"Old Mercury"
In Eric Rücker Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros (1922), the action takes place in a fantasy world that is ostensibly part of the planet Mercury. However, the name is used purely for its exotic value, and there is no attempt to make the characteristics of the world correspond to any facts known or believed about Mercury in the 1920s. Eddison's Mercury resembles Earth in all respects except in details of geography: it has a normal day-cycle, a moon, and a calendar identical to Earth's; in fact.
Tama of the Light Country (1930) and Tama, Princess of Mercury (1931) by Ray Cummings are Burroughsian adventures on a tidally-locked Mercury.
The planet is briefly mentioned in H. P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Out of Time" (1936):
Later, as the Earth's span closed, the transferred minds (of the Great Race of Yith) would again migrate through time and space — to another stopping place in the bodies of the bulbous vegetable entities of Mercury.
In Leigh Brackett's short stories (especially "The Demons of Darkside" (1941), "A World Is Born" (1941), "Cube from Space" (1942), and "Shannach – the Last" (1952)), a tidally locked Mercury features a 'Twilight Belt' exposed to dangerous variations in heat and cold and havoc-wreaking solar storms. Some of Brackett's most colorful characters, like Jaffa Storm ("Shadow Over Mars") and Eric John Stark, were Mercury-born.
Mercury is a setting in several of Isaac Asimov's stories, all written before astronomers knew that the planet was not tidally locked; in each story, Mercury has a permanent day-side and night-side.
"Runaround" (Astounding Science Fiction, 1942, later published in the 1950 collection I, Robot) involves a robot specially designed to cope with the intense solar radiation on the planet.
"The Dying Night" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1956) is a murder mystery in which the suspects are astronomers from Mercury, the Moon, and the asteroid Ceres. The dynamics and living conditions of each of these locations are key to discovering which astronomer is guilty.
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956) is a juvenile novel, the fourth in the Lucky Starr series.
In C. S. Lewis's novel That Hideous Strength (1945), Mercury, or Viritrilbia, is described as being the birthplace of language in the universe. It is by the power of the Oyarsa of Viritrilbia that Merlinus Ambrosius is enabled to "unmake language" at the N.I.C.E. banquet in the penultimate chapter.
In Arthur C. Clarke's Islands in the Sky (1952), there is a description of a strange creature that lives on what was then believed to be the permanently dark nightside with only occasional visits to the twilight zone.
In Hal Clement's Iceworld (1953), the silicon-based aliens establish a base on the hot side of the planet. This is not hot enough for them, so they put the base in the middle of a crater with mirrors on the bank to concentrate sunlight to get the necessary temperature.
Erik Van Lhin's Battle on Mercury (1953) - Erik van Lhin was one of the pen names of Lester del Rey.
Alan E. Nourse's short story "Brightside Crossing" (Galaxy, 1956) is narrated by the only survivor of a failed four-man attempt to cross Mercury's sun-facing hemisphere at perihelion (when Mercury is at its nearest approach to the sun), which has become the ultimate sporting feat. No expedition has yet attempted the much easier feat of crossing the sun-facing hemisphere at aphelion (when Mercury is at its farthest point from the sun, and therefore cooler), because the knowledge and cartography acquired by such an attempt would make things easier for the eventual perihelion expedition – and the members of that successful perihelion crossing would then receive all the glory. The story ends with the survivor volunteering to lead the next attempt, this one to be equipped with better refrigerants against the sun's merciless heat.
In Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan (1959), mindless creatures called harmoniums inhabit the caves of Mercury.
In Gordon R. Dickson's Necromancer (1962), a base was located on Mercury, used by the Chantry Guild for training beginners into the group.
In Larry Niven's "The Coldest Place" (1964), an early short story, Niven teases the reader, who is told that the scene is "the coldest place in the Solar System" and assumes it to be Pluto — only to discover in the end that the actual location is the dark side of Mercury. The story was written when the theory of Mercury being tidally locked with the Sun still prevailed, but was published just after the planet was found to actually rotate in a 2:3 resonance.
Hugh Walters' Mission to Mercury (1965) also assumes Mercury to have a 'dark' side at near absolute zero from which the protagonists must be rescued before they freeze to death.
In Eric Rücker Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros (1922), the action takes place in a fantasy world that is ostensibly part of the planet Mercury. However, the name is used purely for its exotic value, and there is no attempt to make the characteristics of the world correspond to any facts known or believed about Mercury in the 1920s. Eddison's Mercury resembles Earth in all respects except in details of geography: it has a normal day-cycle, a moon, and a calendar identical to Earth's; in fact.
Tama of the Light Country (1930) and Tama, Princess of Mercury (1931) by Ray Cummings are Burroughsian adventures on a tidally-locked Mercury.
The planet is briefly mentioned in H. P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Out of Time" (1936):
Later, as the Earth's span closed, the transferred minds (of the Great Race of Yith) would again migrate through time and space — to another stopping place in the bodies of the bulbous vegetable entities of Mercury.
In Leigh Brackett's short stories (especially "The Demons of Darkside" (1941), "A World Is Born" (1941), "Cube from Space" (1942), and "Shannach – the Last" (1952)), a tidally locked Mercury features a 'Twilight Belt' exposed to dangerous variations in heat and cold and havoc-wreaking solar storms. Some of Brackett's most colorful characters, like Jaffa Storm ("Shadow Over Mars") and Eric John Stark, were Mercury-born.
Mercury is a setting in several of Isaac Asimov's stories, all written before astronomers knew that the planet was not tidally locked; in each story, Mercury has a permanent day-side and night-side.
