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177-588: The planet Venus has been used as a setting in fiction since before the 19th century. Its opaque cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface—a "cosmic Rorschach test ", in the words of science fiction author Stephen L. Gillett. The planet was often depicted as warmer than Earth but still habitable by humans. Depictions of Venus as a lush, verdant paradise, an oceanic planet, or fetid swampland, often inhabited by dinosaur -like beasts or other monsters, became common in early pulp science fiction, particularly between

354-590: A dust ring-cloud , with a suspected origin either from Venus–trailing asteroids, interplanetary dust migrating in waves, or the remains of the Solar System's original circumstellar disc that formed the planetary system . Earth and Venus have a near orbital resonance of 13:8 (Earth orbits eight times for every 13 orbits of Venus). Therefore, they approach each other and reach inferior conjunction in synodic periods of 584 days, on average. The path that Venus makes in relation to Earth viewed geocentrically draws

531-570: A lead jar". Perhaps due to an association of the planet Venus with the Roman goddess of love whose name it shares , sentient Venusians have often been portrayed as gentle, ethereal, and beautiful—an image first presented in Bernard le Bovyer de Fontenelle 's Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (1686). This trope was repeated in W. Lach-Szyrma 's A Voice from Another World (1874) and Letters from

708-454: A pentagram over five synodic periods, shifting every period by 144°. This pentagram of Venus is sometimes referred to as the petals of Venus due to the path's visual similarity to a flower. When Venus lies between Earth and the Sun in inferior conjunction, it makes the closest approach to Earth of any planet at an average distance of 41 million km (25 million mi). Because of

885-402: A plague deliberately introduced by Martians, Heinlein's "Logic of Empire" has the colonies rely upon exploiting workers trapped in indentured servitude , and S. Makepeace Lott 's Escape to Venus (1956) depicts a colony that has turned into a dystopia . Marta Randall 's " Big Dome " (1985) features a rediscovered domed colony abandoned during a prior terraforming project; Gillett describes

1062-465: A pressure 92 times that of Earth's at sea level. These extreme conditions compress carbon dioxide into a supercritical state at Venus's surface. Internally, Venus has a core ,  mantle , and  crust . Venus lacks an internal dynamo, and its weakly induced magnetosphere is caused by atmospheric interactions with the solar wind . Internal heat escapes through active volcanism , resulting in resurfacing instead of plate tectonics . Venus

1239-636: A slush pile , which led to its publication. "Homecoming" won a place in the O. Henry Award Stories of 1947. Bradbury first published The Fireman , a short story about 25,000 words long, in Galaxy Science Fiction in February 1951. Bradbury was asked to extend it by 25,000 words so that it would be published as a novel. Bradbury got the title after the Los Angeles fire chief told him that book paper burns at 451 °F. In UCLA 's Powell Library , in

1416-633: A supervillain in the Fawcett Comics stories about Captain Marvel . In the second half of the 20th century, as the hellish conditions of Venus became better known, depictions of life on Venus became more exotic, with ideas such as the "living petroleum" of Brenda Pearce 's " Crazy Oil " (1975), the telepathic jewels of Varley's "In the Bowl", and the more mundane cloud-borne microbes of Ben Bova 's Venus (2000; part of Bova's Grand Tour series ). In contrast to

1593-543: A 1955 episode of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet depicts a crash landing in a Venusian swamp. Bradbury's short story " The Long Rain " (1950) depicts Venus as a planet with incessant rain, and was later adapted to screen twice: to film in The Illustrated Man (1969) and to television in The Ray Bradbury Theater (1992)—though the latter removed all references to Venus in light of the changed scientific views on

1770-542: A 2023 article in Space Science Reviews , "While Mars offered a sort of barren elegance, Venus had perhaps too much life." Stanley G. Weinbaum portrayed Venus as home to a voracious ecosystem in " Parasite Planet " (1935), and his visions inspired other authors such as Asimov, whose Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus depicts colonists encountering various hostile sea-dwelling creatures. Zelazny's "The Doors of His Face,

1947-451: A 4" telescope. Although naked eye visibility of Venus's phases is disputed, records exist of observations of its crescent. When Venus is sufficiently bright with enough angular distance from the sun, it is easily observed in a clear daytime sky with the naked eye, though most people do not know to look for it. Astronomer Edmund Halley calculated its maximum naked eye brightness in 1716, when many Londoners were alarmed by its appearance in

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2124-589: A Citizen of Venus (1897). The British film Stranger from Venus (1954) portrays a visit by a Venusian in a similar manner to the one by a Martian in the US film The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Visits like this are typically peaceful and for the enlightenment of humanity. Occasionally, Venusians come to Earth intent on conquering it, as in Charles L. Graves and E. V. Lucas 's parody of H. G. Wells 's The War of

2301-473: A Citizen of Venus . Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun . It is a terrestrial planet and is the closest in mass and size to its orbital neighbour Earth . Venus has by far the densest atmosphere of the terrestrial planets, composed mostly of carbon dioxide with a thick, global sulfuric acid cloud cover. At the surface it has a mean temperature of 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F) and

2478-478: A Los Angeles bookstore with British expatriate writer Christopher Isherwood gave Bradbury the opportunity to put The Martian Chronicles into the hands of a respected critic. Isherwood's glowing review followed. Bradbury attributed his lifelong habit of writing every day to two incidents. The first, when he was three years old, was his mother's taking him to see Lon Chaney in the 1923 silent film The Hunchback of Notre Dame . The second occurred in 1932, when

2655-526: A Race of Immortals without a God (1891) features a socialist Venusian civilization, Homer Eon Flint 's " The Queen of Life " (1919) depicts an anarchist society on Venus, and Stanton A. Coblentz 's The Blue Barbarians (1931) is a satirical depiction of a Venus ruled by plutocrats . The Bleilers additionally list capitalist , feudal , monarchical , and matriarchal Venusian societies, among others. In Polish science fiction writer Stanisław Lem 's novel The Astronauts (1951)—later adapted to film as

2832-563: A Thursday-night conclave at age 16. Bradbury cited Verne and Wells as his primary science-fiction influences. He identified with Verne, saying: "He believes the human being is in a strange situation in a very strange world, and he believes that we can triumph by behaving morally." Bradbury admitted that he stopped reading science-fiction books in his 20s and embraced a broad field of literature that included poets Alexander Pope and John Donne . He had just graduated from high school when he met Robert A. Heinlein , then 31. Bradbury recalled: "He

3009-878: A Venus covered in swamps and jungles are found in Gustavus W. Pope 's Journey to Venus (1895), Fred T. Jane 's To Venus in Five Seconds (1897), and Maurice Baring 's " Venus " (1909). Following its popularization by Arrhenius, the portrayal of the Venusian landscape as dominated by jungles and swamps recurred frequently in other works of fiction; in particular, Brian Stableford says in Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia that it became "a staple of pulp science fiction imagery". Clark Ashton Smith 's " The Immeasurable Horror " (1931) and Lester del Rey 's " The Luck of Ignatz " (1939) depict threatening Venusian creatures in

3186-414: A Venusian year (243 versus 224.7 Earth days). Slowed by its strong atmospheric current the length of the day also fluctuates by up to 20 minutes. Venus's equator rotates at 6.52 km/h (4.05 mph), whereas Earth's rotates at 1,674.4 km/h (1,040.4 mph). Venus's rotation period measured with Magellan spacecraft data over a 500-day period is smaller than the rotation period measured during

3363-415: A blue-skinned but otherwise humanoid Venusian sidekick called Lon Vurian. The Bleilers also list a number of more bizarre portrayals of Venusians, such as squid-like; four-legged elephantine beings; intelligent giant bees, beetles, ants and worm larvae; giant monstrous insects; and even "living colors". In Simak's " Tools " (1942), a native Venusian is portrayed as "a blob of disembodied radon gas captured in

3540-438: A breathable atmosphere. Gillett suggests that the theme of terraforming Venus reflects a desire to recapture the simpler, traditional fantasy of early prose about the planet. Early writings, in which Venus was often depicted as a younger Earth, often populated it with large beasts. Pope's Journey to Venus (1895) depicted a tropical world featuring dinosaurs and other creatures similar to those known from Earth's history. Says

3717-452: A carnival entertainer, one Mr. Electrico, knighted the young man with an electrified sword and intoned: "Live forever!" Bradbury remarked: "I felt that something strange and wonderful had happened to me because of my encounter with Mr. Electrico ... [he] gave me a future ... I began to write, full-time. I have written every single day of my life since that day 69 years ago." At that age, Bradbury first started to do magic , which

