James Nicoll is soliciting recommendations for a series of novels about the planets of the Solar System. His first pass:
Mercury:
Venus:
Earth: Imperial Earth, Arthur C. Clarke
Mars:
Jupiter: Jupiter Fred and Carol Pohl (ed)
Saturn:
Uranus:
Neptune: Triton, Samuel R. Delany
As you can see, there are some gaps...
Suggestions are welcome, bearing in mind of course that James's definition of SF pretty much demands MilSpec certification for the bolts holding the rockets together, so it's a little tough to come up with books that meet his standards. I'm a little more forgiving of dodgy science for the sake of a good story, though, so if you've got a swampy Venus novel that you really love, suggest it in the comments.
ATTENTION JONATHAN VOS POST: you are entitled to one (1) sugestion per planet, on average, for a total of eight. Thus, if you are unable to think of a good SF book set on Mercury, you can suggest two set on Mars. You may not, however, post an exhaustive list of all SF novels ever set on Mars in the history of the genre, though you may post such a list on your own blog, and leave a link in the comments here.
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I would have suggested the Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. I know a lot of people don't really like the series, but I did. It's an interesting look into what the process and politics of colonization might be like. His book "The Memory of Whiteness" is also an interesting read, with the main plot being a slow journey visiting most of the planets of the solar system.
Venus - Stirling's The Sky People
Mars - Burroughs'Princess of Mars and the rest
Venus: Logic of Empire by Robert Heinlein.
Mars: The Sands of Mars
And of course '2001' by Arthur C. Clarke. Not sure if it's for Saturn or Jupiter - it's Saturn in the original book, but Jupiter in the movie and the sequel.
At the risk of being a bit of a smartass:
Saturn: 2001 (Clarke)
Jupiter: 2010 (Clarke)
Non-smartass suggestion:
Earth: Spin (Wilson)
If it weren't specifically a request for novels, I'd suggest Asimov's "The Martian Way" for either Mars or Saturn (or both)...
Mercury: Asimov had a nice short story on Mercury back when we thought it was tidally locked. I can't remember the title, though.
You left out Pluto...
Do natural moons "belong" to their planets? If so, "Sirens from Titan" (Vonnegut)
Good plan, Chad!
http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/thisthat.html#space
Venus - Venus of Dreams trilogy by Pamela Sargent
Saturn - The Cassini Division by Ken MacLeod
Mars - The Stone Canal by Ken MacLeod
A less well known Saturn offering: Saturnalia by Grant Callin, hard SF similar in style to Niven's work.
Bradbury's Martian Chronicles comes first to mind (altho KSR's Red/Blue/Green is also excellent).
For Pluto, World of Ptavvs by Larry Niven is excellent. There's also a Niven short story called "Wait It Out" which is very fun.
Teacher With A Bad Attitude
Asimov's Lucky Starr and ... series is lots and lots of two-fisted fun set on Mars, the asteroids, Venus, Mercury, and (moons of) Jupiter and Saturn. It contains a certain amount of alien Sufficiently Advanced Technology but is otherwise quite scientifically accurate given what we knew in the 1950s. In particular he gets credit for paying specific attention to the fact that the planets are almost never neatly lined up in a row on one side of the Sun. Also, he added prefaces to later editions of the books pointing out that, for instance, Mercury is not tidally locked, but we didn't know that in 1956, and he hopes the reader will look past these small errors of fact and enjoy the story.
Zack was right to pick Asimov's series, as I mentioned:
"Jupiter:
1. Isaac Asimov's (as Paul French) "Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter" [New York: Doubleday, 1957; under his own name as The Moons of Jupiter, London: New English Library, 1974]..."
Ben Bova has a modern version of such a series.
As a matter of fact, I am a rocket scientist...
If one actually follows my link, one will see that Chad was right to limit me in numbers, as my one link gives over 300 books:
Moon: 23 titles
Sun: 2 titles
Mercury: 7 titles
Venus: 24 titles
Mars: 203 titles
Asteroids: 15 titles
Jupiter: 10 titles
Saturn: 11 titles
Uranus: 3 titles
Neptune: 8 titles
Pluto: 33 titles
and various other destinations.
Then I ran out of steam (or dilithium). True, I haven't updated that page since 2004, so all the new titles by commenters here are much appreciated. Okay, back to lurking. Thanks for setting reasonable limits, Chad. It's your bandwidth, and I am eager to be a good and compliant guest.
Mercury: Asimov had a nice short story on Mercury back when we thought it was tidally locked. I can't remember the title, though.
I can't remember the title, either, but I believe it was one of Asimov's Robot stories. My books have been sequestered, so I'm unable to find out what the title might be. It was a story about doing mining on Mercury, IIRC.
Regarding Clarke's 2001 book, I think that's a bit of a stretch. It was based on a screenplay of a movie. The relevant Clarke story was The Sentinel, on which the 2001 movie was based. Like most of Clarke's work from the time period, the story was interesting, but like most British SciFi authors, I didn't find it profound*. From what I have read from most British SciFi authors, their prose styling is rather mundane. The only Brit SciFi story that I found particularly interesting was Day of the Triffids, but that was only because the set-up was so unusual.
Regarding Venus & Mars, there are lots of Heinlein books. Venus: Podkayne. Mars: Red Planet. Asteroids: Heinlein had a story (don't remember the name) of a trip to the asteroid belt to divert an asteroid into Earth orbit. The plan threatened to fall through because of some miscalculations, but one of the crew members was a math savant (this was the days before computers) who gave them the correct timing for firing the charges to divert the asteroid.
Nothing for Jupiter & Satern (they're gas giants, anyway), although, from my early childhood, there were some Tom Corbett, Space Cadet! books that referenced colonies on Titan and Ganymede. Apart from the homo-erotic aspect to those books, they were actually rather thrilling to some of us fledgling science advocates.
Neptune: nothing.
Pluto: Yee gads, this is going back a while. Heinlein had at least one story involving Pluto, as did Asimov. BTW, profi astronomers may want to denigrate Pluto, but I won't.
*Ironically, Clarke had submitted The Sentinel to a BBC writing competition and it was rejected.
Mercury - I believe Ray Bradbury's short story "Frost and Fire" is set on Mercury.
Well, if you wait a few years, Bova will have finished the whole solar system for you, I think. I have some problems with his books because of science errors, but YMMV.
The problem gets a little more difficult if you ask for books that are a little bit accurate according to what we now know-- no canals on Mars, no habitible "Twilight" zone on Mercury or swamps of Venus. (I can think of a number of short stories set on the modern Mercury, but no novels). I will suggest my own novel, _Mars Crossing_, for a Mars book.
The Asimov story set on Mercury is called "Runaround", and was the first to feature all Three Laws of Robotics. A slightly modified version (tweaked to mention Susan Calvin) appears in I, Robot.
Earth, by David Brin?
Foundation and Earth, by Isaac Asimov?
:-/
What? He's leaving out the Sun? That's such a glaring oversight (yes, pun intended). Since David Brin was mentioned, he should include the novel "Sundiver" to complete the solar system.
And since Asimov as Paul French was brought up, his aforementioned "Lucky Starr" series does actually have a novel relating to pretty much every planet (including forewards nowadays in which Asimov wrote mea culpas after new information came to light about various planets, such as Venus.)
And I seem to have TOTALLY missed Zack's comment which said pretty much the same thing my 2nd paragraph did.
Lesson: headcolds, Dayquil & posting don't mix.