Extrasolar planets in fiction

Most extrasolar planets in fiction are similar to Earth—referred to in the Star Trek franchise as Class M planets—and serve only as settings for the narrative. The majority of extrasolar planets in fiction are inhabited by native species, a 2024 article in the Journal of Science Communication analysed a sample of 142 fictional exoplanets, of which nearly a third fulfilled this criterion, and found "an absence of influence of whether or not the planet setting is in a real star system on other worldbuilding characteristics". == Exotic shapes ==

Various exotic planetary shapes appear in fiction. while the moon Jinx in Larry Niven's 1975 short story "The Borderland of Sol" is instead stretched by tidal forces from the planet it orbits rather than flattened, resulting in a prolate spheroid shape where the equator is covered by an atmosphere but the poles rise up above it. Bizarro World in the Superman franchise is a cubic planet, rendered that shape by the actions of Superman. Earth itself gets turned into a cube in Henry H. Gross's 1987 short story "Cubeworld", and an altogether artificial planet-sized cube is the setting of G. David Nordley's 2009 novel To Climb a Flat Mountain. == In multiple star systems ==

, orbit around both stars. Another planet is in an S-type, or circumstellar, orbit around only one of the two stars. Circumbinary planets are sometimes nicknamed "Tatooine worlds" after the Star Wars planet. Planets in multiple star systems have attracted attention from science fiction writers, especially in terms of what kind of life would exist on planets with more than one sun and how history might be cyclical as a result of the "long year" that occurs if the orbital period around one of the stars is very lengthy. which depicts various alien species inhabiting the planets orbiting the stars. Isaac Asimov's 1941 short story "Nightfall" portrays a planet which is in constant daylight from at least one of its six suns for millennia at a time before a single night of true darkness, which is a much-anticipated event; the 1963 The Twilight Zone episode "On Thursday We Leave for Home" depicts a planet that is challenging for humans to inhabit due to the unending heat and light from a pair of suns; A similar effect appears in Aldiss's 1977 short story "Creatures of Apogee", albeit here as a result of a highly eccentric orbit around a single star where the distance to the star thus varies greatly between the nearest and farthest points in the orbit. The 1985 anthology ''Medea: Harlan's World is a collaborative effort between Harlan Ellison and several other science fiction writers consisting of several stories set on the same planet in a multiple star system. The 2002 television series Firefly'' is set in a system of five stars each orbited by its own planetary system, all close enough to each other to permit easy travel between the worlds. == Rogue planets ==

Planets that do not orbit any star, known as rogue planets, appear in several works. In the 1977 novel Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin, such a planet becomes a temporary tourist destination as it passes by a star before leaving the star's vicinity and becoming uninhabitable again. Hal Clement's 1974 short story "The Logical Life" explores what kind of life could exist on a planet without a star, == Physical environment ==

Portraying planets with conditions that differ significantly from Earth's in terms of physical environment has been a recurring practice since the middle of the 1900s. The high gravity of Mesklin in Clement's Mission of Gravity thus results in its inhabitants having a centipede-like body structure, while the low gravity yet dense atmosphere in Anderson's 1958 novel War of the Wing-Men ( The Man Who Counts) makes it possible for humanoid creatures to fly using their own wings. One of the most prominent examples thereof is Arrakis in Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, where the extreme scarcity of water influences all aspects of the planet's ecology and society. Less extreme desert conditions are found on the Star Wars planet Tatooine, with more plentiful and varied lifeforms as a result. One of the planets in the 2014 film Interstellar is covered by a shallow ocean and orbits so closely around a black hole that there are both tidal waves the height of mountains and extreme time dilation. while C. J. Cherryh's 1988 novel Cyteen depicts a planet dominated by silicon-based life whose biochemistry creates byproducts extremely hazardous to human health. == Living ==

Planets themselves being portrayed as alive, while relatively rare (especially compared to stars receiving the same treatment), is a recurring theme. Ego the Living Planet is a recurring character in Marvel Comics. == List ==

The following are fictional extrasolar planets with stand-alone Wikipedia articles. ==See also==