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3894-459: A change that would have occurred over the course of billions of years. The rotation period of Venus may represent an equilibrium state between tidal locking to the Sun's gravitation, which tends to slow rotation, and an atmospheric tide created by solar heating of the thick Venusian atmosphere. The 584-day average interval between successive close approaches to Earth is almost exactly equal to 5   Venusian solar days (5.001444 to be precise), but

4071-521: A dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap opera cries, sleep walking , helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction. Bradbury stated that the novel worked as a critique of the later development of political correctness : How does the story of Fahrenheit 451 stand up in 1994? R.B.: It works even better because we have political correctness now. Political correctness

4248-561: A depression. These features are volcanic in origin. Most Venusian surface features are named after historical and mythological women. Exceptions are Maxwell Montes, named after James Clerk Maxwell , and highland regions Alpha Regio , Beta Regio , and Ovda Regio . The last three features were named before the current system was adopted by the International Astronomical Union , the body which oversees planetary nomenclature . The longitude of physical features on Venus

4425-680: A devastated Earth living beneath Venusian oceans. Those two works have been called in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction "the most enduring pulp image" of an oceanic Venus, and the former received another sequel decades later, The Jungle (1991) by David A. Drake . Roger Zelazny 's " The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth " (1965) was the last major depiction of an ocean-covered Venus, published shortly after that vision had been rendered obsolete by advances in planetary science . A third group of early theories about conditions on Venus explained

4602-504: A distinctive body of major works such as H. G. Wells 's The War of the Worlds (1897) and Ray Bradbury 's fix-up novel The Martian Chronicles (1950), Venus largely lacks a corresponding canon. A clement twilight zone on a synchronously rotating Mercury , a swamp-and-jungle Venus, and a canal-infested Mars , while all classic science-fiction devices, are all, in fact, based upon earlier misapprehensions by planetary scientists. One of

4779-465: A dry Venus, and in his " To Build A World " (1964), a terraformed Venus becomes the site of countless wars for the more desirable parts of the surface. Other early depictions of terraforming Venus include A. E. van Vogt 's The World of Null-A (1948) and James E. Gunn 's The Naked Sky (1955). The terraforming of Venus has remained comparatively rare in fiction, though the process appears in works like Bob Buckley  [ de ] 's " World in

4956-463: A dynamo at its core. A dynamo requires three things: a conducting liquid, rotation, and convection . The core is thought to be electrically conductive and, although its rotation is often thought to be too slow, simulations show it is adequate to produce a dynamo. This implies that the dynamo is missing because of a lack of convection in Venus's core. On Earth, convection occurs in the liquid outer layer of

5133-472: A formative event of his youth: I suppose the most important memory is of Mr. Electrico. On Labor Day weekend, 1932, when I was twelve years old, he came to my hometown with the Dill Brothers ... He was a performer sitting in an electric chair and a stagehand pulled a switch and he was charged with fifty thousand volts of pure electricity. Lightning flashed in his eyes and his hair stood on end. I sat below, in

5310-487: A full and complete life." In high school, Bradbury was active in the poetry and drama clubs. Planning to become an actor, he became serious about writing as his high-school years progressed. He graduated from Los Angeles High School, where he took poetry classes with Snow Longley Housh and short-story writing courses taught by Jeannet Johnson. The teachers recognized his talent and furthered his interest in writing, but he did not attend college. Instead, he sold newspapers at

5487-534: A larger collaborative work that would tell the family's complete history, but it never materialized, and according to a 2001 interview, they went their separate ways. In October 2001, Bradbury published all the Family stories he had written in one book with a connecting narrative, From the Dust Returned , featuring a wraparound Addams cover of the original "Homecoming" illustration. Another of Bradbury’s close friends

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5664-449: A more massive primary atmosphere from solar nebula have been proposed to explain the enrichment. However, the atmosphere is depleted of radiogenic argon, a proxy for mantle degassing, suggesting an early shutdown of major magmatism. Studies have suggested that billions of years ago, Venus's atmosphere could have been much more like the one surrounding the early Earth, and that there may have been substantial quantities of liquid water on

5841-417: A mostly ignored part of an otherwise thoroughly explored Solar System; examples include Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama (1973) and the novel series The Expanse (2011–2021) by James S. A. Corey (joint pseudonym of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck ). A romantic, habitable, pre-Mariner Venus continued to appear for a while in deliberately nostalgic and retro works such as Zelazny's "The Doors of His Face,

6018-441: A place that would be hostile to humans. Stories about survival in less extreme conditions had appeared in works such as John W. Campbell 's " Solarite " (1930), where the surface temperature exceeds 150 °F (70 °C); Clifton B. Kruse 's " Menace from Saturn " (1935), where the atmosphere is toxic; and Philip Latham 's Five Against Venus (1952), a Robinsonade . Similarly, colonization stories had been popular throughout

6195-862: A rich theatrical legacy as well as literary. He headed the Pandemonium Theatre Company in Los Angeles for many years, and had a five-year relationship with the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena. Bradbury is featured prominently in two documentaries related to his classic 1950s–1960s era: Jason V Brock 's Charles Beaumont: The Life of Twilight Zone's Magic Man , detailing his troubles with Rod Serling and his friendships with writers Charles Beaumont , George Clayton Johnson , and most especially his dear friend William F. Nolan ; and Brock's The AckerMonster Chronicles! , which delves into

6372-510: A study room with typewriters for rent for ten cents per half-hour., Bradbury wrote his classic story of a book burning future, Fahrenheit 451 , which was about 50,000 words long, costing $ 9.80 from the typewriter-rental fees. Fahrenheit 451 was also published in serial form in the March, April and May 1954 issues of Playboy Magazine . Fahrenheit 451 remains a staple in discussions about censorship and dystopian futures. A chance encounter in

6549-607: A swamp-and-jungle climate. " In the Walls of Eryx " (1936) by H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling features an invisible maze on a jungle Venus. In the planetary romance subgenre that flourished in this era, Ralph Milne Farley and Otis Adelbert Kline wrote series in this setting starting with The Radio Man (1924) and The Planet of Peril (1929), respectively. These stories were inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs 's Martian Barsoom series that began with A Princess of Mars (1912); Burroughs later wrote planetary romances set on

6726-713: A swampy Venus in the Amtor series, beginning with Pirates of Venus (1932). Other authors who wrote planetary romances in this setting include C. L. Moore with the Northwest Smith adventure " Black Thirst " (1934) and Leigh Brackett with stories like " The Moon that Vanished " (1948) and the Eric John Stark story " Enchantress of Venus " (1949). Robert A. Heinlein portrayed Venusian swamps in several unrelated stories including " Logic of Empire " (1941), Space Cadet (1948), and Podkayne of Mars (1963). On television ,

6903-455: A variety of genres, including fantasy , science fiction , horror , mystery , and realistic fiction . Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955). Other notable works include the coming of age novel Dandelion Wine (1957), the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and

7080-525: A work of fiction was Voyage à Venus ( Voyage to Venus , 1865) by Achille Eyraud  [ fr ] , though it had appeared centuries earlier in works depicting multiple locations in the Solar System such as Athanasius Kircher 's Itinerarium Exstaticum (1656) and Emanuel Swedenborg 's The Earths in Our Solar System (1758). Science fiction scholar Gary Westfahl considers the mention of

7257-457: Is 81.5% of Earth's, making it the third-smallest planet in the Solar System . Conditions on the Venusian surface differ radically from those on Earth because its dense atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, with most of the remaining 3.5% being nitrogen . The surface pressure is 9.3 megapascals (93 bars ), and the average surface temperature is 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F), above the critical points of both major constituents and making

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7434-414: Is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen, you see? That's the reason it's going to be around a long time—because it's a Greek myth , and myths have staying power. Bradbury recounted when he came into his own as a writer, the afternoon he wrote a short story about his first encounter with death. When he

7611-406: Is a satire that depicts Venus being successfully marketed as an appealing destination for migrants from Earth in spite of its hostile environment. In Robert Sheckley 's " Prospector's Special " (1959), the desert surface of Venus is mined for resources . Arthur C. Clarke 's " Before Eden " (1961) portrays Venus as mostly hot and dry, but with a somewhat cooler climate habitable to extremophiles at

7788-519: Is called Ishtar Terra after Ishtar , the Babylonian goddess of love, and is about the size of Australia. Maxwell Montes , the highest mountain on Venus, lies on Ishtar Terra. Its peak is 11 km (7 mi) above the Venusian average surface elevation. The southern continent is called Aphrodite Terra , after the Greek mythological goddess of love, and is the larger of the two highland regions at roughly

