Saturn in science fiction
Saturn has been a destination of science fiction since the seventeenth century: Voltaire's Micromégas (1752) features a philosopher from Saturn, Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) sends its astronauts to the Saturnian moon Iapetus, and Christopher Nolan's Interstellar (2014) places a wormhole near the planet. Its rings make it the most cinematic planet in the solar system, and its moons Titan and Enceladus have become favorite settings for stories about life and colonization.
Contents
Before science fiction: cosmic voyages
As soon as telescopes revealed Saturn's strange shape, writers imagined its inhabitants. In his Itinerarium exstaticum (1656), the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher describes a dream journey through the planets guided by an angel, Saturn included. Bernard de Fontenelle's Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (1686) pictures the dwellers of distant, cold Saturn as slow and phlegmatic, in keeping with the planet's astrological reputation. Christiaan Huygens, who had explained the rings, speculated soberly about Saturnians in his posthumous Kosmotheoros (1698).
Voltaire's Micromégas (1752)
Voltaire's philosophical tale is the classic Saturnian story. Micromégas, a giant from a planet of the star Sirius some 120,000 feet tall, is banished from his world and travels through space. On Saturn he befriends the secretary of the Academy of Saturn, a "dwarf" barely a thousand fathoms high, a gentle caricature of Fontenelle. The Saturnian complains that his people have only 72 senses and live a mere 15,000 years; Micromégas, with his thousand senses and much longer life, finds that just as short. The two travel together to Earth, where they discover with a microscope the tiny humans aboard a ship returning from a polar expedition and are amazed by their pride. The tale uses the scale of the cosmos, freshly revealed by astronomy, to mock human vanity.
Pulp and Golden Age science fiction
In the twentieth century Saturn became a place to go rather than a home of aliens. Isaac Asimov's novella The Martian Way (1952) imagines Martian colonists towing ice from the rings to solve a water shortage, a remarkable intuition before space probes confirmed that the rings are nearly pure water ice (see what the rings are made of). Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan (1959) places a stranded alien robot, Salo, on Titan, in a satirical fable about free will.
2001: the novel goes to Saturn, the film to Jupiter
Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick developed 2001: A Space Odyssey together, but the two versions end in different places. In Clarke's novel (1968), the spaceship Discovery uses a gravity assist at Jupiter and continues to Saturn, where the astronaut Dave Bowman finds the Star Gate on the moon Iapetus, the moon with one bright and one dark hemisphere (see Iapetus). In Kubrick's film, released the same year, the destination is Jupiter: the special-effects team, which included Douglas Trumbull, could not produce rings convincing enough for Kubrick. Clarke followed the film's version in his sequel 2010: Odyssey Two (1982). Trumbull finally put Saturn on screen in his own film Silent Running (1972), in which the space freighter Valley Forge passes close to the rings.
Clarke returned to the system in Imperial Earth (1975), whose hero comes from a human colony on Titan, a moon whose dense atmosphere was already known.
Saturn on film
- Saturn 3 (1980): a research station on a moon of Saturn, with Kirk Douglas, Farrah Fawcett and a murderous robot.
- Beetlejuice (1988): in Tim Burton's comedy, the world outside the haunted house is a desert landscape identified as Saturn, with a striped sky and giant sandworms, which reappear in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024).
- WALL-E (2008): the little robot runs his hand through the particles of Saturn's rings during a flight through space.
- Star Trek (2009): the Enterprise hides in the atmosphere of Titan, with Saturn's rings in the background.
- Interstellar (2014): the crew of the Endurance travels about two years to a wormhole that has appeared near Saturn, leading to another galaxy. The film, advised by physicist Kip Thorne, ends on Cooper Station, a cylindrical habitat in orbit around Saturn.
The Expanse and modern science fiction
In James S. A. Corey's The Expanse novels (from 2011) and the television series (2015–2022), Saturn's small moon Phoebe is revealed to be an alien object carrying the protomolecule that drives the plot, a nod to Phoebe's real status as a captured body with a retrograde orbit. Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 (2012) features settlements on Saturn's moons. The discovery by Cassini of geysers on Enceladus and lakes of methane on Titan has made these moons standard settings for stories about alien life; see life on Saturn's moons.
Beyond books and films
Saturn has also become a symbol of cosmic otherness in music. The jazz composer Sun Ra claimed to come from Saturn, called his record label El Saturn and starred in the film Space Is the Place (1974). Japanese manga gave the planet a warrior, Sailor Saturn. And the main awards of the genre in film and television, the Saturn Awards, are named after the planet.
FAQ
Does 2001: A Space Odyssey go to Saturn or Jupiter?
Both, depending on the version. Clarke's novel goes to Saturn and its moon Iapetus; Kubrick's film goes to Jupiter, reportedly because a convincing Saturn with rings was too hard to create with the effects of the time.
What role does Saturn play in Interstellar?
A wormhole appears near Saturn, and the crew travels there to cross into another galaxy. At the end, humanity lives on Cooper Station, a space habitat orbiting Saturn.
Are the sandworms in Beetlejuice from Saturn?
Yes. In Beetlejuice (1988), the desert outside the house is identified as Saturn, and the giant striped sandworms live there.
Who is the Saturnian in Voltaire's Micromégas?
The secretary of the Academy of Saturn, a "dwarf" about a thousand fathoms tall, with 72 senses and a life of 15,000 years, who travels with the giant Micromégas to Earth.
Sources
- Voltaire, Micromégas, 1752
- Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968, and The Lost Worlds of 2001, 1972
- Kip Thorne, The Science of Interstellar, W. W. Norton, 2014
- Bernard de Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, 1686