Line #92 Main/VenusIsWet


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5	[[quoteright:350:[[Magazine/FantasticAdventures https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/venuscity.png]]]]
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7	->''The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shaved the grass and tunneled the soil and molted the bushes. It shrank men's hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped.''
8	-->-- WeatherReportOpening of ''The Long Rain'' by Creator/RayBradbury
9
10	In the early days of science fiction, the one thing most people knew about the planet UsefulNotes/{{Venus}} (or rather, most people who knew ''anything'' about Venus or any other planet in our Solar System for that matter, which at the time included only a very limited group of enthusiasts with university education) was that it has a permanent cloud cover over its entire surface. This led to many depictions of Venus as a planet where it rains a lot, often to the point where it's a SingleBiomePlanet covered in oceans, or at least swamps or rainforests. Relatedly, there was a theory at the time that the planets were formed in reverse order from their proximity to the sun -- therefore, just as Mars was thought of as [[OnceGreenMars a much older world than Earth (and a glimpse of its possible future)]], Venus was believed to be a younger planet, with all the humidity and heat of our world's distant past. Therefore, speculation on what sort of life might be found on Venus tended towards [[JungleOpera stereotypes about the tropics]] and [[HollywoodPrehistory the ancient past]]: Venus was often imagined as going through its own AgeOfReptiles, full of LivingDinosaurs or LizardFolk, and any HumanAliens encountered would be very much of the NubileSavage GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe variety. All this dovetailed nicely with the planet's [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Roman namesake]], as it seemed very appropriate that a planet named for a goddess of fertility and femininity (who was born from seafoam) should be so fecund and {{water\|IsWomanly}}y.
11
12	In the 1960s, the planet was visited by unmanned probes which definitively established that the clouds were sulfuric acid, the atmosphere was largely carbon dioxide, and that due to the resulting greenhouse effect, the temperature at the planet's dry and barren surface was nearly 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480°C). Instead of being able to walk around on Venus, anyone foolish enough to somehow [[TooDumbToLive set foot on its surface]] would be quickly crushed flat by the immense weight and pressure of the planet's atmosphere, then reduced to [[ImMelting a seething puddle]] of [[LudicrousGibs blood and gore]] under the effects of Venus's incredible temperatures and the sulfuric acid present everywhere in its air.[[note]]To this day, no probe on the surface of Venus has lasted more than 127 minutes, the record set by ''Venera 13''.[[/note]]
13
14	As a result, this is now a DeadHorseTrope used only by authors deliberately harking back to the old days of science fiction, or in works involving {{terraform}}ing. Otherwise, the modern stereotype of Venus is as our friendly neighbourhood DeathWorld.
15
16	[[http://www.universetoday.com/23651/venus-possibly-had-continents-oceans/ Evidence reported in 2009]] suggests, however, that Venus ''did'' once have water [[https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.00706 and could have been habitable as recently as around 700 million years ago,]] but Venus's lack of a magnetic field caused that water to become disassociated into its component hydrogen and oxygen atoms via solar radiation, leaving nothing to prevent a runaway greenhouse effect and, as a result, turning Venus into the dry pressure cooker it is today.
17
18	This trope, OnceGreenMars, and StrollingOnJupiter are {{subtrope}}s to ScienceMarchesOn and therefore, more common in sci-fi works of the TwoFistedTales or PlanetaryRomance varieties. May overlap with HungryJungle and SwampsAreEvil.
19	----
20	!!Examples:
21
22	[[foldercontrol]]
23
24	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
25	* ''Anime/CowboyBebop'': Downplayed. While Venus has been {{terraform}}ed to the point that people can live there, the surface is still a vast desert. However, numerous floating islands composed of tropical plants were constructed and served as both a method for introducing oxygen and a home for the colonists, which, incidentally, is the most realistic way Venus could be colonized.
26	* The religious film ''Anime/TheLawsOfTheSun'' states Venus was once a fertile planet because El Miore created plants, animals, and then human-like people to achieve evolution in there, making Venus a futuristic utopia until a cataclysm struck the planet, turning it into the barren, deserted planet it is now.
27	[[/folder]]
28
29	[[folder:Comic Books]]
30	* ''ComicBook/DCOneMillion'': In the far future, all the planets of Earth's system have been made habitable via advanced terraforming technology. In the case of Venus, it is now a lush, green, paradise world similar to [[ComicBook/WonderWoman Themyscira]], where the Amazons are able to live unmolested. Until the antagonist's EvilPlan does so, that is.
