF-7 ed. John Carnell

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intelligent lizard-bird on venus

…The pterodactyl landed lightly on a frond of the opposite fern.  Its absurd, leathery forehead wrinkled at him.  Graff noted that it was barely out of range of his electroblast.  Intelligent, sure enough, and an unusually fearless specimen to perch this close to man.

At any other time he would have been intrigued by the opportunity of making friends with one of the intelligent winged reptiles who had learned to speak man’s languages and, with good reason, shun his works.  Now, he had other things on his mind. 

Like dying painfully in a few hours.

Graff looked up sharply as enormous batlike wings ceased their rustle.

The lizard-bird’s long, sloping forehead wrinkled even further.  Its beak opened and closed several times.  It cleared its throat.

“City?”

Then it was civilized too.  What had induced it to leave its communal eyrie in the San Mountains? 

William Tenn, Ricardo's Virus (Planet Stories, March 1953)

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the cold heights of venus

…The mountains were cold.  Moisture collected on the peaks that were eternally buried in the cloud formations, trickled down the bare, rocky slopes to form rampaging torrents in the deep-cut gorges.  Eventually those swelling rivers poured out into the stinking swamps of the lowlands and finally into the huge, dark, sullen seas.

Rock slides were common.  Huge segments of the mountains, weakened by cold and the unending drip of the water, cut their way with unstoppable force into the valleys.  They formed lakes behind them until, eventually, they were washed away again.

The space ship lay half way up a peak, its nose crumpled against the side of the mountain.  On either side the ground sloped off and the attackers had difficulty in approaching the ship without being picked off.  They didn’t seem to mind the danger.  They tried a rush now and then, and when that failed against the spitting flame from the gun-ports of the wrecked ship they retired to a safer position to wait.  They were patient. 

They were huge, hairy men, six and a half to seven feet tall, with flat, lean bellies and flanks swelling to heavily muscled barrel chests and shoulders a yard across.  One had to hit them in the head or the heart to stop them…

Edwin James, The Slaves of Venus (Planet Stories, September 1952)

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vengeance a-brewing in the swamps of venus

…Her eyes blazed more brightly like evil jewels into his, piercing the closed lids with invisible beams of malignant and gloating resolve.  Her voice was very soft.

“You do not sleep well, do you, Owen Baarslag?  Every terrible thing you have done to my people here in the swamps – the torture, the slavery, the subjection and the terror – it haunts your dreams.  Your blighted conscience crawls, doesn’t it, Owen?”

The sleeping man didn’t answer.  He was deep, deep down in the dark fastnesses of his nightmare, trying to escape, trying to awake.

Outside the synthetic shell of the hut, in the fetid heart of the Venusian swamp sector 5, a serpent hissed as it raised its pointed head from the slime and sank back again.  A gigantic flying Gruoon gurgled overhead as it fell on its prey and flapped upward into the thick mist.  Beyond these more abrupt sounds was the unceasing dreeing of millions of insects and the loud croaking of the bloated albino tree-toads that sagged heavily from the five-hundred foot crinoids…

Bryce Walton, The Green Dream (Planet Stories, Winter 1949)

>>  Guess The World - Open

insecure hedonist culture on venus

…as we threaded our way under the gay colored lights across the arcade to the main island, I somehow seemed to feel the undercurrent of menace here.  Occasionally we passed little figures who were evidently onlookers.  The imbecile workers, lower class who were almost in the position of slaves.  They were weird creatures, most of them no more than four feet tall, grey-skinned and powerfully built.  We passed one who was standing on the shore gazing at a raft where a lone girl shrouded in blue-white filmy drapery was being pelted with flowers.  The gnome-like imbecile stood impassive, gazing with vacant face.  Then he was muttering to himself.  A fragment of it reached us.

“Togliamo is coming to help us workers.  We won’t have to work tomorrow.  Then we can do things like this.”

I gripped Nereid.  “You hear what that worker said?  No work for him tomorrow.  Do you suppose - ?”

She tried to smile.  “What an imbecile says never means much…”

Ray Cummings, The War-Nymphs of Venus (Planet Stories, Spring 1941)

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centaurpedes of venus encroaching on land

MacAloon jerked his lizard’s reins around in the direction of the mine.  Al’s mount came alongside.  The fishman groaned, then began trotting before them on swift webbed feet.  They splashed over the eternal mud, through the ever-present white fog. 

Should they give up the fight against the shrewd, heartbreakingly persistent vermin?  If they did, they would have to abandon the mine which had become their life-work.  They would have to blow up the place before retreating.

For all life on Venus was amphibious, but centaurpedes were deliberately trying to quit the water, knowing their semi-civilization could reach its mechanistic goal only on land. 

Unable to prop the porous native rock with the brittle, primitive plastics they used instead of metals, they were striving to take over an iron mine that had already been started by human engineers.  Then, with the metal they could produce, they would make tools and raise cities… and manufacture weapons with which to push men clear off the planet.

