Neptune in fiction

Neptune was discovered in 1846 and has only made occasional appearances in fiction since then.[1] The first time it was mentioned, then called "Leverrier's planet", was in the 1848 novel The Triumphs of Woman by Charles Rowcroft where an inhabitant of the planet visits Earth.[2] The earliest stories where Neptune itself directly appears as a setting, such as the 1930s works "The Monsters of Neptune" by Henrik Dahl Juve and Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, portray it as a rocky planet rather than as having its actual gaseous composition;[3] in the latter, it becomes humanity's refuge in the far future when the Sun expands.[1][3][4] Later works rectified this error, with Alexei Panshin's 1969 short story "One Sunday in Neptune" depicting a voyage into Neptune's atmosphere[3] and Alex Irvine's 2003 story "Shepherded by Galatea" featuring resource extraction in the atmosphere.[2] In the 1969 novel Macroscope by Piers Anthony, Neptune is converted to a world ship.[1]

A city on Neptune depicted by Frank R. Paul for Amazing Stories

Neptune's largest moon Triton was discovered less than a month after the planet.[2] A few works in the 1930s depicted humans going to Triton, looking for minerals in Roman Frederick Starzl's "The Power Satellite" and a permanent home in John R. Pierce's "The Relics from the Earth".[3] In the late 20th century it started receiving more attention from science fiction writers than Neptune itself.[2] The main such work is Samuel R. Delany's 1976 novel Triton (also known as Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia) which depicts future societies living there.[3][5] In the 1994 novel Neptune Crossing by Jeffrey Carver, an alien on Triton helps humanity avert an impact event.[4]