During the early history of “speculative fiction”, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Rice Burroughs postulated that all or most of the inner planets were, more or less, hospitable to life. Mars was a desert world, long dying for lack of water. Venus was a jungle world, its cloud-covered face hiding jungles that often housed dinosaurs. It was even speculated that a fifth planet, Vulcan, once lay between Mars and Jupiter. Since this makes for a much richer storytelling setting, and the stories are set in the late 19th century, this is true for my inner planets as well

Mercury’s World River

Mercury is tidally locked to the Sun, but that doesn’t keep it from having water, atmosphere, and life. A constant, cold to cool wind from the cold side blows along the surface with an equally constant hot to warm wind aloft returning the air from the hot side. A deep, broad valley circles the twilight zone between them.

Jungles of Venus

The clouds of Venus are water clouds and the surface is a hot, muggy jungle. Saurian leviathans rule the air, land and sea, making exploration difficult – and that is before considering the bloodthirsty lizard people

Earth, With Bonuses

Our own planet is, mostly, the same. But with all the cool things on other worlds, there have to be mysterious islands, lost civilizations, evidence of ancient bases from peoples of the other planets, and other story elements still to be found. Who knows, maybe a voyage to the center of the Earth is possible…

Moon – Scars of Conflict

Not all of those craters on the moon were from natural meteorite impacts. Thousands of years ago, there was a War in Heaven that almost destroyed the numerous moon bases and instillations. Almost…

Mars And The Elves

Mars has canals. Mars also has the mightiest volcanoes in the solar system. And the people of Mars, both those living in the baroque civilizations of the canal queendoms, and the raiders who venerate the millennia-old trans-atmospheric fighters on static display, are human – except for the pointed ears…

Lost Vulcan

The Asteroid Belt is has about 20 times the mass of the belt in real life. It is also far less evenly spaced, most of the asteroids being in the quadrant centered on the ancient moon Ceres. But the closer one comes to the heart of the Vulcan debris field, the more… haunted it becomes.