31	* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': Venus is a lush planet full of plant life and lakes inhabited by winged women who worship Venus and are allied with the Amazons whose culture is very similar to their own.
32	[[/folder]]
33
34	[[folder:Comic Strips]]
35	* ''ComicStrip/SafeHavens'': Venus was once inhabited by an aquatic species, but when the climate began changing to uninhabitable levels, they left to find a new home. They tried Earth first but found it too dangerous. However, those that were left behind on Earth when the rest left are the ancestors of [[spoiler:[[OurMermaidsAreDifferent merfolk.]]]]
36	[[/folder]]
37
38	[[folder:Fan Works]]
39	* ''Fanfic/CoreLine'': One of the various reality changes done by the Vanishing was the transformation of Venus into a jungle planet out of pulp fiction, inhabited by characters from the same... and a hard-core DeathWorld nasty enough that any kind of NatureHero that lives there (well away from civilization) is astonishingly superhuman.
40	%%* ''Fanfic/LeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemenTempestRewrite'': As per the tradition of classic pulp sci-fi.
41	* ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager'' is written InTheStyleOf a 1950's sci-fi magazine serial. In Chakotay's backstory, he took part in a "pacification" campaign against the native inhabitants of Venus, which is described as a world of swamps and jungles under neverending rains. Spacefleet eventually resorted to defoliating everything within twenty miles of its colony, only for the rain to turn the barren area into a swampy morass filled with parasites.
42
43	[[/folder]]
44
45	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
46	* ''Film/TwentyMillionMilesToEarth'' downplays this trope, made during a time when it was generally played very straight. While Venus is still described as having life (and the main alien featured looks distinctly dinosaurian), it is also shown to be inhospitably hot with an atmosphere toxic to humans.
47	* ''Film/QueenOfOuterSpace'': In order to use StockFootage from ''Flight to Mars'', the rocketship is shown crashlanding on an icy world. Our heroes then trek "below the snowline", instantly appearing in a jungle where they make FirstContact with the Venusians, all [[LadyLand gorgeous dames]] who trek around their wet swampy world in short skirts and high heels.
48	* ''Film/PlanetOfStorms'' (''Planeta Bur'') has Venus depicted as a cloudy, swampy place with at least one ocean, and plenty of dinosaurs running around.
49	[[/folder]]
50
51	[[folder:Literature]]
52	!!By Writer:
53	* Creator/DavidDrake: ''Surface Action'' and ''The Jungle'', collected in ''Seas of Venus'', are based on Creator/HenryKuttner's ''Clash By Night''. In ''The Jungle'', the crew of a gunboat are forced to trek across a Venusian HungryJungle. Because the cities are underwater, they are off-limits for warfare and, like in Drake's ''Hammer's Slammers'', the warriors are mercenaries.
54	* Creator/HenryKuttner: In "Clash by Night" and ''Fury'', Venus is an ocean world where the landmasses are dominated by an uninhabitable jungle, forcing the colonists from Earth to live in underwater cities and wage their wars by sea.
55	* Creator/IsaacAsimov:
56	** ''Literature/LuckyStarrAndTheOceansOfVenus'': Published in 1954, Venus is portrayed as an [[SingleBiomePlanet ocean planet]] with seas and kelp (and domed [[UnderwaterCity underwater cities]]). During the 1978 republishing, Dr. Asimov includes a foreword explaining how ScienceMarchesOn, including the 1962 Mariner II probe and 1964 radio telescopes, which established that Venus was too hot to contain liquid water and had a day longer than a year.
57	** "Literature/TheWateryPlace": The irascible sheriff chosen for FirstContact is annoyed by these foreigners from "[[TitleDrop the watery place]]" and tells them to get out since nobody wants to be bothered by them. So they arrange for Earth to be forever isolated. He thought they said {{UsefulNotes/Venice}}!
58	** "Literature/TheWeaponTooDreadfulToUse" (1939): Venus is covered in brown-grey clouds that release perpetually rains. The Earthmen living there build [[DomedHometown domed cities]] to keep out the wetness ([[FantasticRacism and Venusians]]).
59	* Creator/LeighBrackett's short stories, including "Lorelei of the Red Mist", "The Moon That Vanished", and "Enchantress of Venus", depict Venus as warm, wet, and cloudy; most of its surface is ocean or low-lying swamp.
60	* Creator/PoulAnderson:
61	** "The Big Rain": the eponymous rain is entirely man-made due to {{terraform}}ing.
