Saturn in fiction

Early depictions – solid For a long time, Saturn was incorrectly believed to be a solid planet capable of hosting life on its surface. They are occasionally portrayed as warlike yet benevolent, as in the 1935 short story "The Fall of Mercury" by Leslie F. Stone where they aid humanity in a war against Mercury and the 1933 short story "The Men without Shadows" by Stanton A. Coblentz where they come to Earth as conquerors in order to turn it into a utopia. In other works, they are evil, such as in Clifton B. Kruse's 1935 short story "Menace from Saturn" and its 1936 sequel "The Drums". '', with the rings visible in the sky Saturnians are typically depicted as more advanced than the people of Earth, Exceptions to this general trend include the 1886 novel Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds by W. S. Lach-Szyrma where the planet's ecosphere is dominated by fungi and invertebrates and the 1901 novel A Honeymoon in Space by George Griffith where it is populated by seaweed, reptiles, and primitive humanoids. Saturn is also sometimes portrayed as devoid of life, as in the 1936 short story "Mad Robot" by Raymond Z. Gallun. Nevertheless, Saturn remains a popular setting in modern science fiction for several reasons including its atmosphere being abundant with sought-after helium-3 and its magnetosphere not producing as intense radiation as that of Jupiter. serves as the destination for a nature reserve containing post-apocalyptic Earth's remaining plant life in the 1972 film Silent Running, and is devoured by Galactus in the 2007 film Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. In Asimov's 1986 novel Foundation and Earth, the rings allow for positive identification of the Solar System in the far future. Owing to the aesthetic appearance of the rings, the vicinity of Saturn is a popular setting for spacecraft in visual media. == Moons ==

Saturn's moons, especially Titan, have generally received more attention from writers than the planet itself. The satellite system hides a large circular sentient artificial world in John Varley's 1979–1984 Gaea trilogy that begins with the novel Titan. Titan '', featuring Stanley G. Weinbaum's "Flight on Titan" (here under the variant title "A Man, A Maid, and Saturn's Temptation") and its telepathic Titanian threadworm As a comparatively Earth-like world, Titan has attracted attention from writers as a place that could be colonized by humans and inhabited by extraterrestrial life. The 1941 novel Sojarr of Titan by Manly Wade Wellman tells the tale of a human child who grows up orphaned on Titan, inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan books. Titan became more popular as a setting for science fiction stories in the 1950s as advances in planetary science revealed the harsh conditions of Mars and Venus. The 1959 novel The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut is a satire wherein humans are manipulated into journeying to Titan to aid a Tralfamadorian stranded there, and the moon is inhabited by an alien lifeform who travelled to the Solar System to communicate with the Sun in the 1977 novel If the Stars are Gods by Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund. The flybys of the Saturnian system by the Voyager probes in 1980 and 1981 revealed that Titan's atmosphere—already known to be thick and methane-rich—was opaque, preventing any observations of (or indeed, from) the surface. Following this, science fiction writers' interest waned, and Titan was more often portrayed as one location among many in the outer Solar System rather than being the primary focus. In the 2005 novel Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds, Janus is revealed to be an alien spacecraft. Following the discovery of liquid water beneath the surface of Enceladus, the moon featured in the 2016 short story "The Water Walls of Enceladus" by Mercurio D. Rivera. == See also ==