Uranus in fiction facts for kids

The planet Uranus has appeared in various forms of fiction:

Literature

• An anonymous author writing as a Mr. Vivenair published A Journey Lately Performed Through the Air in an Aerostatic Globe, Commonly Called an Air Balloon, From This Terraquaeous Globe to the Newly Discovered Planet, Georgium Sidus in 1784.
• In the Buck Rogers series (1928–), Uranus is portrayed as having biodomes and robots.
• In Stanley G. Weinbaum's 1935 story "The Planet of Doubt", Uranus' North pole is shrouded in a perpetual fog.
• R. R. Winterbotham's "Clouds over Uranus" was published by Astounding in March of 1937
• In Ramsey Campbell's The Insects from Shaggai (1964), a Cthulhu Mythos story, Uranus is known as L'gy'hx and is inhabited by cubical metallic many-legged creatures who worship Lrogg. They entered in religious conflict with the Shan.
• Uranus is the source of radio signals investigated by Chris Godfrey and his team in First Contact?, written by Hugh Walters and published in 1971.
• In Larry Niven's novel A World Out of Time (1976), Uranus is outfitted with a massive fusion motor and used to gently move the Earth outward from an expanding sun.
• "Uranus or UFO Versus IRS," Philip José Farmer, in The Planets, Byron Preiss (Bantam 1985).
• Geoffrey A. Landis's short story "Into the Blue Abyss," part of his short-story collection Impact Parameter and other Quantum Fictions (2001) discussed an expedition to Uranus in search of life.
• Zombie Bums from Uranus, a bestseller by Andy Griffiths, is a story about a 12-year-old boy who encounters in destroying zombie bums that were frozen as Uranus's rings. They came to life when the Great White Bum hit Uranus, turning it brown and melting the ice.

Film and television

• In Futurama, Scientists renamed Uranus to "Urectum" to "end that stupid joke once and for all".
• In the 1962 film Journey to the Seventh Planet, astronauts on Uranus encounter a strange intelligence.
• In the Doctor Who (1963–) serial The Daleks' Master Plan, Uranus is described as being the only location in the universe where the mineral Taranium can be acquired.
• In Space Patrol (1962) episode: The Dark Planet - Professor Heggerty and his daughter Cassiopeia are baffled by a plant sample from Uranus with a mind of its own. Following the disappearance of a 20 strong survey team on Uranus, Colonel Raeburn dispatch the Space Patrol crew to locate larger versions of the plant, where they discover the adult specimens of the plant are far from friendly.
• In Space Patrol (1962) episode: The Invisible Invasion - On Uranus, the Duo's are planning to seize power on Earth by taking over the minds of everyone at Space Headquarters, including Colonel Raeburn. The one person seemingliy unaffected by the Duo's power is Professor Heggerty, who is installed beneath his electronic hair-restorer!

Comics and anime

• In Grant Morrison's DC One Million (1998), all the planets of the solar system are overseen by one member of the future descendants of the Justice League. Uranus is overseen by the Starman of the 853rd century from his floating citadel, after having replaced the Green Lantern.
• The Eternals, a fictional race of superhumans in the Marvel Comics universe, had a colony on Uranus. Most left Uranus and went on to Saturn, while those who remained behind were eventually wiped out by natural disasters. During the Skrull-Kree war the Kree Empire established an outpost on Uranus which acted as a supply depot for their weapons.

Games

• In the role-playing game Transhuman Space, China has begun preliminary harvesting of helium-3 from Uranus' atmosphere to compete against American helium-3 harvesting on Saturn.

Uranus' moons in fiction

Titania

• In Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (1997), Ann Clayborne and Zo Boone visit Uranus' moon Miranda, which is being preserved as a primal wilderness; the other sizable moons of Uranus are being ambitiously colonised at the time with the help of fusion lanterns placed in Uranus' upper atmosphere to provide more light; Blue Mars also contains a description of a colony on Titania, where humans have adapted to the low gravity and light levels.

Miranda

• G. David Nordley's short story "Into the Miranda Rift," in Analog Science Fiction, was set on Miranda.
• In the computer game Descent, level 18 takes place in a mine on Miranda.
• In the novels of Rob Grant and Doug Naylor based on their sitcom Red Dwarf, Miranda is the site of a large, congested spaceport where Dave Lister takes shore leave to get over being dumped by his girlfriend Kristine Kochanski and adopts a cat which he names Frankenstein.

Oberon

• Three levels of the computer game Descent take place in mines Oberon. Levels 19, 20, and 21 take place in an unidentified mine, an iron mine, and a platinum mine, respectively.

• In Paolo Aresi's novel Oberon there is a secret Russian base on Oberon (which plays an important part in the plot)