62	** "Sister Planet": Venus is an ocean world with no landmasses. In a variation from the norm, it doesn't have a human-breathable atmosphere.
63	* Creator/RayBradbury:
64	** "The Long Rain" (published in 1950): A rocket crashes on Venus, where it rains constantly. The crew must locate a Sun Dome in which they can find shelter, or die.
65	--->''It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping in the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains.''
66	** "Literature/AllSummerInADay" (published in 1954) is set in a colony on Venus, where it rains continually and the sun comes out for only an hour once every seven years.
67	* Creator/RobertAHeinlein: In both ''Literature/{{Space Cadet\|Heinlein}}'' and ''Literature/BetweenPlanets'', Venus is a humid, swampy jungle. In the former, an attempt to land a RetroRocket on the surface leads to disaster when the rocket topples over in the swampy ground, stranding the protagonists. In ''Between Planets'', the swamps and jungles prove useful for guerilla warfare when resisting TheWarOfEarthlyAggression.
68
69	!!By Work:
70	* ''Literature/{{Amtor}}'' depicts Venus ("Amtor" to its inhabitants) as an oceanic world with a tropical climate.
71	* ''Literature/BetweenPlanets'': Venus is a humid, swampy jungle planet covered by dense fogs and home to a species of sapient, six-legged multi-ton saurians,
72	* ''Literature/ChooseYourOwnAdventure'': One of the good endings of "Your Very Own Robot" ends with the protagonist and robot going to Venus, which is a sticky, gooey mire; later she has to play dumb when her parents ask about the goo on her shoes.
73	* ''Literature/TheCosmicExpress'': Venus is a habitable jungle planet similar to pre-Cenozoic Earth, complete with dinosaurs.
74	* ''Literature/CourseOfEmpire'' by Richard Wilson: It's mentioned that the English sent a shipment of raincoats with the colonizers of Venus, but it turned out the planet had a mist that rose from the ground instead of water falling from the sky, making the raincoats useless because you got wet anyway.
75	* ''Literature/TheDoorsOfHisFaceTheLampsOfHisMouth'' is an early example of a deliberately retro Venus, with oceans containing monstrous fish.
76	* "Literature/InTheWallsOfEryx", one of Creator/HPLovecraft's ventures into straight science fiction, is set on a Venus that has a tropical climate and is filled with lush, swampy jungles with alien LizardFolk. The atmosphere is not human-breathable, however, and the protagonist mentions having to wear a breathing mask and periodically changing filter cartridges.
77	* ''Literature/IronGold'': 80% of Venus's surface is covered by oceans, with the remaining surface consisting of tropical islands.
78	* ''Literature/LastAndFirstMen'' depicts Venus as an ocean world with fierce storms and torrential rains, covered in thick banks of clouds, stewing in temperatures so high that only the poles are just barely habitable to the Fifth Men and home to its own sort of aquatic lifeforms; as part of their terraforming process, the Fifth Men also seed it with island-sized masses of floating marine plants... However, the atmosphere lacks oxygen until it's terraformed by the Fifth Men, [[HostileTerraforming regrettably wiping out the natives]]. The Seventh Men are engineered with wings to fly over the churning seas several millennia after the air becomes breathable to Terran life.
79	* ''Literature/NorthwestSmith'': The stories depict Venus as dark and swampy.
80	* ''Literature/OldVenus'' is a 2015 anthology that homages this trope, edited by Creator/GeorgeRRMartin and Gardner Dozois. All are contemporary sci-fi stories set on a watery or jungle-clad Venus.
81	* "Literature/ParasitePlanet" by Creator/StanleyGWeinbaum features a variation -- Venus is a TidallyLockedPlanet, where one hemisphere a sun-baked desert and the other submerged under a sea of ice. However, the planet's "twilight zone" -- where the story takes place -- is a perfect example of this trope: hot, steamy, with luxuriant flora and fauna [[EverythingTryingToKillYou hell-bent on eating you]] (yes, even the plants).
82	* ''Literature/{{Perelandra}}'': Venus is an ocean world where the only piece of dry land is a mountain emerging from the depths. The Perelandrans live on enormous rafts of matted plant life.
83	* ''Literature/PodkayneOfMars'': Venus is depicted as a swampy and smog-covered planet.