7965-405: Is currently volcanically active, specifically the detection of olivine , a volcanic product that would weather quickly on the planet's surface. This massive volcanic activity is fuelled by a superheated interior, which models say could be explained by energetic collisions from when the planet was young. Impacts would have had significantly higher velocity than on Earth, both because Venus's orbit

8142-483: Is expressed relative to its prime meridian . The original prime meridian passed through the radar-bright spot at the centre of the oval feature Eve, located south of Alpha Regio. After the Venera missions were completed, the prime meridian was redefined to pass through the central peak in the crater Ariadne on Sedna Planitia . The stratigraphically oldest tessera terrains have consistently lower thermal emissivity than

8319-636: Is far from certain. Studies reported on 26 October 2023 suggest for the first time that Venus may have had plate tectonics during ancient times and, as a result, may have had a more habitable environment , possibly one capable of sustaining life . Venus has gained interest as a case for research into the development of Earth-like planets and their habitability . Much of the Venusian surface appears to have been shaped by volcanic activity. Venus has several times as many volcanoes as Earth, and it has 167 large volcanoes that are over 100 km (60 mi) across. The only volcanic complex of this size on Earth

8496-576: Is faster due to its closer proximity to the Sun and because objects would require higher orbital eccentricities to collide with the planet. In 2008 and 2009, the first direct evidence for ongoing volcanism was observed by Venus Express , in the form of four transient localized infrared hot spots within the rift zone Ganis Chasma , near the shield volcano Maat Mons . Three of the spots were observed in more than one successive orbit. These spots are thought to represent lava freshly released by volcanic eruptions. The actual temperatures are not known, because

8673-462: Is formed by sulphur dioxide and water through a chemical reaction resulting in sulfuric acid hydrate. Additionally, the clouds consist of approximately 1% ferric chloride . Other possible constituents of the cloud particles are ferric sulfate , aluminium chloride and phosphoric anhydride . Clouds at different levels have different compositions and particle size distributions. These clouds reflect, similar to thick cloud cover on Earth, about 70% of

8850-452: Is induced by an interaction between the ionosphere and the solar wind , rather than by an internal dynamo as in the Earth's core . Venus's small induced magnetosphere provides negligible protection to the atmosphere against solar and cosmic radiation . The lack of an intrinsic magnetic field on Venus was surprising, given that it is similar to Earth in size and was expected to contain

9027-583: Is inhabited solely or mostly by women in works like " What John Smith Saw in the Moon: A Christmas Story for Parties Who Were Children Twenty Years Ago " (1893) by Fred Harvey Brown and ruled by women in Stone's " The Conquest of Gola " (1931) among others. In comic books , several of DC Comics ' Wonder Woman stories in the 1940s featured the superheroine's female allies from Venus. The films Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953) and Queen of Outer Space (1958) feature

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9204-404: Is most likely at least partially liquid because the two planets have been cooling at about the same rate, although a completely solid core cannot be ruled out. The slightly smaller size of Venus means pressures are 24% lower in its deep interior than Earth's. The predicted values for the moment of inertia based on planetary models suggest a core radius of 2,900–3,450 km. This is in line with

9381-432: Is not known with certainty, but speculation has ranged from elemental tellurium to lead sulfide ( galena ). Although Venus has no seasons, in 2019 astronomers identified a cyclical variation in sunlight absorption by the atmosphere, possibly caused by opaque, absorbing particles suspended in the upper clouds. The variation causes observed changes in the speed of Venus's zonal winds and appears to rise and fall in time with

9558-482: Is one of two planets in the Solar System , the other being Mercury , that have no moons . Conditions perhaps favourable for life on Venus have been identified at its cloud layers. Venus may have had liquid surface water early in its history with a habitable environment , before a runaway greenhouse effect evaporated any water and turned Venus into its present state. The rotation of Venus has been slowed and turned against its orbital direction ( retrograde ) by

9735-889: Is primitive and violent. Primitive Venusians also appear in Donald Horner 's By Aeroplane to the Sun (1910) and Frank Brueckel 's The War Lord of Venus (1930), while more advanced yet malicious ones are depicted in works such as Landell Bartlett 's " The Vanguard of Venus " (1928) and Roy Rockwood ' s By Air Express to Venus; or, Captives of a Strange People (1929). Venusian civilizations have most commonly been depicted as being comparable to Earth's level of development, slightly less frequently as being more advanced, and only occasionally less advanced. Utopian depictions of Venus are commonplace, appearing in John Munro 's A Trip to Venus (1897) among others. In terms of governance, James William Barlow  [ fr ] 's History of

9912-411: Is reflected in many works' portrayals of Venusians. Depictions of Venusian societies have varied both in level of development and type of governance. In addition to humans visiting Venus, several stories feature Venusians coming to Earth—most often to enlighten humanity, but occasionally for warlike purposes. From the mid-20th century on, as the reality of Venus's harsh surface conditions became known,

10089-406: Is speculation on the possibility that life exists in the upper cloud layers of Venus, 50 km (30 mi) up from the surface, where the atmospheric conditions are the most Earth-like in the Solar System, with temperatures ranging between 303 and 353 K (30 and 80 °C; 86 and 176 °F), and the pressure and radiation being about the same as at Earth's surface, but with acidic clouds and

10266-559: Is surprised to find that Venus does not have jungles—reflecting then-recent discoveries about the environmental conditions on Venus. Others envisioned Venus as a panthalassic planet , covered by a planet-wide ocean with perhaps a few islands. Large land masses were thought impossible due to the assumption that they would have generated atmospheric updrafts disrupting the planet's solid cloud layer. Early treatments of an oceanic Venus include Harl Vincent 's " Venus Liberated " (1929) and Leslie F. Stone 's " Women with Wings " (1930) and Across

10443-420: Is that the absence of a late, large impact on Venus ( contra the Earth's "Moon-forming" impact) left the core of Venus stratified from the core's incremental formation, and without the forces to initiate/sustain convection, and thus a "geodynamo". The weak magnetosphere around Venus means that the solar wind is interacting directly with its outer atmosphere. Here, ions of hydrogen and oxygen are being created by

10620-459: Is the Big Island of Hawaii. More than 85,000 volcanoes on Venus were identified and mapped. This is not because Venus is more volcanically active than Earth, but because its crust is older and is not subject to the same erosion process. Earth's oceanic crust is continually recycled by subduction at the boundaries of tectonic plates, and has an average age of about 100 million years, whereas

10797-481: Is the third brightest object in Earth's sky after the Moon and the Sun. In 1961, Venus became the target of the first interplanetary flight, Venera 1 , followed by many essential interplanetary firsts , such as the first soft landing on another planet by Venera 7 in 1970. These probes demonstrated the extreme surface conditions, an insight that has informed predictions about global warming on Earth. This finding ended

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10974-505: Is the real enemy these days. The black groups want to control our thinking and you can't say certain things. The homosexual groups don't want you to criticize them. It's thought control and freedom of speech control. In a 1982 essay, he wrote: "People ask me to predict the Future, when all I want to do is prevent it." This intent had been expressed earlier by other authors, most of whom attributed it to him. On May 24, 1956, Bradbury appeared on

11151-450: Is visible in dark skies long after sunset. As the brightest point-like object in the sky, Venus is a commonly misreported " unidentified flying object ". As it orbits the Sun, Venus displays phases like those of the Moon in a telescopic view. The planet appears as a small and "full" disc when it is on the opposite side of the Sun (at superior conjunction ). Venus shows a larger disc and "quarter phase" at its maximum elongations from

11328-417: Is −4.14 with a standard deviation of 0.31. The brightest magnitude occurs during the crescent phase about one month before or after an inferior conjunction. Venus fades to about magnitude −3 when it is backlit by the Sun. The planet is bright enough to be seen in broad daylight, but is more easily visible when the Sun is low on the horizon or setting. As an inferior planet , it always lies within about 47° of

11505-482: The Magellan spacecraft imaged a highly reflective substance at the tops of the highest mountain peaks, a " Venus snow " that bore a strong resemblance to terrestrial snow. This substance likely formed from a similar process to snow, albeit at a far higher temperature. Too volatile to condense on the surface, it rose in gaseous form to higher elevations, where it is cooler and could precipitate. The identity of this substance

11682-541: The New York Herald Tribune , Will Cuppy proclaimed Bradbury "suitable for general consumption" and predicted that he would become a writer of the caliber of British fantasist John Collier . After a rejection notice from the pulp Weird Tales , Bradbury submitted "Homecoming" to Mademoiselle , where it was spotted by a young editorial assistant named Truman Capote . Capote picked the Bradbury manuscript from

