It is not unusual for the fields of science and science fiction to coincide within the same author, writing makes few people rich and in the golden age of pulp magazines many authors held down day jobs in the sciences. It goes some way to explaining their fascination about the universe around them and their desire to explore it through their writing. Unfortunately, sometimes science overtakes science fiction and an idea which was once popular is suddenly dropped.

At one time it was thought that Mars had canals and stories incorporated these until it was discovered that no land water existed and therefore no life. Venus, on the other hand, because of its permanent cloud covering was an area of great expectation. What lay beneath the covering? Given our Earth perspective writers conjured up a planet, whose primary feature would be water and rain, leading to descriptions of deep forests and even deeper oceans. Sadly, science caught up, showing the planet to be too hot and hostile for life to have ever begun. Suddenly stories about Venus looked like the ill informed work of adolescents and for a long time the whole idea was dropped.

Many missed the old planet, so when George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois decided to edit an anthology of Venus based stories, from the perspective of the previous romantic view they had little problem in finding contributors.

Old Venus (2015. 580 pages) contains sixteen short stories, set on a fictional view of Venus as generally habitable. The book opens with a forward by Dozois, following which each individual story is prefaced with a resume of the author and some of their more notable work. Admittedly this is a niche market, but with the current resurgence of interest in themes and styles from the pulp era the book should gain an audience.

As one can imagine, with some small variations, Venus is portrayed as a world shrouded in cloud incorporating many water themes, sometimes vast jungles or deep oceans, the proportion of land to water varies between the writers.

There is a peculiarity amongst many of the tales. Given the type of story they were emulating, overall the majority still felt like modern writing. As one can imagine the planet becomes a jumping off point for whatever the author actually wanted to write about and in many cases you could have changed the name of the planet with little or no impact on the end result. It took me a little time to work out what was missing, there was little in the way of an Edgar Rice Burroughs vibe about many of the stories, although, in truth, I’m not sure why I expected a more swashbuckling approach, so less Burroughs and more Ray Bradbury.

Nearly all of the stories are strong, the choice of which is the better one will be very subjective, but my money is on Tobias S. Buckell’s 'Pale Blue Memories' as the most evocative story in the collection.

The full list of stories is:-

FROGHEADS, by Allen M. Steele
THE DROWNED CELESTRIAL, by Lavie Tidhar
PLANET OF FEAR, by Paul McAuley
GREEVES AND THE EVENING STAR, by Matthew Hughes
A PLANET CALLED DESIRE, by Gwyneth Jones
LIVING HELL, by Joe Haldeman
BONES OF AIR, BONES OF STONE, by Stephen Leigh
RUINS, by Eleanor Arnason
THE TUMBLEDOWNS OF CLEOPATRA ABYSS, by David Brin
BY FROGSLED AND LIZARDBACK TO OUTCAST VENUSIAN LEPERS, by Garth Nix
THE SUNSET OF TIME, by Michael Cassutt
PALE BLUE MEMORIES, by Tobias S. Buckell
THE HEART'S FILTHY LESSON, by Elizabeth Bear
THE WIZARD OF THE TREES, by Joe R. Lansdale
THE GODSTONE OF VENUS, by Mike Resnick
BOTANICA VENERIS: THIRTEEN PAPERCUTS BY IDA COUNTESS RATHANGAN, by Ian McDonald

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Charles Packer