Planetary romance[1] (other synonyms aresword and planet,[2][3][4][5] andplanetary adventure[6][7]) is a subgenre ofscience fiction orscience fantasy in which the bulk of the action consists ofadventures on one exoticalien — often technologicallyprimitive —world,[8] characterized by distinctive physical and cultural backgrounds.[9] Some planetary romances take place against the background of a future culture where travel between worlds byspaceship is commonplace; others, particularly the earliest examples of the genre, do not, invokingflying carpets,astral projection, or other methods of getting between planets. In either case, it is the planetside adventures that are the focus of the story, not the mode of travel.[9]
As the label itself implies, theplanetary romance extends the late-19th- and early-20th-centuryadventure-romance andpulp traditions to a planetary setting.[9][10] Popular adventure fiction by writers such asH. Rider Haggard andTalbot Mundy placed bold protagonists in exotic milieus and "lost worlds"—for instance in still-unmapped regions ofSouth America,Africa, or theMiddle East andFar East—while a parallel variant was set in imagined or historical locales ofantiquity and theMiddle Ages, trends that also fed into the modernfantasy genre.[11]
Inplanetary romance, the narrative energies ofspace opera are applied to the popular adventure mode (note that in Englishromance here denotes heroic, mythic, and allegorical narrative rather than the realistnovel).[12] The stalwart adventurer becomes a spacetraveller, often fromEarth, which functions analogically as the modernWestern world andNorth America—centres oftechnology and (self-conscious)colonialism.[9][13] The other worlds—very often, in early examples,Mars andVenus—replace Asia and Africa as the exotic elsewhere, while hostile tribes ofaliens and their decadentmonarchies take the place of stock Western images of "savage races" and "orientaldespotism."[13][14] Although theplanetary romance has been used to voice a wide spectrum of political and philosophical positions, a persistent subject isfirst contact—encounters betweenalien civilizations, the difficulties of communication, and the frequent disasters that ensue.[15]
The expression "planetary romance" is attested at least as early as 1978, when Russell Letson, in his introduction to the reissue ofPhilip José Farmer's novelThe Green Odyssey (1957), described the tradition explicitly:[8][9]
The major tradition is the subgenre which may be called the "planetary romance". This subgenre is distinguished from its close cousins, the space opera and thesword and sorceryfantasy, by its setting (an exotic, technologically primitive planet), although it shares with them the adventure-plot conventions of chases, escapes, andquests.
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction mentions two caveats as to the usage of the term. First, while the setting may be in an alien world, if "the nature or description of this world has little bearing on the story being told," as inA Case of Conscience, then the book is not a planetary romance. Second,hard science fiction tales are excluded from this category, where an alien planet, while being a critical component of the plot, is just a background for a primarily scientific endeavor, such asHal Clement'sMission of Gravity,[9] possibly with embellishments.Allen Steele writes that while the label "space opera" has been posted on any story away from Earth, it stands apart from "planetary romance", which he describes as a "close cousin" of "space opera".[1]
Among nineteenth-century prototypes of the form—mostly set onMars—isAcross the Zodiac (1880) byPercy Greg, which employs "apergy" (a speculative form ofantigravity) to reach the Red Planet.[16] A significant precursor of the genre isEdwin L. Arnold'sLieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation (1905), in which an officer reaches Mars bymagic carpet and undertakes an adventure with a princess, a theme later developed more successfully byEdgar Rice Burroughs.[17] In the same vein areGustavus W. Pope's "Romances of the Planets":Journey to Mars (1894) andJourney to Venus (1895).[18]
In the early twentieth century,A Voyage to Arcturus (1920) byDavid Lindsay is often read less as straightforward science fiction than as aphilosophical novel, using the alien world principally as a vehicle for exploring philosophical themes.[19]