11859-469: The 1964 New York World's Fair and wrote the narration script for The American Journey attraction there. He also worked on the original exhibit in Epcot 's Spaceship Earth geosphere at Walt Disney World . He focused on detective fiction in the 1980s. In the latter half of the 1980s and early 1990s, he hosted The Ray Bradbury Theater , a televised anthology series based on his short stories. Bradbury

12036-567: The Brown Derby to watch the stars who came and went for meals. He recounted seeing Cary Grant , Marlene Dietrich and Mae West , who, he learned, made a regular appearance every Friday night, bodyguard in tow. Bradbury was free to start a career in writing when, owing to his bad eyesight, he was rejected for induction into the military during World War II . Inspired by science-fiction heroes such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers , he began publishing science-fiction stories in fanzines in 1938. He

12213-618: The Carboniferous . Scientist Svante Arrhenius popularized the idea of Venus being swamp-covered with flora and fauna similar to that of prehistoric Earth in his non-fiction book The Destinies of the Stars (1918). Whereas Arrhenius assumed that Venus had unchanging climatic conditions that were similar all over the planet and concluded that a lack of adaptation to environmental variability would result only in primitive lifeforms, later writers often included various megafauna . Early treatments of

12390-548: The Garden of Eden on floating islands in a vast Venusian ocean. Isaac Asimov 's Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954) depicts human colonists living in underwater cities on Venus. In Poul Anderson 's " Sister Planet " (1959), migration to an oceanic Venus is contemplated as a potential solution to Earth's overpopulation . " Clash by Night " (1943) by Lawrence O'Donnell (joint pseudonym of C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner ) and its sequel Fury (1947) describe survivors from

12567-519: The Space Age , space probes starting with the 1962 Mariner 2 found that Venus's surface temperature was in the range of 800–900 °F (400–500 °C), and atmospheric pressure at ground-level was many times that of Earth's. This rendered obsolete fiction that had depicted a planet with exotic but habitable settings, and writers' interest in the planet diminished when its inhospitability became better understood.Some works go so far as to portray Venus as

12744-419: The Sun . Venus "overtakes" Earth every 584 days as it orbits the Sun. As it does so, it changes from the "Evening Star", visible after sunset, to the "Morning Star", visible before sunrise. Although Mercury, the other inferior planet, reaches a maximum elongation of only 28° and is often difficult to discern in twilight, Venus is hard to miss when it is at its brightest. Its greater maximum elongation means it

12921-401: The decreasing eccentricity of Earth's orbit , the minimum distances will become greater over tens of thousands of years. From the year   1 to 5383, there are 526 approaches less than 40 million km (25 million mi); then, there are none for about 60,158 years. While Venus approaches Earth the closest, Mercury is more often the closest to Earth of all planets. Venus has

13098-422: The dissociation of water molecules from ultraviolet radiation. The solar wind then supplies energy that gives some of these ions sufficient velocity to escape Venus's gravity field. This erosion process results in a steady loss of low-mass hydrogen, helium, and oxygen ions, whereas higher-mass molecules, such as carbon dioxide, are more likely to be retained. Atmospheric erosion by the solar wind could have led to

13275-415: The sulphur in the atmosphere may indicate that there have been recent eruptions. About 80% of the Venusian surface is covered by smooth, volcanic plains, consisting of 70% plains with wrinkle ridges and 10% smooth or lobate plains. Two highland "continents" make up the rest of its surface area, one lying in the planet's northern hemisphere and the other just south of the equator. The northern continent

13452-421: The " Morning Star " in the second-century work True History by Lucian of Samosata to be the first appearance of Venus—or any other planet—in the genre. Venus has a thick layer of clouds that prevents telescopic observation of the surface, which gave writers free rein to imagine any kind of world below until Venus exploration probes revealed the true conditions in the 1960s— Stephen L. Gillett describes

13629-492: The 16-year period between the Magellan spacecraft and Venus Express visits, with a difference of about 6.5   minutes. Because of the retrograde rotation, the length of a solar day on Venus is significantly shorter than the sidereal day, at 116.75 Earth days (making the Venusian solar day shorter than Mercury 's 176 Earth days — the 116-day figure is close to the average number of days it takes Mercury to slip underneath

13806-442: The 1930s and 1950s. Some other stories portrayed it as a desert, or invented more exotic settings. The absence of a common vision resulted in Venus not developing a coherent fictional mythology, in contrast to the image of Mars in fiction . When included, the native sentient inhabitants, Venusians, were often portrayed as gentle, ethereal and beautiful. The planet's associations with the Roman goddess Venus and femininity in general

13983-670: The 1940s and 1950s, and became so again towards the end of the century in parallel to the rise in popularity of fictional terraforming projects. Following the Space Age discoveries about the conditions on Venus, fiction about the planet started to mainly focus on survival in the hostile environment, as in Larry Niven 's " Becalmed in Hell " (1965). Devices for protection against the elements in these stories include domed cities as in John Varley 's " In

14160-701: The Bowl " (1975), environmental suits as in Brian and Frank Herbert 's Man of Two Worlds (1986), floating cities as in Geoffrey A. Landis 's " The Sultan of the Clouds " (2010) and Derek Künsken 's The House of Styx (2020), and space stations . Colonization of Venus appeared as early as J. B. S. Haldane 's essay " The Last Judgment " (1927) and John Wyndham 's " The Venus Adventure " (1932), and grew in popularity in subsequent decades. Following emerging scientific evidence of Venus's harsh conditions, colonization of Venus

14337-636: The Clouds " (1980) and G. David Nordley 's " The Snows of Venus " (1991), while other such as Raymond Harris 's Shadows of the White Sun (1988) and Nordley's " Dawn Venus " (1995) feature an already terraformed, Earth-like Venus. Pamela Sargent 's Venus trilogy —consisting of Venus of Dreams (1986), Venus of Shadows (1988), and Child of Venus (2001)—is an epic detailing the generations-long process of terraforming Venus, drawing comparisons to Kim Stanley Robinson 's Mars trilogy (1992–1996); Robinson's later novel 2312 (2012) features Venus in

14514-558: The Earth in its orbit [the number of days of Mercury's synodic orbital period]). One Venusian year is about 1.92   Venusian solar days. To an observer on the surface of Venus, the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east, although Venus's opaque clouds prevent observing the Sun from the planet's surface. Venus may have formed from the solar nebula with a different rotation period and obliquity, reaching its current state because of chaotic spin changes caused by planetary perturbations and tidal effects on its dense atmosphere,

14691-420: The Lamps of His Mouth" (1965) and Thomas M. Disch 's " Come to Venus Melancholy " (1965), and Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison collected works written before the scientific advancements in the anthology Farewell, Fantastic Venus (1968). The nostalgic image of Venus has also occasionally resurfaced several decades later: S. M. Stirling 's The Sky People (2006) takes place in an alternate universe where

14868-750: The Lamps of His Mouth" revolves around an encounter with a giant Venusian sea monster, and in Clarke's The Deep Range (1957) sea creatures on Venus are commercialized. Venus is home to dragons in Heinlein's Between Planets (1951) and to dinosaurs in the Three Stooges short Space Ship Sappy (1957), while a Venusian monster brought to Earth by a space probe attacks humans in the film 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957). Prehistoric creatures sometimes coexist with primitive humanoids in depictions of Venus. The Green Lantern story " Summons from Space " (1959) features

15045-614: The Planets (1887–1893), about an interplanetary tour of a winged, angel-like Venusian, as well as in George Griffith 's A Honeymoon in Space (1900), where human visitors to Venus encounter flying Venusians communicating through music. The anonymously published A Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of Paul Aermont among the Planets (1873) depicts one Venusian race like this and another which

15222-565: The Polish– East German coproduction The Silent Star (1960) and then dubbed to English and recut as First Spaceship on Venus (1962)—an expedition to Venus discovers a barren environment and the ruins of a civilization, deducing that the cause was nuclear holocaust . Conversely, in Clarke's " History Lesson " (1949) Venusians come to Earth and find humanity already extinct from environmental causes. The association of Venus with women manifests in different ways in many works. The planet

15399-487: The Sun and thus receives only 25% of Mercury's solar irradiance , of 2,600 W/m (double that of Earth). Because of its runaway greenhouse effect , Venus has been identified by scientists such as Carl Sagan as a warning and research object linked to climate change on Earth. Venus's atmosphere is rich in primordial noble gases compared to that of Earth. This enrichment indicates an early divergence from Earth in evolution. An unusually large comet impact or accretion of