Richard Storey, Menace of the Mists (Planet Stories, May 1943)

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robots' vigil on venus

…The white towers of the city pointed at the graying sky like skeleton fingers rising from the dead hands of the buildings. Where smaller houses on the outskirts of the city had nestled there were creeping greeneries and exotic plants. Where great canals had channeled across the land bearing water to all the outposts of the Terrestrial colony there were only the white arms of broken concrete, broken and scarred and crumbled where the trees had pushed themselves up with a great straining and a great heaving, to break through and gasp and rear upwards towards the sky in exhilaration.

The city was a dead city, turning its sightless, ancient eyes to gaze at the creeping bushes and grasses that swarmed over its limbs. And the rains that swept Venus washed its bones and the winds of Venus picked them clean through the long years.

This silent and misty afternoon there was not a movement to be seen throughout the whole city, but on the outskirts, from a small and crumbled building, came a plume of smoke, rising and curling steadily upwards from a tall chimney.

Within the building the two sat at the table as they always sat at this time of the day, watching the fire burning in the ancient grate as they had done through the centuries…

Bryan Berry, The Final Venusian (Planet Stories, January 1953)

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prismatic peaks on venus

We were in the heart of the Crystal Mountains! They towered round us on every side, and stretched away in interminable ranges of shining pinnacles. Such shapes! Such colors! Such flashing and blazing of gigantic rainbows and prisms! There were mountains that looked to my amazed eyes as lofty as Mont Blanc, and as massive, every solid mile of which was composed of crystalline ice, refracting and reflecting the sunbeams with iridescent splendor. For now we could begin to see a part of the orb of the sun itself, prodigious in size, and poised on the edge of the gem-glittering horizon, where the jeweled summits split its beams into a thousand haloes.

There was one mighty peak, still ahead of us, but toward which we were rushed sidewise by the wind, which surpassed all the others in marvelousness. It towered majestically above our level—a superb, stupendous, coruscating Alp of Light! On every side it darted blinding rays of a hundred splendid hues, as if a worldful of emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds had been heaped together in one gigantic pile and transfused with a sunburst.

Garrett P Serviss, A Columbus of Space (serial in All-Story Magazine, 1909)

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danger from a dart-bush on venus

Tom Corbett, Space Cadet (September 1954), drawn by Ray Bailey

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using a machete on an insect on venus

  Hans stopped suddenly. 

“Dragonfly. Hear it?” Charlie listened, heard the high, motor-like hum he had heard the night before. “There it is,” Hans said quickly. “Hang onto Nixie and be ready to beat it off. I’m going to attract its attention.” 

 Charlie felt that attracting its attention was in a class with teasing a rattlesnake, but it was too late to object; Hans was waving his arms. 

 The fly hesitated, veered, headed straight for him. Charlie felt a moment of dreadful anticipation—then saw Hans take one swipe with his machete. The humming stopped; the thing fluttered to the ground. 

 Hans was grinning. The dragonfly jerked in reflex, but it was dead, the head neatly chopped off. “Didn’t waste a bit,” Hans said proudly. 

 “Huh?” 

 “That’s lunch. Cut some of that oil weed behind you.” Hans squatted down. In three quick slices he cut off the stinger and the wings; what was left was the size of a medium lobster. Using the chrome-sharp machete as delicately as a surgeon’s knife, he split the underside of the exoskeleton, gently and neatly stripped out the gut. He started to throw it away, then paused and stared at it thoughtfully.

 Charlie had been watching in queasy fascination. “Trouble?” 

 “Egg sac is full. They’re going to-swarm.” 

 “That’s bad, isn’t it?” 

 “Some. They swarm every three, four years.” Hans’ hesitated. “We’d better skip seeing my land. Got to tell Paw, so they’ll keep the kids in.” 

 “Okay, let’s get started.”  

Robert A Heinlein, Tenderfoot in Space (Boys' Life, May-July 1958)

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sunrise on venus

The gorgeous display of a Venerian dawn was already coloring the east as the great buildings seemed to rise silently about them. The sky, which had been a dull luminous gray, a gray that rapidly grew brighter and brighter, was now like molten silver, through which were filtering the early rays of the intense sun. As the sun rose above the horizon, though invisible for clouds, it still was traceable by the wondrous shell pink that began to suffuse the ten mile layer of vapor. The tiny droplets were, however, breaking the clear light into a million rainbows, and all about the swiftly deepening pink were forming concentric circles of blue, of green, orange, and all the colors of the rainbow, repeated time after time—a wondrous halo of glowing color, which only the doubly intense sun could create.

“It's almost worth missing the sun all day to see their sunrises and sunsets,” Fuller commented. The men were watching it, despite their need for haste. It was a sight the like of which no Earthman had ever before seen.

John W Campbell, Solarite (Amazing Stories, November 1930)

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Note from contributor Lone Wolf:  This is a little short, but it's almost all there is from his description of Venus in the whole story. Campbell's style is as vague and lacking details as usual, but this idea about a rainbow sunrise because of the cloud envelope is indeed original. I also noticed, that the version from the magazine and the later publication as part of a book featuring the same three characters, which I found on the site of The Project Gutenberg are slightly different, although I didn't have time to compare them in details. But for one thing, in the latter is missing one interesting part, where is described the Venerian duodecimal numeration. This is interesting, because in the novels of Ralph Milne Farley the Venusians use duodecimal system too. But from the other hand I've come across several stories in which Martians are described using a duodecimal system (the oldest was Percy Greg's novel from 1880). Thus I cannot decide whether the duodecimal mathematics should be considered as more characteristic of the fictional cultures of Old Mars or Old Venus... 

twilit snow on venus

 He followed his radiocompass, moving easily through a thin layer of snow. Very little of the landscape around him was visible. It was hidden in the gray twilight of Venus. Underfoot were thin, springy plants, sparsely scattered through the snow. They were the only living things in sight.