The first writer to reach a wide market for this kind of story wasEdgar Rice Burroughs, whose initialBarsoom (Mars) tales appeared in thepulp magazineThe All-Story in 1912.[20][9]
Burroughs's Barsoom presents a colorful, heterogeneous mix of cultures and technologies that is typical of classicplanetary romance.[9] Among its futuristic devices are the "radium engine" and aircraft sustained by the "eighth ray," which provides buoyancy.[21] The setting features Martian cavalry and adynastic social order of emperors and princesses.[20]
The content of theBarsoom saga is steeped inswashbuckling adventure: frequentduels, arena combats, hairbreadth escapes, and clashes with monstrous creatures; for these works, the retrospective label "sword and planet" has often been applied.[9][21]
These novels belong as much to science fiction as tofantasy, although elements of "pure" fantasy and thesupernatural are minimized or given in-universe explanations: on Barsoom, faculties such astelepathy operate machinery by thought inA Princess of Mars, while cults and supposed deities are unmasked assuperstition or imposture within the narrative.[20]
TheDune universe created byFrank Herbert andStar Wars byGeorge Lucas both draw on this fusion of the futuristic with the quasi-medieval—knightly orders, principalities, and codes of honor reframed through technology.[9][22][23]
Thanks to Burroughs's success, numerous imitators followed, includingOtis Adelbert Kline, who consciously adopted the adventurousplanetary romance pattern in his Venus trilogy (theGrandon of Venus books) and later his Mars duology (theSwordsman of Mars novels).[24] Burroughs himself revisited the formula with theVenus series (Carson of Venus) in the 1930s.[20] In 2007 the American publisher Paizo launched thePlanet Stories imprint to reissue classics ofscience fantasy andplanetary romance, including new editions of Kline's Martian novels.[25][24]
The rise of specializedscience fiction pulps from 1926—beginning with the launch ofAmazing Stories in April—opened a new market for adventure tales set on other worlds, a market that expanded markedly through the 1930s.[26][10]
Among the new periodicals,Planet Stories (from 1939) stood out, being designed to publish exclusively adventure-centered interplanetary fiction.[27] In the same yearStartling Stories (Standard/Better Publications) also debuted as a sister title toThrilling Wonder Stories, with a one-complete-novel-per-issue format.[28][29] In parallel, established fantastic-fiction magazines such asWeird Tales had, from the outset, alternated weird-science and scientific detection with the more familiarfantasy andhorror.[30]
One of the leading writers in the mode wasC. L. Moore, with the cycle about the adventurerNorthwest Smith, inaugurated by the storyShambleau inWeird Tales (November 1933).[31] In Moore's stories the swashbuckling action recedes before psychological tension and the push-and-pull of fear and fascination for the unknown, often with an explicitly erotic component.[32][33][34]
Robert E. Howard engaged the form withAlmuric (1939), a three-part novel with strongly adventure-forward plotting set on an alien planet dominated by tribal societies and a hostile environment, where physical conflict and survival take center stage. The book translates into a planetary frame the narrative models of heroic and pulp fiction, with a terrestrial protagonist asserting physical superiority in an exotic, primitive world.[35]
Stanley G. Weinbaum contributedA Martian Odyssey (1934), often cited as an earlyplanetary romance that advances a more articulated imagining of alien otherness: Mars is not merely an exotic backdrop but the site of encounter with a radically different being, described with biological and cultural attentiveness—anticipating concerns central to the more mature genre.[36][37]
In the 1940s and 1950s, one of the most significant contributions to the mode came fromLeigh Brackett, a regular inPlanet Stories andThrilling Wonder Stories, who honed a controlled, adventure-forward strain of planetary romances often set on aMars cognate with Burroughs's.[38][39][40][41] Within this period fall the three short novels in theEric John Stark sequence that ran inPlanet Stories:The Secret of Sinharat (originallyQueen of the Martian Catacombs, Summer 1949),People of the Talisman (originallyBlack Amazon of Mars, March 1951), andEnchantress of Venus (Autumn 1949).[41]