15576-470: The Sun's 11-year sunspot cycle . The existence of lightning in the atmosphere of Venus has been controversial since the first suspected bursts were detected by the Soviet Venera probes . In 2006–07, Venus Express clearly detected whistler mode waves , the signatures of lightning. Their intermittent appearance indicates a pattern associated with weather activity. According to these measurements,

15753-422: The Sun, and appears at its brightest in the night sky. The planet presents a much larger thin "crescent" in telescopic views as it passes along the near side between Earth and the Sun. Venus displays its largest size and "new phase" when it is between Earth and the Sun (at inferior conjunction). Its atmosphere is visible through telescopes by the halo of sunlight refracted around it. The phases are clearly visible in

15930-462: The Sun. This results in Venus transiting above Earth in a sequence of currently 8 years , 105.5 years , 8 years and 121.5 years , forming cycles of 243 years . Ray Bradbury Ray Douglas Bradbury ( US : / ˈ b r æ d b ɛr i / BRAD -berr-ee ; August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in

16107-590: The Venusian surface is estimated to be 300–600   million years old. Several lines of evidence point to ongoing volcanic activity on Venus. Sulfur dioxide concentrations in the upper atmosphere dropped by a factor of 10 between 1978 and 1986, jumped in 2006, and again declined 10-fold. This may mean that levels had been boosted several times by large volcanic eruptions. It has been suggested that Venusian lightning (discussed below) could originate from volcanic activity (i.e. volcanic lightning ). In January 2020, astronomers reported evidence that suggests that Venus

16284-581: The Void (1931). In Olaf Stapledon 's Last and First Men (1930), future descendants of humanity are modified to be adapted to life on an ocean-covered Venus. Clifford D. Simak 's " Rim of the Deep " (1940) likewise features an oceanic Venus, with the story set at the bottom of Venusian seas, featuring pirates and hostile Venusian aliens. C. S. Lewis 's Perelandra (1943) retells the Biblical story of Adam and Eve in

16461-599: The Worlds (1897) titled The War of the Wenuses (1898), Ray Cummings 's Tarrano the Conqueror (1925), and the film Target Earth (1954). Marvel Comic 's Sub-Mariner defended Earth from an invasion by amphibious Venusians in a story arc from the Golden Age of Comic Books . Venusians infiltrating Earth by posing as humans appear in several works including Eric Frank Russell 's Three to Conquer (1956) and Windsor's Loma,

16638-504: The alienation of people by media: In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in

16815-411: The atmosphere before reaching the ground. Without data from reflection seismology or knowledge of its moment of inertia , little direct information is available about the internal structure and geochemistry of Venus. The similarity in size and density between Venus and Earth suggests that they share a similar internal structure: a core , mantle , and crust . Like that of Earth, the Venusian core

16992-474: The atmosphere of Venus. On 29 January 2013, ESA scientists reported that the ionosphere of Venus streams outwards in a manner similar to "the ion tail seen streaming from a comet under similar conditions." In December 2015, and to a lesser extent in April and May 2016, researchers working on Japan's Akatsuki mission observed bow-shaped objects in the atmosphere of Venus. This was considered direct evidence of

17169-443: The atmosphere. Later research attributed the spectroscopic signal that was interpreted as phosphine to sulphur dioxide, or found that in fact there was no absorption line. Thermal inertia and the transfer of heat by winds in the lower atmosphere mean that the temperature of Venus's surface does not vary significantly between the planet's two hemispheres, those facing and not facing the Sun, despite Venus's slow rotation. Winds at

17346-519: The authors of EC Comics 's line of horror and science-fiction comics. Initially, the writers plagiarized his stories, but a diplomatic letter from Bradbury led to the company's paying him and negotiating properly licensed adaptations of his work. The comics featuring Bradbury's stories included Tales from the Crypt , Weird Science , Weird Fantasy , Crime Suspenstories , and Haunt of Fear . Bradbury remained an enthusiastic playwright all his life, leaving

17523-512: The carbon dioxide air. Venus's atmosphere could also have a potential thermal habitable zone at elevations of 54 to 48 km, with lower elevations inhibiting cell growth and higher elevations exceeding evaporation temperature. The putative detection of an absorption line of phosphine in Venus's atmosphere, with no known pathway for abiotic production, led to speculation in September 2020 that there could be extant life currently present in

17700-491: The cloud cover with a hot, dry planet where the atmosphere holds water vapor and the surface has dust storms. The idea that water is abundant on Venus was controversial, and by 1940 Rupert Wildt had already discussed how a greenhouse effect might result in a hot Venus. The vision of a desert Venus was never as popular as that of a swampy or jungle one, but by the 1950s it started appearing in a number of works. Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth 's The Space Merchants (1952)

17877-590: The concept is found in Stapledon's Last and First Men , where the process destroys the lifeforms that already existed on the planet. While Venus has since come to be regarded as the most promising candidate for terraforming, before the 1960s science fiction writers were more optimistic about the prospects of terraforming Mars , and early depictions, such as Kuttner and Moore's Fury , consequently portrayed terraforming Venus as more challenging. Anderson's " The Big Rain " (1954) revolves around an attempt to bring about rain on

18054-420: The core because the bottom of the liquid layer is much higher in temperature than the top. On Venus, a global resurfacing event may have shut down plate tectonics and led to a reduced heat flux through the crust. This insulating effect would cause the mantle temperature to increase, thereby reducing the heat flux out of the core. As a result, no internal geodynamo is available to drive a magnetic field. Instead,

18231-479: The corner of South Norton Avenue and Olympic Boulevard. In regard to his education, Bradbury said: Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years. So I graduated from

18408-456: The creative people he met were special-effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen and radio star George Burns . Bradbury's first pay as a writer, at age 14, was for a joke he sold to George Burns to use on the Burns and Allen radio show. Bradbury was fascinated with carnivals from a young age, and they would feature in such works as The Illustrated Man and Something Wicked This Way Comes . He related

18585-552: The crust. Then, over a period of about 100   million years, subduction occurs on an enormous scale, completely recycling the crust. Venusian craters range from 3 to 280 km (2 to 174 mi) in diameter. No craters are smaller than 3   km, because of the effects of the dense atmosphere on incoming objects. Objects with less than a certain kinetic energy are slowed so much by the atmosphere that they do not create an impact crater. Incoming projectiles less than 50 m (160 ft) in diameter will fragment and burn up in

18762-455: The currents and drag of its atmosphere. It takes 224.7 Earth days for Venus to complete an orbit around the Sun, and a Venusian solar year is just under two Venusian days long. The orbits of Venus and Earth are the closest between any two Solar System planets, approaching each other in synodic periods of 1.6 years. Venus and Earth have the lowest difference in gravitational potential of any pair of Solar System planets. This allows Venus to be

18939-412: The daytime with overcast clouds". Strong 300 km/h (185 mph) winds at the cloud tops go around Venus about every four to five Earth days. Winds on Venus move at up to 60 times the speed of its rotation, whereas Earth's fastest winds are only 10–20% rotation speed. The surface of Venus is effectively isothermal ; it retains a constant temperature not only between the two hemispheres but between

19116-579: The daytime. French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte once witnessed a daytime apparition of the planet while at a reception in Luxembourg . Another historical daytime observation of the planet took place during the inauguration of the American president Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., on 4   March 1865. A transit of Venus is the appearance of Venus in front of the Sun, during inferior conjunction . Since

19293-607: The definitive use of Green Town is in Summer Morning, Summer Night , a collection of short stories and vignettes exclusively set in the town. Bradbury returns to the signature locale as a look back at the rapidly disappearing small-town world of the American heartland, which was the foundation of his roots. Bradbury wrote many short essays on culture and the arts, attracting the attention of critics in this field, using his fiction to explore and criticize his culture and society. He observed, for example, that Fahrenheit 451 touched on

19470-755: The diversity of visions of the Venusian environment, the inhabitants of Venus are most commonly portrayed as human, or human-like. The catalogue of early (pre-1936) science fiction works compiled by Everett Franklin Bleiler and Richard Bleiler in the reference works Science-Fiction: The Early Years (1990) and Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years (1998) lists examples such as winged, angelic people; telepaths ; archaic humans ("subhumans"); humans but with wings and antennae; humans with tentacles; furry humans; dwarves; giants; centaurs ; fish-men; catpeople; reptilians ; rat-men; and plant-men. Some works which portray Venusians as humans explain this by suggesting that Venus

19647-416: The early tropes of adventures in Venusian tropics mostly gave way to more realistic stories. The planet became portrayed instead as a hostile, toxic inferno, with stories changing focus to topics of the planet's colonization and terraforming , although the vision of tropical Venus is occasionally revisited in intentionally retro stories. The earliest use of the planet Venus as the primary setting in