He adjusted the radio in his suit, hoping that someone would broadcast the major league baseball scores. But all he got was the end of a weather broadcast from Mars.

Snow began to fall again. It was cold; the dial on his wrist showed it, because no chilled air could creep through his suit. And although Venus had an oxygen atmosphere, he didn’t have to breathe it. A plastic helmet sealed him into a tiny, man-made world of his own. Within it, he couldn’t even feel the cold, stiff wind which pushed steadily against him.

As he walked, the snow became deeper. He glanced back. His ship was completely hidden in the gray twilight, and progress was becoming more difficult.

"If they put down a colony here,’ he said to himself, "they sure won’t get me to homestead on it!”

Robert Sheckley, Earth, Air, Fire and Water (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1955)

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Comment from contributor Lone Wolf:

I finally found this story! I've been searching for it for several years already (it seems they have fixed the Internet Archive page for the pulp magazines and now it can display them by year and issue, while before they were shown randomly and it was a matter of chance to fine the issue one needs). I've read it only in translation back in the 80s and I've always wondered why Venus is described as a snow world - was this a mistake of the author or if he needed such a planet for his story, why choose Venus, which always has been envisioned as a hot world? Maybe the idea was that the cloud layer instead of producing hothouse effect reflects most of the sunlight and thus the planet is experiencing an ice age, but no explanation actually is given... It may be not very interesting description of the planet (as it's said in the story: "there were no real dangers on Venus, no men, no beasts, no poisonous plants"), but it's curious as being highly atypical - I don't remember reading any other story in which Venus is portrayed as a snow world, it just somehow doesn't feels like Venus...

contrasting views of venus

From low-hanging clouds, fell eternal misty rain; squat, rubbery vegetation with its dull, reddish-brown colour stretched away in all directions. Now and then a Hop-scotch Bird fluttered wildly above them, emitting plaintive squawks as it went. 

 Karl turned his head to gaze at the tiny dome of Aphrodopolis, largest city on Venus.

 “God,” he muttered, “even the dome is better than this awful world out here.” He pulled the rubberized fabric of his coat closer about him. “I’ll be glad to get back to Earth again.”

 He turned to the slight figure of Antil, the Venusian, “When are we coming to the ruins, Antil?”

 There was no answer and Karl noticed the tear that rolled down the Venusian’s green, puckered cheeks. Another glistened in the large, lemur-like eyes; soft, incredibly beautiful eyes.

 The Earthman’s voice softened. “Sorry, Antil, I didn’t mean to say anything against Venus.”

 Antil turned his green face toward Karl, “It was not that, my friend. Naturally, you would not find much to admire in an alien world. I, however, love Venus, and I weep because I am overcome with its beauty.” The words came fluently but with the inevitable distortion caused by vocal cords unfitted for harsh-languages.

“I know its seems incomprehensible to you,” Antil continued, “but to me Venus is a paradise, a golden land-I cannot express my feelings for it properly.”

 “Yet there are some that say only Earthmen can love.” Karl’s sympathy was strong and sincere.

 The Venusian shook his head sadly. “There is much besides the capacity to feel emotion that your people deny us.”

 Karl changed the subject hurriedly. ‘Tell me, Antil, doesn’t Venus present a dull aspect even to you? You’ve been to Earth and should know. How can this eternity of brown and grey compare to the living, warm colours of Earth?”

 “It is far more beautiful to me. You forget that my colour sense is so enormously different from yours. How can I explain the beauties, the wealth of colour in which this landscape abounds?” He fell silent, lost in the wonders he spoke of, while to the Terrestrial the deadly, melancholy grey remained unchanged... 

Isaac Asimov, The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use (Amazing Stories, May 1939)

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Note from Lone Wolf regarding the early Asimov:   I was quite surprised to find that in his early years he has written several stories of the classic OSS type (his later Lucky Starr series is more borderline RSS, although possibly inspired by Captain Future, with which it shares many common features).  

Note from Zendexor:  This Venusian scene certainly seems uncharacteristic of Asimov - and interestingly so, in my view.  I'd say that to an even greater extent than in most good writers, the underneath of his mind was larger and greater than the surface. 

spongy touch-down on venus

...they must depend entirely on instruments to help them.  In more ways than one this would indeed be a blind landing.

Six miles to go.  If there were any mountain peaks like Everest the rocket might well smash itself against one.  Every second the crew awaited the sickening jar that would spell disaster.

Four miles.  Three.  The tension was unbearable, but still they stuck grimly to their posts.

“Watch out,” shouted Serge.  “It will be any second now.”