In parallel,Startling Stories published key texts: in August 1952Philip José Farmer'sThe Lovers and in September 1952Jack Vance'sBig Planet.[29]The Lovers, later expanded to book length in 1961, made Farmer famous for its joint treatment of sexual and xenobiological themes and won him the 1953 Hugo as "most promising new writer."[42]Big Planet provided a long-running science-fictional model for the planetary romance: an immense world poor in metals, which fosters low-technology societies. Much of Vance's later SF belongs to the mode: the sequelShowboat World (1975); theAlastor cluster trilogy; theDurdane trilogy; theCadwal Chronicles; the four-volumePlanet of Adventure (also known as theTschai sequence, 1968–1970); many of theMagnus Ridolph stories; the five-volumeDemon Princes; and stand-alone works such asMaske: Thaery (1976) and the storyThe Moon Moth (1961).[43]
Among writers active from the 1930s through the 1950s wasMurray Leinster: hisThe Forgotten Planet (1954) assembled, as afix-up novel, material originally published between 1920 and 1953.[44] In the same time frame,C. S. Lewis issued hisSpace Trilogy:Out of the Silent Planet (1938),Perelandra (1943), andThat Hideous Strength (1945).[45]
The Survivors (1958) byTom Godwin is an epic about four thousand human colonists abandoned to die on a cold, hostile world.The Forgotten Planet (1954) byMurray Leinster—whose first two chapters were published as stories in 1920 and 1921—relates the fortunes of a small group of humans regressed on a world only partiallyterraformed.[46][44]
From the mid-1960s onward, the traditional Solar-System planetary romance waned in popularity asspace exploration revealed the hostility and desolation of nearby planets—most notably with the 1965Mariner 4 images that dramatically altered the popular and genre perception ofMars.[47] In parallel, writers increasingly shifted their stories toexoplanetary settings, breezily invoking conventions such ashyperspace or otherfaster-than-light devices to justify interstellar travel.[13][48]
An exception is the long-runningGorean sequence byJohn Norman, launched withTarnsman of Gor (1966): the cycle is set on aCounter-Earth that shares Earth's orbit, located on the opposite side of the Sun near the system's L3 point.[49][50] The astronomically problematic premise is presented without real physical justification, a convention long tolerated within the subgenre.[49]
At the same time, a self-consciousretro revival ofsword and planet emerged.Lin Carter inaugurated theCallisto cycle withJandar of Callisto (1972), an explicit homage toEdgar Rice Burroughs and his Martian scenarios.[51]Michael Moorcock, under the pseudonym Edward P. Bradbury, offered his own Martian trilogy featuringKane of Old Mars (1965).[52] In the same yearsKenneth Bulmer, chiefly as Alan Burt Akers, launched the expansiveDray Prescot cycle set on Kregen, explicitly conceived as a Burroughsianpastiche, published for decades byDAW Books and later continued with installments that first appeared in German translation.[53]
Within the rationalized tradition sits theKrishna sequence byL. Sprague de Camp, embedded in the widerViagens Interplanetarias setting (from 1949 into the early 1990s): the novels play out onexoplanets inhabited by technologically backward civilizations, described with systematic attention to social structures, customs, and institutions, and framed as quasi-anthropological objects of study by the Terran protagonists.[54][55]
A number of large-scale SF cycles are frequently cited as representative planetary romances. Notable among these are theDarkover series (from 1958) byMarion Zimmer Bradley,[9][56] and theDragonriders of Pern sequence (from 1967) byAnne McCaffrey.[57][58] InScience Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (1985), editor and criticDavid Pringle namedMarion Zimmer Bradley andAnne McCaffrey as two "leading practitioners nowadays" of planetary romance.[59]
TheDune cycle byFrank Herbert (from 1963)—especially the early novels predominantly set onArrakis—integrates hallmark planetary-romance elements into a broader SF architecture of political, religious, and ecological themes;[60][22] Herbert initially considered setting his epic on Mars before opting for aninvented planet.[61]Dune has been called by some critics the best SF novel ever written[62] and is probably the best-selling worldwide.[63] It was included in the BBC's 2019 list of 100 novels that shaped our world,[64] and credited with helping pivot the genre toward politically, religiously, and ecologically complex worlds.[65]