"Runaround" (Astounding Science Fiction, 1942, later published in the 1950 collection I, Robot) involves a robot specially designed to cope with the intense solar radiation on the planet.
"The Dying Night" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1956) is a murder mystery in which the suspects are astronomers from Mercury, the Moon, and the asteroid Ceres. The dynamics and living conditions of each of these locations are key to discovering which astronomer is guilty.
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956) is a juvenile novel, the fourth in the Lucky Starr series.
In C. S. Lewis's novel That Hideous Strength (1945), Mercury, or Viritrilbia, is described as being the birthplace of language in the universe. It is by the power of the Oyarsa of Viritrilbia that Merlinus Ambrosius is enabled to "unmake language" at the N.I.C.E. banquet in the penultimate chapter.
In Arthur C. Clarke's Islands in the Sky (1952), there is a description of a strange creature that lives on what was then believed to be the permanently dark nightside with only occasional visits to the twilight zone.
In Hal Clement's Iceworld (1953), the silicon-based aliens establish a base on the hot side of the planet. This is not hot enough for them, so they put the base in the middle of a crater with mirrors on the bank to concentrate sunlight to get the necessary temperature.
Erik Van Lhin's Battle on Mercury (1953) - Erik van Lhin was one of the pen names of Lester del Rey.
Alan E. Nourse's short story "Brightside Crossing" (Galaxy, 1956) is narrated by the only survivor of a failed four-man attempt to cross Mercury's sun-facing hemisphere at perihelion (when Mercury is at its nearest approach to the sun), which has become the ultimate sporting feat. No expedition has yet attempted the much easier feat of crossing the sun-facing hemisphere at aphelion (when Mercury is at its farthest point from the sun, and therefore cooler), because the knowledge and cartography acquired by such an attempt would make things easier for the eventual perihelion expedition – and the members of that successful perihelion crossing would then receive all the glory. The story ends with the survivor volunteering to lead the next attempt, this one to be equipped with better refrigerants against the sun's merciless heat.
In Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan (1959), mindless creatures called harmoniums inhabit the caves of Mercury.
In Gordon R. Dickson's Necromancer (1962), a base was located on Mercury, used by the Chantry Guild for training beginners into the group.
In Larry Niven's "The Coldest Place" (1964), an early short story, Niven teases the reader, who is told that the scene is "the coldest place in the Solar System" and assumes it to be Pluto — only to discover in the end that the actual location is the dark side of Mercury. The story was written when the theory of Mercury being tidally locked with the Sun still prevailed, but was published just after the planet was found to actually rotate in a 2:3 resonance.
Hugh Walters' Mission to Mercury (1965) also assumes Mercury to have a 'dark' side at near absolute zero from which the protagonists must be rescued before they freeze to death.
"New Mercury"
In Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama (1973), Mercury is ruled by a hot-tempered government of metal miners that threatens to destroy the alien spacecraft Rama. The novel shares its background of a colonized Solar System with several others, especially Imperial Earth.
In David Brin's Sundiver (1980), the characters spend most of the time in Mercury, between expeditions into the Sun's chromosphere.
In Kim Stanley Robinson's novels and short stories, especially The Memory of Whiteness (1985), "Mercurial" (in The Planet on the Table, 1986) and Blue Mars (1996), Mercury is the home of a vast city called Terminator, populated by large numbers of artists and musicians. To avoid the dangerous solar radiation, the city rolls around the planet's equator on tracks, keeping pace with the planet's rotation so that the Sun never rises fully above the horizon. The motive power comes from solar heat expanding the rails on the day side. The city is ruled by an autocratic dictator called the Lion of Mercury.
In Warren Ellis' and Darick Robertson's Transmetropolitan (1997–2002), a cyberpunk comic book series, Mercury is said to be covered with solar panels, to aid in the power needs of a technologically advanced Earth.
In Grant Morrison's DC One Million (1998), each planet of the solar system is overseen by one member of the future descendants of the Justice League. Mercury is overseen by the Flash of the 853rd century.
Ben Bova's Mercury (2005; part of his Grand Tour series) is about the human drama of the exploration of Mercury: why people might be interested in going there (for instance, to harness the intense solar energy that close to the sun), and what challenges there would be.
In Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama (1973), Mercury is ruled by a hot-tempered government of metal miners that threatens to destroy the alien spacecraft Rama. The novel shares its background of a colonized Solar System with several others, especially Imperial Earth.
In David Brin's Sundiver (1980), the characters spend most of the time in Mercury, between expeditions into the Sun's chromosphere.
In Kim Stanley Robinson's novels and short stories, especially The Memory of Whiteness (1985), "Mercurial" (in The Planet on the Table, 1986) and Blue Mars (1996), Mercury is the home of a vast city called Terminator, populated by large numbers of artists and musicians. To avoid the dangerous solar radiation, the city rolls around the planet's equator on tracks, keeping pace with the planet's rotation so that the Sun never rises fully above the horizon. The motive power comes from solar heat expanding the rails on the day side. The city is ruled by an autocratic dictator called the Lion of Mercury.
In Warren Ellis' and Darick Robertson's Transmetropolitan (1997–2002), a cyberpunk comic book series, Mercury is said to be covered with solar panels, to aid in the power needs of a technologically advanced Earth.
In Grant Morrison's DC One Million (1998), each planet of the solar system is overseen by one member of the future descendants of the Justice League. Mercury is overseen by the Flash of the 853rd century.
Ben Bova's Mercury (2005; part of his Grand Tour series) is about the human drama of the exploration of Mercury: why people might be interested in going there (for instance, to harness the intense solar energy that close to the sun), and what challenges there would be.
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