Without knowing it the crew were holding their breaths.  Suddenly they all let them out with a gasp.  Phoenix had touched something solid…

…”We’ve landed,” Morrey said weakly.

The rocket had been scarcely jarred as it came into contact with the planet.  No matter how carefully a ship is handled on making a terrestrial or a lunar landing, there is always a slight impact with the solid surface. None of the crew had felt anything.  It was as if they had touched down inside a bowl of cotton-wool…

Hugh Walters, Expedition Venus (1962)

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a sea-monster surfaces on venus

Heath flung himself against the sweep and stopped it.

“Be quiet,” he said.  “Look.  Out there.”

They followed his gesture.  Far away over the port bow, flowing toward them, was a ripple in the weed.  A ripple as though the very bed of the Upper Seas was in motion.

“What is it?” whispered Alor, and saw Heath’s face, and was silent.

Sluggishly, yet with frightening speed, the ripple came toward them.  Heath got a harpoon out of the stern locker.  He watched the motion of the weed, saw it gradually slow and stop in a puzzled way.  Then he threw the harpoon as far away from the ship as he could with all his strength and more.

The ripple began again.  It swerved and sped toward where the harpoon had fallen.

“They’ll attack anything that moves,” said Heath.  “It lost us because we stopped.  Watch.”

The weed heaved and burst open, its meshes snapping across a scaled and titanic back.  There seemed to be no shape to the creature, no distinguishable head.  It was simply a vast and hungry blackness that spread upward and outward…

Leigh Brackett, The Moon That Vanished (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1948)

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caged on venus

…I was taken to an open square or plaza in a poor part of the city and locked in a cage.  There were a number of these cages, but only one other had an occupant.  He was a human being like myself, and his cage was next to mine.  We were not exactly on exhibit; but the plaza was not enclosed, and many Brokols came and gawped at us.  Some of them poked us with sticks, and others threw stones at us.  For the most part, however, they just looked and commented – a word or a short phrase.  They were not given to loquacity.

One of them looked at me and said to his companion, “What is it?”

The other just shook his head.

“Yellow hair,” said the first.

“Gray eyes,” said the second.

They were running on terribly, for Brokols.

“You talk too much,” the man in the next cage yelled at them.

One of them threw a rock at him, and then they both walked away.

“They hate to have anyone say they talk too much,” confided my neighbor.

I nodded.  I was suddenly sick at heart, as though I felt a premonition of tragedy…

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lost on Venus (1946)

>>  Guess The World - Fourth Series

Comment from Zendexor:  This one is from the fourth and last book in the Amtor series, and is more a fix-up of four novelettes than a unified novel.  The 4-novelette format was a successful feature of the last phase of ERB's writing career, exemplified by Lost on Venus,  Llana of Gathol and Savage Pellucidar.  If only he had completed the Jovian one...

green-blooded natives of venus

Presently the compound loomed mysteriously from the grey opaqueness, taking shape as a simple corral of electrically-charged wires in the form of a rough square. In it, sitting or standing motionless and silent, were ten of the strangest of all creatures to be found on any of the known planets of the universe.

These were the chloro-men of Venus.

Through some unfathomable quirk of nature, this nearly extinct species represented a curious link between plant and animal worlds. Averaging about five feet in height, they were only semi-vertebrate in structure, having tough cables of cartilage supporting their bodies instead of bones. Their skin was a porous, bark-like substance, at once flexible and unbelievably tough. About seventy per cent of their “blood stream” was a compound almost identical with chlorophyl, the element which enables plants to absorb the energy of the sunlight and use it for conversion of carbon dioxide into starches and proteins.

The presence of this chlorophyl in their veins gave the chloro-men a greenish tinge—hence the colloquial reference to them as “greenies.” They had eyes and rudimentary ears, but neither mouth nor nose, since they ate and breathed like plants, through, their “skin.”

For locomotion, they depended on a sort of flowing pseudopodal motion of the under parts; though they had arms, there were no true legs. They moved but seldom, and always slowly.

Since the upkeep of these strange creatures was almost nothing, only CO₂ and a few minerals being necessary, and as they were very enduring and could work for great lengths of time without fatigue, they were highly prized by wealthy Tellurian and Martian landowners as slaves. But laws had been passed, forbidding capture or sale of the chloro-men.

They were declared contraband, and violators of the anti-slavery laws were liable to severe punishment. However, once on Earth, the excessive sunlight so stepped up the metabolism of the greenies that their normal life span of two or three hundred years was radically shortened. So the demand exceeded the supply, and the price went up, and smugglers with daring and cunning made fortunes by slipping through the blockade with their illegal cargo.

“Poor devils,” said Frampton bitterly, as the two men looked over the shipment. Their soft eyes staring appealingly in bewilderment always stirred the young man’s pity. “This is a rotten business, Old-timer.”

SLINKING around the outskirts of the clearing were half a dozen of the scaly man-things native to the planet, awaiting their payment with candy and cheap, loud-ticking clocks and gewgaws. They represented the only source of supply for the slavers; an Earthman would hardly know where to look for the curious chloro-men, and the terrific climate wouldn’t allow him penetrate the unexplored wilderness very far... 

