Space Elevators in Fiction - Novels and Fairy Tales

Novels and Fairy Tales

• 2061: Odyssey Three, novel by Arthur C. Clarke. The possibility of a space elevator is realised after a groundbreaking discovery that Jupiter's core (now in fragments around the orbit of Lucifer) had been a solid diamond; as the hardest substance in nature, suddenly available in vast quantities, it facilitates the construction of a solid elevator rather than the more common tether structure previously envisaged
• 2312, novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. Thirty-seven space elevators connect Earth's surface to orbit.
• 3001: The Final Odyssey, novel by Arthur C. Clarke. In this novel, a ring habitat now exists around the Earth that is connected to the surface via four, solid-diamond space elevators
• Across the Sea of Stars, collection by Arthur C. Clarke
• Across the Sea of Suns, novel by Gregory Benford
• Assassin Gambit, novel by William Forstchen
• Blue Remembered Earth, novel by Alastair Reynolds
• Chasm City, novel by Alastair Reynolds
• City of Heaven, novel by Tom Terry depicts a terrorist attack aboard a space elevator
• Coyote Frontier, novel by Allen Steele
• Deepsix, novel by Jack McDevitt. The remains of a space elevator are found on a doomed planet
• The Descent of Anansi, novel by Steven Barnes and Larry Niven (ISBN 0-8125-1292-8)
• Drakon, novel by S.M. Stirling. Referd to as the beanstalk
• The End of the Empire, novel by Alexis A. Gilliland
• Feersum Endjinn, novel by Iain M. Banks
• Foreigner, novel by Robert J. Sawyer
• Friday, novel by Robert A. Heinlein
• The Fountains of Paradise, novel by Arthur C. Clarke. This novel is primarily about the construction of a space elevator on a mountain top on Earth in a fictionalised version of Sri Lanka.
• The Gordon Mamon Casebook, five SF murder-mystery stories (Murder On The Zenith Express, Single Handed, The Fall Guy, The Hunt For Red Leicester, and A Night To Remember) by Simon Petrie, set on a string of hotel modules ascending and descending a space elevator that connects Earth with a mega-hotel in geosynchronous orbit.
• Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, novel by Eric S. Nylund. Features the UNSC Centennial Orbital Elevator in Havana, Cuba.
• The Highest Frontier, novel by Joan Slonczewski. A college student rides a space elevator constructed of self-healing cables of anthrax bacilli. The engineered bacteria can regrow the cables when severed by space debris.
• Hothouse, novel by Brian Aldiss
• Jack and the Beanstalk, fairy tale. Due to this story about a plant that grows up into the sky, another name for a space elevator has been coined: 'beanstalk'.
• Jack and the Skyhook, children's book by Damien Broderick
• Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London, novel by Keith Mansfield. Title character Johnny Mackintosh and sister Clara leave Earth for the first time in a secret space elevator.
• Jumping Off the Planet, novel by David Gerrold
• The Last Theorem, novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl
• Limit, novel by Frank Schätzing. Used for transporting nuclear fuel between Moon and Earth.
• The Mars Trilogy, a series of novels (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson, depicts space elevators on Earth and on Mars, the cables of which are made of carbon nanotubes manufactured on asteroids and lowered into each planet's atmosphere, using the asteroid as a counterweight. Red Mars depicts what happens when a cable is cut at the asteroid anchor point.
• Mercury, novel by Ben Bova about a space elevator sabotage that gets an innocent man exiled from Earth
• Metaplanetary and Superluminal, novels by science fiction writer (as opposed to comic creator) Tony Daniel
• The Mirrored Heavens, novel by David J. Williams
• The Night Sessions. novel by Ken MacLeod
• The Night's Dawn Trilogy, novels by Peter F. Hamilton
• Old Man's War, novel by John Scalzi. Explicitly established not to be in a physically viable orbit, indicating the government which maintains it is keeping technological secrets from Earth.
• Rainbow Mars, novel by Larry Niven with 'beanstalks' on Mars and Earth
• The Science of Discworld, by Terry Pratchett, Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, in which Roundworld humanity escapes to the stars via an elevator
• Singularity's Ring, novel by Paul Melko
• Sometimes The Dragon Wins, novel by William Walling
• Songs of Distant Earth, novel by Arthur C. Clarke. The name 'space elevator' is not used in this book and the device used is not suitable for transporting humans. Instead, a kind of very strong cable is used to pull massive blocks of ice up to a spaceship in orbit around a fictitious planet from its surface
• Starclimber, novel by Kenneth Oppel. The main characters go to space using a space elevator.
• Star Trek: S.C.E. #37: Ring Around the Sky by Allyn Gibson. Features a world with a series of space elevators that connect to a solid ring structure built around the planet, now threatened with collapse.
• Strata, one of Terry Pratchett's two solely science-fiction novels
• Sundiver, novel by David Brin
• Sunstorm, novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
• Tour of the Universe, novel by Robert Holdstock and Malcolm Edwards
• The Web Between the Worlds, novel by Charles Sheffield
• Zavtra Nastupit Vechnost (Tomorrow The Eternity Will Come), novel by Russian sci-fi writer Alexander Gromov
• Zmeyonysh (Young Snake), novella by the same author
• Zastryat v Lifte (To Struck in The Elevator), short story by Russian sci-fi writer Dmitry Tarabanov. In this technical love-story, the sabotage of the first space elevator, built by LiftPort Group and named after Yuri Artsutanov, is described