Early works inUrsula K. Le Guin's Hainish universe are set on alien planets:Rocannon's World andPlanet of Exile (both 1966).[66][67]
Also within the frame belongPierre Boulle'sPlanet of the Apes (1963), a satirical and philosophical novel that reverses human/ape relations for social critique and reflection on civilization and its founding myths.[68][69] In the same constellation areHarry Harrison'sPlanet of the Damned (1962) andPlanet of No Return (1981), which cast single-world adventure through scenarios of colonization and social conflict, with elements of sociological critique of colonial contexts and power mechanisms.[70][71]
Developments in the 1970s–1980s includeLarry Niven'sRingworld (1970), where the setting is a planet-sizedmegastructure that reorients surface exploration to an enormously expanded scale while preserving the logic of a single "world" with distinct regions, cultures, and hazards.[72][73]Robert Silverberg'sMajipoor Chronicles (1982) gathers linked tales on a richly imagined world, continuing the sequence begun withLord Valentine's Castle (1980).[74]Brian Aldiss'sHelliconia trilogy (1982–1985) centers on a planet subject to exceptionally long seasonal cycles (the "Great Year"), shaping society and history according to astronomical and climatic dynamics.[75][76]
In the early 1990s, French authorAyerdhal published the large-scale trilogyMytale (1991), insisting on dense, exotic worldbuilding and a pseudo-ethnological framework.[77][78] In the same decade,Kim Stanley Robinson'sMars trilogy (1992–1996) returned the focus to long-term adventure on a single planet, following thecolonization andterraforming of Mars and entangling the "surface" progression with a debate of ideas about ecology, politics, and social models.[79][80][47]Catherine Asaro'sSkolian Empire saga (from 1995) reworks exotic-world adventure in dynastic, romance-adjacent terms: for example,Catch the Lightning (1996) situates a substantial portion on an alternate Earth before opening onto the interstellar frame, whileThe Last Hawk (1997) centers on the protagonist's crash-landing on amatriarchal planet and its social and political consequences.[81]
By now, planetary romance has become a significant component of contemporary SF,[9] though few authors use the label for their own work. Given the mutual hybridization of planetary romance andspace opera, many stories are difficult to classify exclusively as one or the other.[9][82]
In comics, interplanetary adventure in a popular key finds a decisive reference point inFlash Gordon byAlex Raymond, debuting as anewspaper strip in 1934; critics rank it among the foundations ofscience fiction comics and relate it to the romances ofEdgar Rice Burroughs, helping to establish a durable imaginary of adventure on exotic worlds.[83][84]
In the United States,Planet Comics (1940–1953)—the comic-book "companion" to the pulp magazinePlanet Stories—specialized in interplanetary adventure and is described as consisting largely of "planetary romances" set within theSolar System.[85][84]
In Italy, an early case isS.K.1 by Guido Moroni Celsi, a strip forTopolino launched in 1935; it has been considered a space opera largely inspired by, and in large measure copied from,Flash Gordon, and is classed by many scholars—though within the SF context—as "fantasy."[86]
During the postwar years and theSilver Age, the formula of adventure on other worlds was updated byAdam Strange (1958,DC Comics), often described as an obvious imitation ofJohn Carter of Mars: a terrestrialarchaeologistteleported to the planetRann in theAlpha Centauri system.[87][88]
A planetary epic reimagined in family terms isSpace Family Robinson, published byGold Key Comics from 1963, which bears many similarities to the later TV seriesLost in Space (1965–1968); both were loosely inspired byThe Swiss Family Robinson (1812) byJohann David Wyss, a canonicalrobinsonade.[89][90]
In the 1970s the tradition hybridized with fantasy in long-running independent series such asElfquest (from 1978) byWendy and Richard Pini, set on the "World of Two Moons," a planet with an autochthonous human population but also home toelves andtrolls descended fromalien ancestors; this science-fictional premise underpins a narrative constructed in the key ofhigh fantasy.[91]
.jpg)
A concise list of films and TV series that centre on adventure and survival on a single alien world.
Planet Stories, launched at the end of 1939, focused primarily on planetary adventure.
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