19824-578: The early solar system orbital dynamics have shown that the eccentricity of the Venus orbit may have been substantially larger in the past, reaching values as high as 0.31 and possibly impacting early climate evolution. All planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun in an anticlockwise direction as viewed from above Earth's north pole. Most planets rotate on their axes in an anticlockwise direction, but Venus rotates clockwise in retrograde rotation once every 243 Earth days—the slowest rotation of any planet. This Venusian sidereal day lasts therefore longer than

20001-442: The equator and the poles. Venus's minute axial tilt —less than 3°, compared to 23° on Earth—also minimizes seasonal temperature variation. Altitude is one of the few factors that affect Venusian temperatures. The highest point on Venus, Maxwell Montes , is therefore the coolest point on Venus, with a temperature of about 655 K (380 °C; 715 °F) and an atmospheric pressure of about 4.5 MPa (45 bar). In 1995,

20178-415: The existence of perhaps the largest stationary gravity waves in the solar system. Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 0.72  AU (108 million  km ; 67 million  mi ), and completes an orbit every 224.7 days. Although all planetary orbits are elliptical , Venus's orbit is currently the closest to circular, with an eccentricity of less than 0.01. Simulations of

20355-657: The fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space . Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Bradbury also wrote poetry which has been published in several collections, such as They Have Not Seen the Stars (2001). The New York Times called Bradbury "An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation" and "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into

20532-621: The first observation-based estimate of 3,500 km. The principal difference between the two planets is the lack of evidence for plate tectonics on Venus, possibly because its crust is too strong to subduct without water to make it less viscous . This results in reduced heat loss from the planet, preventing it from cooling and providing a likely explanation for its lack of an internally generated magnetic field . Instead, Venus may lose its internal heat in periodic major resurfacing events. In 1967, Venera 4 found Venus's magnetic field to be much weaker than that of Earth. This magnetic field

20709-477: The flagship theater for MGM and Fox . There, Bradbury learned how to sneak in and watched previews almost every week. He roller skated there, as well as all over town, as he put it, "hell-bent on getting autographs from glamorous stars. It was glorious." Among stars the young Bradbury was thrilled to encounter were Norma Shearer , Laurel and Hardy , and Ronald Colman . Sometimes he spent all day in front of Paramount Pictures or Columbia Pictures , then skated to

20886-465: The following 200 years , but most were determined to be stars in the vicinity. Alex Alemi's and David Stevenson 's 2006 study of models of the early Solar System at the California Institute of Technology shows Venus likely had at least one moon created by a huge impact event billions of years ago. About 10   million   years later, according to the study, another impact reversed

21063-640: The front row, and he reached down with a flaming sword full of electricity and he tapped me on both shoulders and then the tip of my nose and he cried, "Live, forever!" And I thought, "God, that's wonderful. How do you do that?" ... So when I left the carnival that day I stood by the carousel and I watched the horses running around and around to the music of " Beautiful Ohio " and I cried. Tears streamed down my cheeks because I knew something important had happened to me that day because of Mr. Electrico. I felt changed. And so I went home and within days I started to write. And I've never stopped. Throughout his youth, Bradbury

21240-429: The heat from the core is reheating the crust. One possibility is that Venus has no solid inner core, or that its core is not cooling, so that the entire liquid part of the core is at approximately the same temperature. Another possibility is that its core has already been completely solidified. The state of the core is highly dependent on the concentration of sulphur , which is unknown at present. Another possibility

21417-574: The heroes protecting the human-like inhabitants of Venus from dinosaurs. In the British children's television show Pathfinders to Venus (1961), the local fauna includes both pterodactyls and "apemen". The Soviet film Planeta Bur (1962) features an American–Soviet joint scientific expedition to Venus, which finds the planet teeming with various lifeforms, many resembling terrestrial species, including sentient if primitive Venusians. Science fiction author Jerry Pournelle noted that early science fiction

21594-399: The hypothesis of a spin-orbit resonance with Earth has been discounted. Venus has no natural satellites. It has several trojan asteroids : the quasi-satellite 524522 Zoozve and two other temporary trojans, 2001 CK 32 and 2012 XE 133 . In the 17th century, Giovanni Cassini reported a moon orbiting Venus, which was named Neith and numerous sightings were reported over

21771-516: The impact craters, mountains, and valleys commonly found on rocky planets. Among these are flat-topped volcanic features called " farra ", which look somewhat like pancakes and range in size from 20 to 50 km (12 to 31 mi) across, and from 100 to 1,000 m (330 to 3,280 ft) high; radial, star-like fracture systems called "novae"; features with both radial and concentric fractures resembling spider webs, known as " arachnoids "; and "coronae", circular rings of fractures sometimes surrounded by

21948-523: The insights without too much extra comment." He studied Eudora Welty for her "remarkable ability to give you atmosphere, character, and motion in a single line." Bradbury was once described as a " Midwest surrealist " and is often labeled a science-fiction writer. He resisted that categorization, however, defining science fiction as "the art of the possible." First of all, I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451 , based on reality. Science fiction

22125-643: The leg—I respond by writing them down—everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off". An imagined version of Waukegan, Green Town is a symbol of safety and home, which is often the setting for tales of the macabre and the dark fantastic. It serves as the setting of his semiautobiographical classics Dandelion Wine , Something Wicked This Way Comes , and Farewell Summer , as well as many of his short stories. In Green Town, Bradbury's favorite uncle sprouts wings, traveling carnivals conceal supernatural powers, and his grandparents provide room and board to Charles Dickens . Perhaps

22302-503: The library when I was twenty-eight years old. He told The Paris Review : "You can't learn to write in college. It's a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don't." He considered science to be 'incidental' to his writing. He claimed not to be interested in the development of science, but hoped to use it as a form of social commentary and as an allegorical technique. He described his inspiration: "My stories run up and bite me in

22479-481: The life of former Bradbury agent, close friend, mega-fan and Famous Monsters of Filmland editor Forrest J Ackerman. Bradbury's legacy was celebrated by the bookstore Fahrenheit 451 Books in Laguna Beach, California, in the 1970s and 1980s. He and his favorite illustrator, Joseph Mugnaini , attended the opening of an addition to the store in the mid-1980s. It closed its doors in 1987, but in 1990, another shop of

22656-402: The lightning rate is at least half that on Earth, however other instruments have not detected lightning at all. The origin of any lightning remains unclear, but could originate from clouds or Venusian volcanoes . In 2007, Venus Express discovered that a huge double atmospheric polar vortex exists at the south pole. Venus Express discovered, in 2011, that an ozone layer exists high in

22833-580: The literary mainstream". Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois , to Esther (née Moberg) Bradbury (1888–1966), a Swedish immigrant , and Leonard Spaulding Bradbury (1890–1957), a power and telephone lineman of English ancestry. He was given the middle name "Douglas" after actor Douglas Fairbanks . Bradbury was surrounded by an extended family during his early childhood and formative years in Waukegan. An aunt read him short stories when he

23010-492: The loss of most of Venus's water during the first billion years after it formed. However, the planet may have retained a dynamo for its first 2–3 billion years, so the water loss may have occurred more recently. The erosion has increased the ratio of higher-mass deuterium to lower-mass hydrogen in the atmosphere 100 times compared to the rest of the solar system. Venus has a dense atmosphere composed of 96.5% carbon dioxide , 3.5% nitrogen—both exist as supercritical fluids at

23187-514: The lowest gravitational potential difference to Earth than any other planet, needing the lowest delta-v to transfer between them. Tidally Venus exerts the third strongest tidal force on Earth, after the Moon and the Sun, though significantly less. To the naked eye , Venus appears as a white point of light brighter than any other planet or star (apart from the Sun). The planet's mean apparent magnitude

23364-488: The many visions was of a tidally locked Venus with half of the planet always exposed to the Sun and the other half in perpetual darkness—as was widely believed to be the case with Mercury at the time. This concept was introduced by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli in 1880 and appeared in Garrett P. Serviss 's A Columbus of Space (1909) and Garret Smith 's Between Worlds (1919), among others. A common assumption

23541-771: The money to head to New York for the First World Science Fiction Convention in New York City, and funded Bradbury's fanzine, Futuria Fantasia . Bradbury wrote most of its four issues, each volume printed in limited number due to publishing costs. Between 1940 and 1947, he was a contributor to Rob Wagner 's film magazine, Script . In 1939, Bradbury joined Laraine Day 's Wilshire Players Guild, where for two years he wrote and acted in several plays. They were, as Bradbury later described, "so incredibly bad" that he gave up play-writing for two decades. His first paid piece, "Pendulum", written with Henry Hasse ,