84	* ''Literature/{{Radiance}}'' is an homage to inter-war science fiction in which all of the worlds of the solar system are inhabited by complex life and at least moderately hospitable to humans. Venus, where many of the key events of the novel take place, is depicted as a wet world of marshes, lakes, and seas, but Neptune is the novel's out-and-out waterworld with no land at all.
85	* ''Literature/PerryRhodan'': In early issues of the series, Venus is described as a lush jungle world teeming with life. After initial exploration, mankind colonizes the planet.
86	* ''Literature/TheSkyPeople'': Venus is a lush, fertile world similar in climate to Earth's Mesozoic, although the jungles share space with floodplains, mountain ranges, and other biomes. It is home to a wide variety of life from the breadth of Earth's evolutionary history, including dinosaurs, giant insects, and tribes of humans and neanderthals, which were seeded there by the mysterious "Lords of Creation".
87	* ''Literature/TheSpaceMerchants'': Venus is portrayed as a world of "verdant valleys, crystal lakes, brilliant mountain vistas"... in Fowler Schocken advertising artists' impressions of what it ''might'' look like after decades of terraforming. In the present, Venus is devoid of water or a breathable atmosphere.
88	* ''Literature/TomCorbettSpaceCadet'': ''Revolt on Venus'' depicts Venus as a jungle world.
89	[[/folder]]
90
91	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
92	* ''Series/{{Cosmos}}'': Creator/CarlSagan lists the theories about how Venus could be before spacecrafts found the hot, hard facts. Among others, besides the lush world already mentioned, was that the planet was covered in a global ocean where part of the carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere would have dissolved. In other words, a sparkling water sea.
93	[[/folder]]
94
95	[[folder:Podcasts]]
96	* ''Podcast/TwilightHistories'': “Blue Dragons” takes place in a world where Venus has been terraformed into a habitable world. Your mission is to find out who did this and how they accomplished it.
97	[[/folder]]
98
99	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
100	* ''TabletopGame/BuckRogersXXVC'': A terraformed Venus is a lush, swampy jungle with frequent rain. However, like the actual planet, this liquid is not water but ''acid'' with the genetically-engineered "native" life all adapted to these conditions.
101	* ''Leaving Earth 1956-1976'': It's possible to explore Venus and reveal a world like this. Or you could find it to be as hot, crushing, and inhospitable as the Venus we know (and love?). This game is focused on the space race, and recapturing the fact we didn't know the truth about these worlds before sending probes there -- both realistic and theoretical possible options exist in the game and the true nature of each planet is random from those.
102	* ''TabletopGame/MutantChronicles'': Venus is more diverse than other examples. While the large area around the equator is sweltering jungle, further north or south things become more temperate. Closer to the Rings of Winter, it's very similar to North America
103	* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' and its sci-fi spinoff ''TabletopGame/{{Starfinder}}'' are both set in a solar system loosely resembling ours, though filtered through a very pulpy ScienceFantasy lens. The second planet from their sun, Castrovel, is, therefore, a throwback to these older portrayals of Venus, a jungle world inhabited by a [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe beautiful]] and [[LadyLand matriarchal]] race of psychic [[HumanAliens humanoids]] called the lashunta. Castrovel is also [[AlienFairFolk the original home]] of the elves.
104	* ''TabletopGame/RocketAge'''s version of Venus plays this one pretty straight, and is dominated by {{hungry jungle}}s, impenetrable fog, and dinosaurs. The colonial powers of Earth vie for control of the planet's resources, while the native Venusians - a race of gorilla-like {{warrior poet}}s - do their best to hang on.
105	* ''TabletopGame/Space1889'': Venus is a swamp planet inhabited by lizard-men and dinosaurs. Its magnetic field destroys the liftwood the British use for their spaceships, so initially [[KaiserReich German]] [[ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld ether Zeppelins]] were used to colonize it.
106	* ''TabletopGame/UrbanJungle'': Venus is a swamp and ocean world inhabited by colorful bird people who spend most of their lives flying. It also has an atmospheric toxic to Earthlings and Tellurians.
107	[[/folder]]
108
109	[[folder:Video Games]]
110	* ''VideoGame/{{Destiny}}'': Venus ''was'' once the 900-degree world that we know, but the Traveler helped humanity {{terraform}} it, and now it's a wet and drippy jungle world.
111	* ''VideoGame/MaxBlasterAndDorisDeLightningAgainstTheParrotCreaturesOfVenus'': Venus is a proper pulp-serial jungle, with [[QuicksandSucks random quicksand pools]], snakes [[EverythingTryingToKillYou cunningly disguised as vines]] and BirdPeople natives.
