Space Advertising - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

Large billboards in space have been featured in several science fiction books, films and television series, most notably the animated series Futurama. They are usually shown as satire of commercialisation.

In Fredric Brown's 1945 short story, "Pi in the Sky," an inventor rearranges the apparent positions of the stars to form an advertising slogan.

In Robert A. Heinlein's 1951 novella The Man Who Sold the Moon the protagonist raises funds for his lunar ambitions by publicly describing means of covering the visible lunar face in advertising and propaganda, and then taking money not to do so.

In Isaac Asimov's 1958 short story Buy Jupiter, a group of extraterrestrials broker a deal with the governments of Earth to purchase the right to replace the planet Jupiter with a device in the size and shape of the planet that would generate advertisements to the starships from their worlds that passed by the planet.

A Red Dwarf novel features an advertising campaign whereby a ship is sent on a mission by The Coca-Cola Company to cause 128 stars to go supernova in order to visibly spell the words "Coke Adds Life!" across the sky on earth. The message is intended to last five weeks, and be visible even in daylight.

In an episode of Carmen Sandiego's television show, she plans to launch rockets to transform the moon's face into the show's logo.