Arthur K Barnes, Green Hell (Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1937)

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Comment from contributor Lone Wolf:
This seems to be the first story set in the shared OSS universe of Arthur K. Barnes and Henry Kuttner, but neither of the two principal protagonists of their stories - Gerry Carlyle and Tony Quade - appears in it. That's why it is not included in the Interplanetary Huntress anthology, just as Kuttner's stories featuring Tony Quade alone are likewise left out. I personally would prefer an anthology that includes all the stories set in the same universe, regardless of their themes or literary quality, so that once could fully appreciate the world-building with all its elements.

herds of insects grazing on venus

The web had been stretched between two large gray leafless trees of the sort I had observed near the beach, but without the red tips to the branches. Nearby was a wood of similar but slightly smaller trees, bordering on a field of thickly matted silver-green grass, very similar in color. In this field were grazing a herd of pale green insects a little larger than sheep, with long trailing antennae.

These creatures swayed from side to side, lifting first one foot after another as they munched the matted grass. On the sides of some of them clung one or more bright red parasites, resembling lobsters in size and appearance; but their green hosts did not seem to mind or even notice them. Nor did they notice me, for that matter, as I passed between them across the field.

On the further side of the field was a road, built of concrete, resembling in every way such concrete roads as we have on the earth; and along it I set out, whither I knew not.

[...]  For a while the road ran between silver-green fields; then entered a wood. On the gaunt gray trees hung a tangle of tropical vines, and between the trees grew some kind of small shrub with large heart-shaped leaves, on each leaf of which there sat motionless one or more purple grasshoppers about four inches in length.

In the distance I occasionally caught sight of some strange sort of bird—as I thought—flitting in tandem pairs from tree to tree. A multitude of tiny lizards, resembling miniature kangaroos, hopped about on the concrete and by the side of the road...

Ralph Milne Farley, An Earthman on Venus (originally The Radio Man,
Argosy All-Story Weekly, 28 June - 19 July 1924)

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Comment from contributor Lone Wolf:
The Radio Man" was the first of a series of novels by the same author about the adventures of Myles Cabot, who teleports to Venus by radio. One original idea is that the Venusians (both humans and intelligent ants) don't have hearing and communicate by radio-waves. Otherwise it's a stereotypical planetary romance after the fashion of E. R. Burroughs like many other imitations from that time.

fungus forest on venus

As they went on, the fog seemed to darken ahead of them. Chris spied a coppery gleam high overhead—the dripping, horizontal wires of the Curtain that encircled the Compound. Then he was at the edge of the jungle.

The Terrestrians call it that out of habit, but the gweelen is no such jungle as was ever seen on Earth. There were no trees, no looping vines, no rustling leaves. Immense fungi towered fifty, seventy-five, a hundred feet into the steaming air, trunks and thick branches grotesquely contorted. Instead of foliage there were the fringed umbrellas of monstrous toadstools; instead of underbrush, coiled, pallid stems and crumpled clumps of membranous stuff resembling diseased seaweed.

The colors of the gweelen were orange and purple, a sickly white and the gray-yellow of corruption, but never green. And in the gweelen a thick silence brooded always, relieved only by the eternal drip of moisture from its dark roof.

Gree appeared out of the haze. A cord of twisted banta now suspended from his neck—a two-foot, hollow cylinder out of the open top of which protruded the gum-blackened sharp points of a half-dozen throw-sticks. He handed a second, similar quiver to Toom, and then they were on the move again.

The Earthman could not make out how the natives knew which way Fran had gone. Not that the kid was an expert woodsman or had taken pains to conceal his route. It was the gweelen itself that had obliterated the traces of his passage. The stump of a branch Chris broke off in passing was sending out a new tentacle almost before the fragment reached the ground; a spore-ball burst and its spill of black dust turned scarlet at once with cilia of new growth to blot out his footmarks.

The light faded to a lurid semi-darkness. The Weenies went swiftly and Chris could only follow them. There was no sound save the soft thud of his own boots and the incessant patter of rain, and the three from the Station were the only sentient beings in this obscurity.

Arthur Leo Zagat, Venus Station (Science Fiction Stories, April 1943)

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dry and dusty venus

There was a mild breeze, for Venus, but it drove a steady scud of sand across the broken plain.  The angry storm-colored light was diffused by airborne dust till it seemed to pervade the land, and even through his helmet and earphones Hollister was aware of the wind-jammer and the remote banging of thunder.

A new racket grew in heaven, stabbing jets and then the downward hurtle of sleek metal.  The rocket’s glider wings were fully extended, braking her against the updraft, and the pilot shot brief blasts to control his yawing vessel and bring her down on the markings.  Wheels struck the hard-packed sand, throwing up a wave of it…

Poul Anderson, The Big Rain (Astounding, October 1954)

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settler cityscape on venus

He looked out over Venicity.  From his apartment, the topography resembled that of a lunar crater.  In the middle was a giant concrete plain, the rocketport.  From the edges of the rocketport, the size of the buildings increased gradually; at a third of the distance from the center, they were at maximum height; thereafter, they decreased gradually until one and two story structures nibbled at the surrounding forest.