112	* ''VideoGame/DestroyAllHumansPathOfTheFuron'': Pox claims that Venus used to be lush and sustained life before the Furon Empire turned into a "self-perpetuating inferno". While it is never clarified as to ''why'' they did that (although it can't be hard to guess with [[AxCrazy the Furons]]), the last remaining thing from this time in Venus's history are spore samples from a carnivorous plant species that are used as ammo for the Venus Human Trap weapon.
113	* ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'': {{Justified\|Trope}}. Venus had been partially terraformed by Orokin {{Precursors}} in the distant past, but rather than turning it into a lush jungle they only managed to cool it off, turning vast segments of the planet into frozen wastelands covered in artificial snow (the snow is not water, but synthetical cooling liquid) and poor in vegetation. These conditions remain only due to the remnant terraforming machines that [[RagnarokProofing managed to last centuries working non-stop]], and without them, the planet would presumably return to its natural state as we know it.
114	** It's mentioned in [[AllThereInTheManual the Codex]] that the majority of the planet is similar to its original state. The Orb Vallis (a large snowy territory containing several of the aforementioned terraforming devices) is described by one of its denizens as "A blizzard in a firestorm", and is bordered on all sides by a perpetual storm, presumably caused by the temperature difference.
115	** [[spoiler:Following "The New War", the trope is played a bit straighter, as the Sentients fully repaired the terraforming tower [[TheBadGuyWins after they took over the Origin System]]. The frozen parts of the Vallis have thawed enough that the area now looks more like a snow-covered grassland than a barren Tundra]].
116	* ''VideoGame/WolfensteinIITheNewColossus'': Discussed. One of the soldiers stationed there comments how he thought Venus would have more trees, having read a book about it called "Pirates something" by "that guy who wrote the jungle boy stories" which depicted Venus as a world of lush jungles and rivers (he's referring to "Pirates of Venus", the first of the ''Literature/{{Amtor}}'' series written by Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs).
117	* ''VideoGame/XaindSleena'': Venus is a [[SingleBiomePlanet jungle world]] with big insects and carnivore flowers and where EverythingIsTryingToKillYou.
118	[[/folder]]
119
120	[[folder:Webcomics]]
121	* ''Webcomic/AMiracleOfScience'' puts a different spin on the trope, giving Venus a CyberpunkWithAChanceOfRain and CityNoir vibe and blaming the constant rain on a side effect of the {{terraform}}ing process.
122	* ''Webcomic/{{Narbonic}}'': In the classic early SF approach, Venus is a thriving, aquatic jungle-world populated by [[FishPeople fish-like savages]]. Even their [[ThoseMagnificentFlyingMachines spaceships are fish-shaped]]. Mars is, just as classically, a rocky desolation.
123	-->'''Madblood''': Venus! Mist-shrouded world of sweltering secrets and hothouse passion... the morning-star ever beckoning, bright and beguiling live a vast, sparkly woman... [[{{Bathos}} it smells awful]].
124	[[/folder]]
125
126	[[folder:Web Original]]
127	* ''WebOriginal/HarDeshur'' is a {{Speculative Biology}} project that fully runs on old {{Solar System Neighbors}} tropes, but its version of Venus manages to be a subversion in that, like its version of Mars, it is only slightly less of a hellhole than it is in real life. Most life has fled to the skies while the bottom-dwellers are extreme thermophiles with deep-sea-fish-like adaptations to the immense pressure. Seas and lakes are mentioned as existing, but they are boiling hot and only kept liquid thanks to the extreme air pressure.
128	* This mock [[http://www.zazzle.com/venus_by_air_poster-228660366756679984 retro-space tourism poster]] from Zazzle Art urges you to ''See Venus by Air!'', because the ground these ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld fly over looks rather damp.
129	* Somewhat [[ReconstructedTrope Reconstructed]] in [[http://www.worlddreambank.org/V/VENUS.HTM this art project]], where the terraformed Venus of 3000 CE is a world with Earthlike oceans and continents. It’s noted that many aquatic species from Earth have been transplanted into the Venusian oceans, including SapientCetaceans.
130	[[/folder]]
131
132	[[folder:Western Animation]]
133	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': Venus is depicted as a lush, tropical swamp with red water and purple and blue plants during Leela's dream in "[[Recap/FuturamaS4E12TheSting The Sting]]".
134	[[/folder]]

Context Main / VenusIsWet