23718-420: The most accessible destination and a useful gravity assist waypoint for interplanetary flights from Earth. Venus figures prominently in human culture and in the history of astronomy. Orbiting inferiorly (inside of Earth's orbit), it always appears close to the Sun in Earth's sky, as either a "morning star" or an "evening star". While this is also true for Mercury , Venus appears more prominent, since it

23895-404: The orbit of Venus is slightly inclined relative to Earth's orbit, most inferior conjunctions with Earth, which occur every synodic period of 1.6 years, do not produce a transit of Venus above Earth. Consequently, Venus transits above Earth only occur when an inferior conjunction takes place during some days of June or December, the time where the orbits of Venus and Earth cross a straight line with

24072-405: The planet underwent a global resurfacing event 300–600   million years ago, followed by a decay in volcanism. Whereas Earth's crust is in continuous motion, Venus is thought to be unable to sustain such a process. Without plate tectonics to dissipate heat from its mantle, Venus instead undergoes a cyclical process in which mantle temperatures rise until they reach a critical level that weakens

24249-479: The planet's conditions. Bradbury revisited the rainy vision of Venus in " All Summer in a Day " (1954), where the Sun is only visible through the cloud cover once every seven years. In German science fiction , the Perry Rhodan novels (launched in 1961) used the vision of Venus as a jungle world, while the protagonist in K. H. Scheer 's sixteenth ZBV  [ de ] novel Raumpatrouille Nebelwelt (1963)

24426-421: The planet's spin direction and the resulting tidal deceleration caused the Venusian moon gradually to spiral inward until it collided with Venus. If later impacts created moons, these were removed in the same way. An alternative explanation for the lack of satellites is the effect of strong solar tides, which can destabilize large satellites orbiting the inner terrestrial planets. The orbital space of Venus has

24603-581: The planet's surface with a density 6.5% that of water —and traces of other gases including sulphur dioxide . The mass of its atmosphere is 92 times that of Earth's, whereas the pressure at its surface is about 93 times that at Earth's—a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of nearly 1 km ( 5 ⁄ 8  mi) under Earth's ocean surfaces. The density at the surface is 65 kg/m (4.1 lb/cu ft), 6.5% that of water or 50 times as dense as Earth's atmosphere at 293 K (20 °C; 68 °F) at sea level. The CO 2 -rich atmosphere generates

24780-500: The poles. Dean McLaughlin 's The Fury from Earth (1963) likewise features a dry, hostile Venus, this time rebelling against Earth. While these inhospitable portrayals more accurately reflected the emerging scientific data, they nevertheless generally underestimated the harshness of the planet's conditions. In scientific circles, life on Venus was increasingly viewed as unlikely from the 1930s on, as more advanced methods for observing Venus suggested that its atmosphere lacked oxygen. In

24957-616: The popular quiz show You Bet Your Life hosted by Groucho Marx . During his introductory comments and on-air banter with Marx, Bradbury briefly discussed some of his books and other works, including giving an overview of " The Veldt ", his short story published six years earlier in The Saturday Evening Post under the title "The World the Children Made". Bradbury was a consultant for the United States Pavilion at

25134-493: The process of being terraformed. A terraformed Venus reverting to its natural state is mentioned in Clarke's The Ghost from the Grand Banks (1991). In anime , the terraforming of Venus appears in the film Venus Wars (1989), where it is precipitated by a comet impact removing atmosphere and adding water to the planet, and the television show Cowboy Bebop (1998), where it is carried out by introduced plant life creating

25311-527: The publishing rights for Fahrenheit 451 came up for renewal in December 2011, Bradbury permitted its publication in electronic form provided that the publisher, Simon & Schuster , allowed the e-book to be digitally downloaded by any library patron. The title remains the only book in the Simon & Schuster catalog for which this is possible. Several comic-book writers have adapted Bradbury's stories, particularly

25488-446: The pulp version of Venus is real, and the anthology Old Venus (2015) edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois collects newly-written works in the style of older stories about the now-outdated vision of Venus. The role-playing games Space: 1889 (1989) and Mutant Chronicles (1993) likewise use a deliberately retro depiction of Venus. Even before the hellish conditions on Venus were known, some authors imagined it as

25665-718: The radio show Chandu the Magician , and every night when the show went off the air, he wrote out the entire script from memory. As a teen in Beverly Hills , he often visited his mentor and friend, science-fiction writer Bob Olsen , sharing ideas and maintaining contact. In 1936, at a secondhand bookstore in Hollywood, Bradbury discovered a handbill promoting meetings of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society . Excited to find others who shared his interest, he joined

25842-529: The same name (with different owners) opened in Carlsbad, California. In the 1980s and 1990s, Bradbury served on the advisory board of the Los Angeles Student Film Institute . Bradbury lived in his parents' home until, in 1947, at age 27, he married Marguerite McClure (January 16, 1922 – November 24, 2003). They remained married until her death. Maggie, as she was affectionately called,

26019-433: The scene, people were saying, 'Oh my God, I'm so afraid.' I hate people like that—I call them the neo- Luddites " and: "In a sense, [computers] are simply books. Books are all over the place, and computers will be, too." He resisted the conversion of his work into e-books , saying in 2010: "We have too many cellphones. We've got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now." When

26196-449: The situation as a "cosmic Rorschach test ". Venus thus became a popular setting in early science fiction , but that same versatility meant that it did not develop a counterpart to the image of Mars in fiction made popular by Percival Lowell around the turn of the century—with supposed Martian canals and a civilization that built them—and it never reached the same level of popularity. On the subject, Westfahl writes that while Mars has

26373-442: The size of South America. A network of fractures and faults covers much of this area. There is recent evidence of lava flow on Venus (2024), such as flows on Sif Mons, a shield volcano, and on Niobe Planitia, a flat plain. There are visible calderas . The planet has few impact craters , demonstrating that the surface is relatively young, at 300–600   million years old. Venus has some unique surface features in addition to

26550-523: The size of the hot spots could not be measured, but are likely to have been in the 800–1,100 K (527–827 °C; 980–1,520 °F) range, relative to a normal temperature of 740 K (467 °C; 872 °F). In 2023, scientists reexamined topographical images of the Maat Mons region taken by the Magellan orbiter. Using computer simulations, they determined that the topography had changed during an 8-month interval, and concluded that active volcanism

26727-424: The story's jungle-like setting as an homage to the image of Venus found in early science fiction. Sarah Zettel 's The Quiet Invasion (2000) features colonization of Venus by extraterrestrials better adapted to the planet's conditions. As scientific knowledge of Venus advanced, science fiction authors endeavored to keep pace, particularly by focusing on the concept of terraforming Venus . An early treatment of

26904-410: The strongest greenhouse effect in the Solar System, creating surface temperatures of at least 735 K (462 °C; 864 °F). This makes the Venusian surface hotter than Mercury 's, which has a minimum surface temperature of 53 K (−220 °C; −364 °F) and maximum surface temperature of 700 K (427 °C; 801 °F), even though Venus is nearly twice Mercury's distance from

27081-443: The sunlight that falls on them back into space, and since they cover the whole planet they prevent visual observation of Venus's surface. The permanent cloud cover means that although Venus is closer than Earth to the Sun, it receives less sunlight on the ground, with only 10% of the received sunlight reaching the surface, resulting in average daytime levels of illumination at the surface of 14,000 lux , comparable to that on Earth "in

27258-459: The surface are slow, moving at a few kilometres per hour, but because of the high density of the atmosphere at the surface, they exert a significant amount of force against obstructions, and transport dust and small stones across the surface. This alone would make it difficult for a human to walk through, even without the heat, pressure, and lack of oxygen. Above the dense CO 2 layer are thick clouds, consisting mainly of sulfuric acid , which

27435-489: The surface atmosphere a supercritical fluid out of mainly supercritical carbon dioxide and some supercritical nitrogen. The Venusian surface was a subject of speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the 20th century. Venera landers in 1975 and 1982 returned images of a surface covered in sediment and relatively angular rocks. The surface was mapped in detail by Magellan in 1990–91. The ground shows evidence of extensive volcanism, and

27612-503: The surface. After a period of 600 million to several billion years, solar forcing from rising luminosity of the Sun and possibly large volcanic resurfacing caused the evaporation of the original water and the current atmosphere. A runaway greenhouse effect was created once a critical level of greenhouse gases (including water) was added to its atmosphere. Although the surface conditions on Venus are no longer hospitable to any Earth-like life that may have formed before this event, there

