Telescopes and space probes have revealed the nature of the planets.
But science fiction has also explored our neighbours in space.
Sci-fi is a significant genre in books and movies.
And occasionally, art meets science in unusual ways.
Welcome to Solar System: fact and fiction.
The Sun
The Sun is our local star. Its heat and light gives life to our Earth.
In the Sun’s core, hydrogen gas turns to helium in a nuclear fusion reaction.
This reaction gives the energy that powers our local star.
The Sun: NASA
Sun facts
The Sun turns 600 million tons of hydrogen into 596 million tons of helium every second.
The missing 4 million tons is turned into pure energy.
In a single second the Sun produces one million times more energy than the Earth uses in a whole year!
That has been happening for every second of your life.
It’s been going on for the last 5 billion years.
And it will continue for another 5 billion years.
Wow, that’s an amazing fact.
How can scifi match that?
Sun fiction
We now know that the Sun is an ordinary, stable star.
But fiction has portrayed the Sun rather differently, as a source of imminent disaster.
Several disaster movies show the effects of solar super-flares.
Such events are within the bounds of possibility.
But in the 2007 movie Sunshine, the Sun is dying and the Earth is freezing.
A group of astronauts is sent to deliver a stellar bomb to reignite the Sun’s core.
What could possibly go wrong!
Inevitably it does but, hey, what odds on a happy ending?
Planets
Now let’s look at the planets that orbit the Sun.
We’ll see how fact meets fiction.
Mercury
Mercury facts
This is is the smallest planet and nearest to the Sun.
On the sunlit side, temperatures reach a roasting 430 degrees C.
But in the dark of night, temperatures plummet to a frigid minus 180 degrees C.
That’s the biggest temperature range on any planet.
Mercury: NASA
The reason is that Mercury has virtually no atmosphere.
The result is that the tiny world loses its heat when darkness falls.
Mercury is an airless, waterless world.
It is heavily cratered, much like our Moon.
Mercury fiction
Mercury fiction is not so much stories but their writers.
On Mercury we find Bronte, Dickens, Hemingway, Kipling, Mark Twain, Tolkien and of course, Shakespeare.
Mercury has 444 named craters and they are all named after famous writers, artists and composers.
Mercury: NASA Messenger
Beethoven, Keats, Michelangelo and Renoir are together on Mercury.
Other musicians include Bach and Stravinsky along with Lennon, Scott Joplin and Duke Ellington.
Among artists, we meet Van Gogh, Cezanne, Degas and Goya.
The arts and science come together on this hot, arid little world.
Venus
Venus fiction
‘Through a dull, misty gloom it was a flat, water-logged swamp.
From out of the primeval slime sprang a jungle of vegetation.
Then from the emerald green nightmare, they saw – a dinosaur!’
That’s an extract from Captain W E Johns’ book ‘Kings of Space‘.
It describes a landing on Venus. The book was published in 1954.
Back then it was though that Venus might be like the Earth was 200 million years ago.
The problem was that we couldn’t see the surface.
Venus is covered in cloud, all over, all the time.
Cloud-covered Venus: NASA
The idea of a Jurassic Venus was shattered when space probes visited Venus.
The Russian Venera probes and NASA’s Magellan revealed a hot, hostile world.
Surface of Venus: Magellan, NASA
Venus facts
The thick carbon dioxide atmosphere traps heat from the Sun.
A runaway greenhouse effect has made Venus the hottest planet in the Solar System.
The ground temperature is a fiery 470 degrees C.
No vegetation, no dinosaurs, no life could possible exist in the furnace of Venus.
Venus is like a planet from Hell.
However things may have now gone full circle.
Some research theorises that 3 billion years ago Venus was indeed much like our Earth.
Early Venus: NASA
Computer modelling indicates that Venus could have had water oceans, clouds and land.
There may even have been life there long ago.
That would have brought a smile to the face of Captain W. E. Johns!
Mars
‘Mars is dead, nothing there but scraps of lichen‘.
So said Colonel Breen in the 1967 movie ‘Quatermass and the Pit’.
Professor Quatermass replies ‘ Five million years ago it might have been different’.
That conversation encapsulates the red planet in terms of fact and fiction.
Of all the planets in our Solar System, Mars has attracted most science and most fiction.
More space probes have visited Mars than any other world.
And more stories have been told about Mars than any other planet.
Mars facts
Mars is a dead world.
Robotic probes that have orbited and landed on Mars show a dry, freezing cold desert.
Martian surface, Perseverance rover: NASA
Seen from orbit, Mars shows meteorite craters, extinct volcanoes and valleys.
Planet Mars: NASA
The air is thin carbon dioxide and the average temperature is around minus 6o degrees Celcius.
The red colour comes from iron oxide sand. Mars is a rusty world!
But Mars has not always looked like this.
Probes have shown clear evidence of dry river valleys.
Dry river valleys on Mars: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
Some 3 billion years ago, Mars may have been a very different world.
It was warm. Liquid water formed seas, lakes and rivers.
And in that water, life might have developed.
Sadly, over time, Mars lost its atmosphere.
Most water evaporated into space. What remained froze into the soil.
The Martian surface is now a cold, arid desert.
Mars fiction
Mars has a proud place in scifi stories and movies.
It is the most written about planet in our Solar System, subject of dozens of books and films.
In these accounts, there is always some kind of life on the red planet, either human or alien.
H G Wells’ novel ‘War of the Worlds‘, published in 1898, is one of the earliest science fiction stories.
Mars is a dying world and its inhabitants invade Earth to carry on their species.
The story has been adapted several times for movies and TV shows.
My favourite version is a radio adaptation by Orson Welles.
Aired in 1938, thousands of Americans thought that an alien invasion was actually happening!
In other stories, we are the invaders, attempting to colonise Mars.
One of the most acclaimed recent book and film is The Martian by Andy Weir.
The year is 2035 and an American astronaut is stranded on the red planet.
The story tells of how he adapts and survives in the hostile Martian environment.
Here science fact and fiction combine.
Read on!
I hope that this review of planetary fact and fiction may encourage you pick up a book or watch a movie.
Whether it’s real or imagined, the planets are a joy to explore from the comfort of your armchair.
On our website
If you would like to learn more about the Solar System, click on our Wonder Book of Space.
And we also have fun activities.
Take a look now!
The author: Dennis Ashton, MBE, is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a Wonderdome presenter.
In 2024, Dennis received the Special Contribution award from the British Association of Planetaria.
In 2025 he became a Member of the Order of the British Empire for over 50 years work in Astronomy Education.
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