The most recommended books about Venus

Pohl drew heavily on his experience as an advertising copywriter in this, perhaps his most famous novel co-written with C.M. Kornbluth. Although not directly set on a colonized world, it’s easily one of the darkest takes on the subject as the protagonist, a ‘star-class copysmith’ is given the job of selling people on the idea of emigrating to Venus…while carefully avoiding the reality of Venus being barely, if at all, habitable, with nothing to promise but a harsh existence and generations of toil before the planet can be fully terraformed.

Tom Corbett, Space Cadet remains my favorite young adult series. What’s not to like? Fights ending in fellowship, villains, and perils defeated, all in a dazzling 24th-century world of atomic spaceflight, electric wristwatches, high-speed slidewalks, hard-nosed Solar Guard officers with hearts of gold, and – remember this was written 70 years ago – brilliant women who are full professors of astrophysics at Space Academy (I’ll always love you, Dr. Joan Dale). Oh yes, and the Paralo-Ray: a weapon that immobilizes but does not kill. Of the eight Corbett books, The Revolt on Venus is the best: tense and thrilling, full of great characters, and politically astute.

I found this book moving. On one level it is the mythology of the planet we know as Venus, from the perspective of the Maasai people. On another level it speaks to the condition of age and loneliness. And I love the illustrations, which take the reader into the landscape of East Africa and show us the humanity of the old man. Like all the best tales, it can be enjoyed by both children and adults.

Mystery writer Steven Saylor’s recreations of late Republican Rome are the best out there. The Venus Throw finds Saylor’s detective, Gordianus the Finder, investigating the death of an Egyptian ambassador visiting the city. Through Gordianus’ search we meet a range of Romans known from historical sources including a noble woman, a love poet, and a eunuch priest of the eastern goddess Cybele. Saylor captures the variety of the city’s inhabitants and its places. You step into elegant houses, a dive bar with sour wine, and public baths where the floor is “heated to just the right temperature by the hot-water pipes underneath.” The Venus Throw is not the first entry in the Gordianus series but you can start with it, as I did, and then read all the others. One of these books’ many strengths is attention to the lives of slaves.

Wulf brings eighteenth-century Enlightenment science, philosophy, and thought to life like no other contemporary writer.

Chasing Venus is the amazing story of the first global scientific collaboration: the expeditions to measure the transit of Venus across the face of the sun in 1761 and 1769.

The result, if achieved, would enable scientists, for the first time, to calculate the distance from the Earth to the sun. The teams of astronomers and surveyors that fanned out across Europe, North America, and Asia to take the necessary measurements faced adversity ranging from wars and hostile locals to equipment failures and bad weather. Yet, against the odds, they succeeded, ushering in a new era in astronomy and scientific cooperation. 

Strange moon dust...Earth faces destruction…people must evacuate, but where can they go? This is hard science fiction, which I devoured with relish before that dust devoured me.

The story is so real and plausible that I became caught up with the principal characters when everybody realized Earth faces doom. Broad in scope, the novel touched something deep within me when I considered the scenario. How would I make peace with myself and others when staring at death?

That is what this book brings into sharp relief: family against family, nation against nation, eager to exploit the ‘final solution’ against an enemy. Yet, amidst looming chaos, there is hope for mankind to conquer the Solar System…if it survives—an enchanting read. 

In contrast to Marooned (and, in fact, just about every other SF space novel of the ’60s and ’70s) is this short and very dark masterpiece. The first winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, this novel about the aftermath of a doomed mission to Venus is Malzberg’s dark answer to the over-optimistic view of space exploration that was prevalent in the post-Apollo period, and a stark reminder that the universe is an unforgiving and dangerous place.

I was fortunate to view two Venus transits, and this book made me realize how certain astronomical events have had enormous social impacts. There are many such examples of adventure, elation, and disappointment in this book, but the one that I found most fascinating is the 1769 transit of Venus, which was the main reason for the British voyage to the Southern Hemisphere. This historical event had major repercussions for Australian Indigenous people due to British colonisation. 

I particularly enjoyed referring to the many colorful images and maps as I read. The stunning painting of Fort Venus, set up for Lieutenant James Cook and astronomer Charles Green’s observations, led me to recently visit the same site, now called ‘Point Venus’, in Tahiti.

As a teenager this collection of short stories blew my mind; it’s one of the first to really explore sexual pleasure from a female perspective and I loved the way it wove psychology, power, culture, and erotic play up seamlessly and provocatively. It was most likely an unconscious template for my own collections of erotic short stories, the perfect format for the pillow book (to be read out loud to one’s lover/husband/guilty pleasure). Nin, a friend of Henry Miller and a number of Paris-based groundbreaking artists and intellectuals in the 1920s, is the perfect conduit for the louche erotic experimentation of the era, and yet this book is still timeless and still delivers in terms of fantasy.  

In the late 18th century, European scientists claimed that “the sciences were never at war,” using as an example the international Transit of Venus voyages that took place during the height of the Seven Years’ War.

Even though the two opposing sides–France and Britain–were engaged in one of the bloodiest conflicts of that century, scientists from those two nations, as well as many allied nations on both sides, traveled vast distances across the globe (including Tahiti, South Africa, and Siberia) to witness the two Transits of Venus, 1761 and 1769.

Facing not just war but also fierce cold, disease, and the perils of ocean navigation (see Longitude above), the astronomers combined their observations to give mankind its first glimpse of the enormous scale of our solar system.