Five million people and in ten years there would undoubltedly be seven, a sizable metropolis even for Earth.  That didn’t mean that the population of Venus could compare with the home planet.  Venus was settled differently.  Newcomers started with the cities; only later did they venture out into the vast wild lands.  Venus was civilized, after a fashion, but it wasn’t a copy of Earth.

F L Wallace, Tangle Hold (Galaxy, June 1953)

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no walkabout for first man on venus

Jack had fought his ship down through absolute blindness: clouds of gas that closed his own eyes and confused the radar, down to the skin of an unknown world.  He had been within a thousand feet of the ground before he could see anything but swirling yellow.  And then he landed and cut the rockets.

“Well, I couldn’t get out, of course,” he said.  “For forty or fifty reasons, somebody else will have to be the first man to set foot on Venus.  Somebody who doesn’t care much about breathing, I guess.  Anyway, there I was, looking at it.”  He shrugged his shoulders, looked baffled, and said a dirty word softly.  “I’ve told it a dozen times at lectures, but I’ve never got it over.  I tell ‘em the closest thing to it on Earth is the Painted Desert.  Maybe it is; I haven’t been there.

“The wind blows hard on Venus and it tears up the rocks.  Soft rocks blow away and make the dust storms.  The hard parts – well, they stick out in funny shapes and colours.  Great big monument things, some of them.  And the most jagged hills and crevasses you can imagine.  It’s something like the inside of a cave, sort of – only not dark.  But the light is – funny.  Nobody ever saw light like that on Earth.  Orangy-brownish light, brilliant, very brilliant, but sort of threatening…”

F Pohl and C M Kornbluth, The Space Merchants (1953)

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Note from Zendexor:
It's a great satire and an exciting story, but I'm puzzled by the novel's ending, in which a huge shipload of colonists is bound for Venus.  How do they expect to live there?  Perhaps the answer is in Pohl's sequel, The Merchants' War, which I read a long time ago and of which I forget the details.  I had better re-read it...

making plants grow on venus

…they’ve been busting their backs for forty years and more trying to make green things grow.  But that’s hellishly difficult, because of the kind of planet Venus is.  Plants have a tough time.  One, there’s not really enough light; two, there’s damn near no water at all; three, it’s way too hot.  So to make anything grow at all takes all kinds of technological wizardry and enormous effort.  First they had to nuke some tectonic faults to set off volcanos – that’s to bring whatever water vapor there is up out of the core (that’s the way the Earth got its water billions of years ago, they say).  Second, they had to cap the volcanos to catch the water vapor.  Third, they had to provide something cold enough to condense the vapor to a liquid; that’s the cold end of the Hilsch tubes – you see them on mountaintops all over Venus, big things like one-hole piccolos, with the hot end blasting gases out through the atmosphere to get lost in space and the cold end providing cooling for the cities – and generating a little electricity while they do it.  Fourth, they have to pipe that trickle of water to where things are planted, and they have to do it underground so it won’t boil away in the first ten feet.  Fifth, they have to have special, genetically tailored plants that can whisk that water up through their stems and leaves before letting it boil away…  

Frederick Pohl, The Merchants' War (1984)

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Comment from Zendexor:
...So here's one result of my re-reading (see comment on previous scene).
   Pohl's Venus is just barely OSS.  It's not quite as useless as the real Venus, since on the latter you wouldn't be able to grow plants at all (at least not on the surface - it might still be feasible to float stuff in the upper atmosphere).

a divided, two-power venus

"... I have been surprised to see no water in sight, but I think I see my mistake now. You know the Mississippi has its mouth further from the center of the Earth than its source; it flows up hill! The answer is, of course, that the centrifugal force of the Earth's spin impels it to flow that way. Similarly, I am sure now that we will find that Venus has a vast belt of water about the middle, and to the north and south there will be two great caps of dry land. We are on the northern cap."

(...)

"“Twenty centuries ago,” Tonlos continued, “there were two great rival nations on this planet. The planet Turo is naturally divided so that there would be a tendency toward such division. There are two enormous belts of land around the globe, one running from about 20 degrees north of the equator to about 80 degrees north. This is my country, Lanor. To the south there is a similar great belt of land, of almost identical size, Kaxor. These two nations have existed for many thousands of our years.”"

John W Campbell, Solarite (Amazing Stories, November 1930)

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Comment from contributor Lone Wolf:

I just realized that the geography of Venus (or maybe I should say "aphrodisiography"), as described in J. W. Campbell's Solarite in 1930, quite resembles the old XVIII century Venusian globe of Bianchini (http://www.bo.astro.it/~biblio/Vultus-Uraniae/Globe-of-Venus.html)  and also his map of Venus (shown on the second page of Patrick Moore's article https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1985JBAA...95...50M, although the image there is not very good). [Suggestion from Zendexor: perhaps "cythereography" could be a slightly shorter alternative to "aphrodisiography".]

The only difference seems to be that on Bianchini's map the two continents are connected by land in one or two places (difficult to say how many, because on the picture only one side of the globe is seen, while the image of the map is too blurred). I don't know whether this is a coincidence or Campbell had that map in mind when he wrote his novel...

