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Old 08-20-2011, 09:10 PM   #1
isf
 
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Default Planetary Romance and the outer planets

Under the theory that the planets got older as you went out from the Sun, how do the outer planets like Jupiter and Saturn fit into this scheme?

For the Steampunk Mars game that I'm running; I think that I am going to have them be the cthulhu like planets with enigmatic aliens and things that are weird (like DnD's Abberrations- Illithids, Beholders; or the Mi-go from the Mythos). I'm open to any other suggestions or ideas.
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Old 08-20-2011, 09:19 PM   #2
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Under the theory that the planets got older as you went out from the Sun, how do the outer planets like Jupiter and Saturn fit into this scheme?
Really they don't. Even in the 19th century people could see that they were a different sort of celestial object. You have Asteroids (really old, blew up like Krypton), Mars (old and dying), Earth (coming into its prime), Venus (primitive and savage), and Mercury (barely starting to cool enough to have the possibility of life).

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Old 08-20-2011, 09:55 PM   #3
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Really they don't. Even in the 19th century people could see that they were a different sort of celestial object. You have Asteroids (really old, blew up like Krypton), Mars (old and dying), Earth (coming into its prime), Venus (primitive and savage), and Mercury (barely starting to cool enough to have the possibility of life).

Bill Stoddard
That would explain why my google-fu failed me :). I was hoping for some strange theories or speculation that I had missed.
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Old 08-20-2011, 09:55 PM   #4
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Default Re: Planetary Romance and the outer planets

read Lin Carters planetary romances set on Callisto. To be perfectly honest the Moons of the outer planets make a better setting for Planetary Romance.
One could even make the multiple settings for various moons and have your Victorian or Even Atomic Horror characters move about them in their Aether Flyers. With Jupiter or Saturn taking up as much as 25% of the sky that would be a spectacular backdrop for derring-do.
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Old 08-20-2011, 09:58 PM   #5
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or the Mi-go from the Mythos.
Yuggoth is Pluto
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Old 08-20-2011, 10:52 PM   #6
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here's an idea. You have one player be an Earthman.Send him to Titan via a magic space ray. Give him a cool ability like super-strength and/ or jumping. The rest of the pc's are the blue skinned natives of ,say, Titan. Now you have some great adventures and after a bit the Earthman should become a local Power and have married the nubile blue Princess. End of campaign. Re-start a bit later with Explorers( the pc's) and contacted by a trustworthy figure who just happens to a writer of science fiction or fantasy, who shows them a series of letters written by the Earthman of the previous campaign and have them set off to the Moon to "Rescue" him. They should build some sort of awesome experimental rocket or Aether Flyer and have them crash the object on Titan where they are lacking just one component that they need to re-fly the ship. Put them in a series of amazing adventures where they finally meet the previous character ( Now an important NPC) who eventually will give them the things they need to fix the ship. They return to Earth( though possibly one may wish to stay due to a nubile blue- skinned space babe) and they contact the former writer and tell him the tale.
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Old 08-20-2011, 10:58 PM   #7
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That would explain why my google-fu failed me :). I was hoping for some strange theories or speculation that I had missed.
Actually, if you take a look at Other Worlds, by Garrett Serviss (available via Project Gutenberg), you will find a really strange and cool theory:

Now, the history of the solar system, according to the nebular hypothesis, is a history of cooling and condensation. The sun, a thousand times larger than Jupiter, has not yet sufficiently cooled and contracted to become incrusted, except with a shell of incandescent metallic clouds; Jupiter, a thousand times smaller than the sun, has cooled and contracted until it is but slightly, if at all, incandescent at its surface, while its thickening shell, although still composed of vapor and smoke, and still probably hot, has grown so dense that it entirely cuts off the luminous radiation from within; the earth, to carry the comparison one step further, being more than a thousand times smaller than Jupiter, has progressed so far in the process of cooling that its original shell of vapor has given place to one of solid rock.

A sudden outburst of light from Jupiter, such as occurs occasionally in a star that is losing its radiance through the condensation of absorbing vapors around it, would furnish strong corroboration of the theory that Jupiter is really an extinguished sun which is now on the way to become a planet in the terrestrial sense.


(Serviss, by the way, more or less created the edisonade in 1898 with his novel Edison's Conquest of Mars, an unauthorized sequel to The War of the Worlds.)

How cool is that? Not a cold Jupiter, but a hot Jupiter, not yet cooled to solidity, though sufficiently cooled to be no longer luminous. And possibly with life-bearing satellites.

Bill Stoddard
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Old 08-20-2011, 11:21 PM   #8
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Under the theory that the planets got older as you went out from the Sun, how do the outer planets like Jupiter and Saturn fit into this scheme?
Well, the more serious planetary romanticists regarded the gas giants and their moons as mini-solar systems. The gas giants arbitrarily provide enough heat to provide a kind of earthlike environment.

Others just totally ignored reality and portrayed them as really big solid planets.

Pluto though, Pluto was always just totally non earthlike and if there was life there, it was totally freaky.
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Old 08-21-2011, 12:41 AM   #9
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Actually, if you take a look at Other Worlds, by Garrett Serviss (available via Project Gutenberg), you will find a really strange and cool theory:
I'm reading this now. They have a couple of his works at Gutenberg; I'll have to read the rest.

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(Serviss, by the way, more or less created the edisonade in 1898 with his novel Edison's Conquest of Mars, an unauthorized sequel to The War of the Worlds.)
I had read this earlier this year but did not think to look for any other works by him.

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How cool is that? Not a cold Jupiter, but a hot Jupiter, not yet cooled to solidity, though sufficiently cooled to be no longer luminous. And possibly with life-bearing satellites.

Bill Stoddard
I'll have to ponder that for a bit; the game is set on Mars but I want a better idea of the history and scope of the background.
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Old 08-21-2011, 04:34 PM   #10
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How cool is that? Not a cold Jupiter, but a hot Jupiter, not yet cooled to solidity, though sufficiently cooled to be no longer luminous. And possibly with life-bearing satellites.
Bill Stoddard
Since the outer planets are much older and the gas giants have all cooled enough to mostly stop producing light; any ancient civilizations on them have had to deal with their local sun going dim or out entirely?

Do I have this nebular theory correct?
1 Nebula starts contracting and cooling off leaving rings.
2 The rings cool off and form planets
3. the planets go from suns to gas giants to rocky bodies through cooling and contracting (the differences being size and age)
4. planets may cool and contract enough to explode like the fifth planet

Having read some his other stuff; it is interesting on what they got right and what was spectacularly wrong; dismissing the idea that craters on the Moon and Mars could be meteoric and instead are seen to be volcanic, firmly considering the canals on Mars as confirmed fact, and others.
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