27789-420: The surrounding basaltic plains measured by Venus Express and Magellan , indicating a different, possibly a more felsic , mineral assemblage. The mechanism to generate a large amount of felsic crust usually requires the presence of water ocean and plate tectonics , implying that habitable condition had existed on early Venus with large bodies of water at some point. However, the nature of tessera terrains

27966-487: The theories and then popular science fiction about Venus being a habitable or inhabited planet. Venus is one of the four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, meaning that it is a rocky body like Earth. It is similar to Earth in size and mass and is often described as Earth's "sister" or "twin". Venus is close to spherical due to its slow rotation. Venus has a diameter of 12,103.6 km (7,520.8 mi)—only 638.4 km (396.7 mi) less than Earth's—and its mass

28143-654: The trope of Venus being populated by beautiful women, and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968), the second of two English-language adaptations of Planeta Bur (the first being Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet , 1965), portrays the Venusians as "half-naked sex-appealing blond sirens" with supernatural or psychic powers. A theme of a Venusian visitor to Earth is seen in some works, such as Lach-Szyrma's A Voice from Another World and William Windsor 's Loma,

28320-508: Was "a God-given thing, and I'm so grateful, so, so grateful. The best description of my career as a writer is 'At play in the fields of the Lord'." Bradbury was a close friend of Charles Addams , and Addams illustrated 1946's "Homecoming", the first of Bradbury's stories about the Elliotts, a family that resembled Addams's own Addams Family , transplanted to rural Illinois. Addams and Bradbury planned

28497-418: Was 14. The family arrived with only US$ 40 (equivalent to $ 911 in 2023), which paid for rent and food until his father finally found a job making wire at a cable company for $ 14 a week (equivalent to $ 319 in 2023), allowing them to stay in Hollywood. Bradbury attended Los Angeles High School and was active in the drama club. He often roller-skated through Hollywood in hopes of meeting celebrities. Among

28674-540: Was a boy, he met a young girl at a lake edge and she went out into the water and never came back. Years later, as he wrote about it in " The Lake ", tears flowed from him. He recognized he had taken the leap from emulating the many writers he admired to connecting with his voice as a writer. When later asked about source of the lyrical power of his prose, he replied: "From reading so much poetry every day of my life. My favorite writers have been those who've said things well." He said: "If you're reluctant to weep, you won't live

28851-555: Was a child. This period provided foundations for both the author and his stories. In Bradbury's fiction, 1920s Waukegan becomes Green Town, Illinois. The Bradbury family lived in Tucson, Arizona , during 1926–1927 and 1932–1933 while their father pursued employment, each time returning to Waukegan. While in Tucson, Bradbury attended Amphi Junior High School and Roskruge Junior High School. They eventually settled in Los Angeles in 1934 when Bradbury

29028-542: Was a strong supporter of public libraries, raising money to prevent the closure of several libraries in California facing budgetary cuts. He said "libraries raised me", and shunned colleges and universities, comparing his own lack of funds during the Depression with poor contemporary students. His opinion varied on modern technology. In 1985 Bradbury wrote: "I see nothing but good coming from computers. When they first appeared on

29205-440: Was about 18. Bradbury's favorite writers growing up included Katherine Anne Porter , Edith Wharton and Jessamyn West . He loved the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs , especially his John Carter of Mars series; The Warlord of Mars impressed him so much that at age 12, he wrote his own sequel. The young Bradbury was also a cartoonist and loved to illustrate. He wrote about Tarzan and drew his own Sunday panels. He listened to

29382-492: Was an avid reader and writer and knew at a young age that he was "going into one of the arts". Bradbury began writing his own stories at age 12 (1931), sometimes writing on butcher paper. In his youth, he spent much time in the Carnegie Library in Waukegan, reading such authors as H. G. Wells , Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe . At 12, he began writing traditional horror stories and said he tried to imitate Poe until he

29559-767: Was colonized by an ancient, advanced civilization from Earth, such as Atlantis in Warren E. Sanders 's " Sheridan Becomes Ambassador " (1932) and Polish science fiction writer Władysław Umiński 's Zaziemskie światy (1948) or Ancient Egypt in Jeffery Lloyd Castle  [ de ] 's Vanguard to Venus (1957), while the Treens in the Dan Dare comics that launched in 1950 are kidnapped humans that have been genetically engineered to survive on Venus. Comics superhero Tommy Tomorrow in "Frame-Up at Planeteer Academy" (1962) has

29736-403: Was his first great love. He said that had he not discovered writing, he would have become a magician. Bradbury claimed a wide variety of influences, and described discussions he might have had with his favorite writers, among them Robert Frost , William Shakespeare , John Steinbeck , Aldous Huxley , and Thomas Wolfe . From Steinbeck, he learned "how to write objectively and yet insert all of

29913-623: Was increasingly portrayed as more challenging than colonization of Mars . Several writers have suggested that colonists on the surface of Venus might have to lead a nomadic life to stay in a favourable position relative to the Sun. Colonizing Venus is a major theme in Jack Williamson 's Seetee series (1949–1951), Rolf Garner 's trilogy beginning with Resurgent Dust (1953), and Soviet science fiction writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky 's The Land of Crimson Clouds (1959). In Simak's " Hunger Death " (1938) colonists on Venus contend with

30090-622: Was invited by Forrest J. Ackerman to attend the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society, which at the time met at Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles. There he met Robert A. Heinlein , Emil Petaja , Fredric Brown , Henry Kuttner , Leigh Brackett and Jack Williamson . Bradbury's first published story was " Hollerbochen's Dilemma ", in the January 1938 number of Ackerman's fanzine Imagination! . In July 1939, Ackerman and his girlfriend Morojo gave 19-year-old Bradbury

30267-506: Was published in the pulp magazine Super Science Stories in November 1941, for which he earned $ 15. Bradbury sold his first solo story, "The Lake", for $ 13.75 at 22 and became a full-time writer by 24. His first collection of short stories, Dark Carnival , was published in 1947 by Arkham House , a small press in Sauk City, Wisconsin , owned by August Derleth . Reviewing Dark Carnival for

30444-668: Was rife with images of exotic Venusian life: "thick fungus that ate men alive; a world populated with strange animals, dragons and dinosaurs and swamp creatures resembling the beastie from the Black Lagoon ". Sentient plant life appears in several stories including Weinbaum's "Parasite Planet" sequel " The Lotus Eaters " (1935), the Superman comic book story " The Three Tough Teen-Agers " (1962) by Jerry Siegel and Al Plastino , and The Outer Limits episode " Cold Hands, Warm Heart " (1964).A sentient Venusian worm called Mister Mind appears as

30621-513: Was that the Venusian clouds were made of water, as clouds on Earth are, and consequently the planet was most often portrayed as having a wet climate. This sometimes meant vast oceans, but more commonly swamps and/or jungles. Another influential idea was the early version of the nebular hypothesis of Solar System formation which held that the planets are older the further from the Sun they are, meaning that Venus should be younger than Earth and might resemble earlier periods in Earth's history such as

30798-458: Was the cause. Almost a thousand impact craters on Venus are evenly distributed across its surface. On other cratered bodies, such as Earth and the Moon, craters show a range of states of degradation. On the Moon, degradation is caused by subsequent impacts, whereas on Earth it is caused by wind and rain erosion. On Venus, about 85% of the craters are in pristine condition. The number of craters, together with their well-preserved condition, indicates

30975-469: Was the only woman he ever dated. They had four daughters: Susan, Ramona, Bettina and Alexandra. Bradbury never obtained a driver's license, but used public transportation or his bicycle. He was raised Baptist by his parents, who were infrequent churchgoers. As an adult, Bradbury said he considered himself a "delicatessen religionist" who resisted categorization of his beliefs and took guidance from both Eastern and Western faiths. He felt that his career

31152-544: Was the special-effects expert Ray Harryhausen , who was best man at Bradbury's wedding. During a BAFTA 2010 awards tribute honoring Harryhausen's 90th birthday, Bradbury spoke about having first met him at Forrest J Ackerman's house when they were both 18. Their shared love for science fiction, King Kong , and The Fountainhead was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. These early influences inspired them to believe in themselves and to affirm their career choices. After their first meeting, they kept in touch at least once

31329-577: Was well known, and he wrote humanistic science fiction, which influenced me to dare to be human instead of mechanical." During his young adulthood, Bradbury read stories published in Astounding Science Fiction , and read everything by Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke , as well as the early writings of Theodore Sturgeon and A. E. van Vogt . The family lived about four blocks from the Fox Uptown Theatre on Western Avenue in Los Angeles,

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