I found these materials while searching for information about Bianchini - Jules Verne mentions him in one of his novels, saying that he has observed seven interconnected seas on Venus (obviously those rhomboid sea basins around the equatorial zone), which got me interested.

About Campbell writing about Venus - Solarite is the second tale from the series about the trio of scientists Arcot, Wade and Morey (which as a whole I don't find very readable, despite the many interesting ideas along the stories).   Re Penton and Blake, I think that there was a short mentioning  about them being on Venus before going to Mars in the first story and that there one of them got caught in some peculiar tree - it seems this refers to the variant of the primitive jungle Venus, not that of the high civilization described in Solarite. Still, interesting how the archetypical planetary characteristics connect and become manifest in different stories, sometimes probably completely unintentionally. Thus in Solarite the Venerians (as Campbell calls them) are blue-skinned and have copper instead of iron in their blood (and the copper is the metal traditionally associated with Venus in medieval alchemy). Curiously, the same thing is said about the Vulcans from Star Trek (only their blood is green, not blue), whom some people think were inspired by the Venusians from Space Patrol (while the Klingons were based on the Martians from the same show). Actually, I think  that the Venusians in Space Patrol were meant to be blue-skinned too - it cannot be seen in black-and-white, but they are painted blue in the comics. And from the other hand, the emblematic "Vulcan neck-pinch" of Spock, which paralyzes a man by pressing specific neural points, is described decades earlier by Edmond Hamilton as some Venusian trick, which Captain Future uses (I think it was in the story about the seven space stones). It's like the new SF continues to use the old planetary archetypes, only projecting them on an interstellar setting. BTW, I wonder if the name "Rod Blake" of the main protagonist of the old TV show Blake's 7 (one of my favourites!) has been taken from Campbell's character with the same name, although otherwise they are completely unrelated...

monsters in the phosphorescent ocean of venus

Seconds flowed into moments, and the moments merged into one another, and still the clouds pressed with a visible strength against the ports. The rockets drummed steadily, holding the ship aloft, dropping it slowly toward the planet below. Then the clouds thinned, and, incredibly, were permeated with a dim and glowing light. A second later, and the clouds were gone, and a thousand feet below tumbled and tossed in a majestic display of ruthless strength an ocean that seemed to be composed of liquid fluorescence.

Kerry Blane heard Splinter's instant sigh of unbelief.

"Good Lord!" Splinter said, "What—"

His voice stilled, and he was silent, his eyes drinking in the weird incredible scene below.

The ocean was a shifting, white-capped wash of silvery light that gleamed with a bright phosphorescence of a hundred, intermingled, kaleidoscopic colors. And the unreal, unearthly light continued unbroken everywhere, reflected from the low-hanging clouds, reaching to the far horizon, bathing every detail of the planet in a brilliance more bright than moonlight.

Splinter turned a wondering face. "But the official reports say that there is no light on Venus," he exclaimed. "That was one of the reasons given when exploration was forbidden!"

Kerry Blane nodded. "That was merely a pretext to keep foolhardy spacemen from losing their lives on the planet. In reality, the ocean is alive with an incredibly tiny marine worm that glows phosphorescently. The light generated from those billions of worms is reflected back from the clouds, makes Venus eternally lighted."

He turned the ship to the North, relaxed a bit on the air bunk. He felt tired and worn, his body aching from the space bends of a few hours before.

"Take over," he said wearily. "Take the ship North, and watch for any island."

Splinter nodded, rested his long hands on the controls. The space cruiser lifted a bit in a sudden spurt of speed, and the rocket-sound was a solid thrum of unleashed power.

Kerry Blane lit a cigarette, leaned toward a vision port. He felt again that thrill he had experienced when he had first flashed his single-man cruiser through the clouds years before. Then the breath caught in his throat, and he tapped his companion's arm.

"Take a look!" he called excitedly.

They fought in the ocean below, fought in a never-ending splashing of what seemed to be liquid fire. It was like watching a tri-dim screen of a news event, except for the utter lack of sound.

One was scaly, while the other was skinned, and both were fully three hundred feet long. Great scimitars of teeth flashed in the light, and blood gouted and stained the water crimson whenever a slashing blow was struck. They threshed in a mad paroxysm of rage, whirling and spinning in the phosphorescent water like beings from a nightmare, exploding out of their element time and again, only to fall back in a gargantuan spray of fluorescence.

And then the scaly monster flashed in a half-turn, drove forward with jaws agape, wrenched and ripped at the smooth black throat of the other creature. The second creature rippled and undulated in agony, whipping the ocean to foam, then went limp. The victorious monster circled the body of its dead foe, then, majestically, plunged from sight into the ocean's depths. An instant later, the water frothed, as hundreds of lesser marine monsters attacked and fed on the floating corpse.

Wilbur S Peacock, Planet of No Return (Planet Stories, Winter 1942)

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Comment from contributor Lone Wolf:
This story is a continuation, although not direct sequel of The Thing of Venus, published in the Spring issue of the same year. Both feature the same variant of Venus as a water planet with no land, but some little floating islands, covered with jungles. The greatest danger there seems to be the "Thing", mentioned in the title - a big mass of living protoplasm in the ocean, something like a giant amoeba, which absorbs literally everything alive, that has destroyed the first expeditions, which landed on the planet. 

