Neptune in Fiction

Neptune In Fiction

The planet Neptune has been used as a reference and setting in various films and works of fiction:

• The first fictional visit of Neptune, portrayed as glacial but nevertheless inhabited, occurred in Spirito gentil (1889).
• In H. G. Wells's short story The Star, Neptune is destroyed in a collision with another supermassive object which reduces its orbital velocity to zero; the wreckage falls into the Sun, narrowly missing Earth.
• In the Captain Future series, Neptune is portrayed as a sea planet, not out of any scientific theory but evidently because Neptune is the Roman sea god.
• In Olaf Stapledon's 1930 epic novel Last and First Men, Neptune is the final home of the highly evolved human race. The planet is depicted as having a dense atmosphere but with a solid surface.
• In Hugh Walters' 1968 novel Nearly Neptune, the first manned expedition to Neptune ends in apparent disaster as a fire destroys vital equipment on board the spacecraft as it nears the planet.
• Neptune was the intended destination of the mining ship Red Dwarf in the books based on the BBC sitcom of that name, but an accident on board sends it into deep space instead.
• The planet served as the backdrop for the 1997 science fiction/horror film Event Horizon.
• The humorous short story, "The Elephants on Neptune" by Mike Resnick, was published in Asimov's Science Fiction, and was nominated for both a Hugo and a Nebula award (2001).
• The pilot of the TV movie Virtuality centers around a starship preparing to make a flyby of Neptune before leaving the solar system.
• Mothstorm (2008), a book in the Larklight Trilogy by Philip Reeve. Neptune is called Hades. The lizard-like Silth tow their miniature Sun into orbit of it, allowing them to inhabit it and rename it Snil. The remainder of the giant moths they farmed are taken there also.
• Sailor Neptune also known as Michiru Kaioh is a fictional superheroine in the Japanese metaseries Sailor Moon. She uses water-based powers and was the princess of her home planet in her previous life.
• In the adventure game Anastronaut: The Moon Hopper The player time-travels to a future phase of planet Neptune and four of its moons.