Comment from Zendexor:
That amorphous "Thing" sounds rather like Clark Ashton Smith's Venusian amoeboid colossus The Immeasurable Horror.

many-legged monsters battle on venus

The ship dropped lower as it cruised above the surface of Venus, and now those within the observatory of the interplanetary flyer could view the more minute details of the planet.

Gigantic forms lumbered ungainly through the yellow forests, raising their huge snouts to bellow defiance at the space ship.

"Oh, look, daddy !" exclaimed Sue suddenly. "Down there!" the girl pointed her finger at a small clearing in the forest of yellow, swaying branches.

"It is a battle of monsters!" exclaimed Clarkford.

Below them in the forest, two nightmarish engines of flesh and blood were preparing to tear one another asunder with the mighty weapons which nature had bestowed upon them! One of the creatures was formed like a great snake with a long body some five feet in diameter, having a series of some eight or ten sets of long legs which held it above the ground. The great, glittering rows of teeth which lined the terrible jaws of the animal were outstretched to a span of some twelve feet ready to close upon the anatomy of its equally fearsome adversary at the first opportunity! Its opponent was just as large, though of a more compact build, being of towering proportions mounted on three sets of legs. From all sides huge, curling tentacles waved nervously as the other beast approached. Four little eyes gleamed wickedly from the squat, diminutive head which, devoid of any neck, sprouted from the upper forepart of the creature's colossal bulk. The tail of the animal curled and switched as it stood, waiting defensively for the charge of the other snakelike creature. The later, its wide jaws distended, was rushing forward madly.

"What terrible things!" breathed the girl excitedly as she viewed the grotesque creations which roamed the forests of Venus.

AND now there broke forth upon the ears of the space ship passengers the most terrifying, blood-curdling roars, howls, mouthings and screams they had ever heard, the radio phones upon the outside of the craft conducting the sounds of conflict to the ears of those within.

The first animal leaped forward and seized a goodly portion of the second creature within its wide jaws which closed tightly in a vise-like grip! The bulky animal writhed and roared in the terrible grasp of the attacker. As its powerful tentacles closed upon the long, twisting body of the other in a death-hold, a large section of the animal was torn loose. And now the witnesses to the primitive, mortal combat saw the effects of the tightening tentacles upon the body of the wide jawed animal. The edges of the tentacles were lined with razor-edged segment, and as the tentacles closed tightly, working back and forth in a rapid motion, the body of the attacking beast was cleaved into three or four sections which continued to wriggle and twist separately in their death throes! The head of the disgusting creature released its mouthful of living flesh and seized upon the huge animal in a new spot!

The second beast, with victory within his grasp, though bleeding to death, stiffened spasmodically at this second onslaught, while the great jaws crunched together for the last time and froze, the bodily remains of the animal still squirming, the long legs kicking!

"How terrible!" shuddered the girl as she shrank back from the grisly sight.

As if by prearranged signal, there broke forth from the surrounding forest below a pack of animals as large as horses, running swiftly forward on ten legs. They appeared to be a cross between an animal and insect, for a series of antennae arose from their heads, while the covering on their backs was such as one sees on beetles. Their jaws were those of an animal, and from between them there issued dismal howls as the dozen or more of these denizens of the yellow forest broke forth into the clearing from the surrounding verdure. They had been impatiently awaiting the outcome of the conflict between the forest giants. They leaped, fought and howled, their weird cries wailing in concert as they viciously attacked and devoured the remains of the two great beasts who had fought and died within the short space of a few minutes.

Neil R Jones, The Moon Pirates (Amazing Stories, September 1934)

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Comment from contributor Lone Wolf:
This is a bit long, but it's a completed scene, which otherwise is of no consequence to the later events of the story, that itself is not related to Venus at all. It's nice that the author took the trouble to describe it, although it doesn't contribute anything to the plot and probably nobody would notice if this episode was deleted from the text.

cultural contrast on venus

Unquestionably the great spaceport at Venusopolis is an epitome of the aspirations and limitations of man.

Here, in breathtaking beauty, the shimmering traffic-tower rises into the night, pointing like a shining finger at the distant planets and the far more distant stars toward which the great ships take off with thunderous crash of rockets.  Watching those ships go out, one can believe man is a god.

But leave the spaceport and walk through the sordid huddle of shabby streets around it, and you see the god’s feet of clay.  Beyond the ring of mountainous warehouses that hold the ores from Mercury and grain and frozen meat from Saturn, the machinery from nearby Earth and the previous vitron from faraway Arkar, lies the zone known as the “Belt.”

The Belt is a shabby slum battening upon spacemen, adventurers, merchants and less-identifiable characters who flow into Venus through the spaceport.

It has seemed incongruous to more than one observer that men who have known the beauty and wonder of the starways should find relaxation in the tawdry drinking-places and amusements of this place.

But human nature changes slowly, too slowly to match the swift, rising beat of a star-conquering civilization….

Edmond Hamilton (writing as "Brett Sterling"), Danger Planet (1945)

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