Mercury in fiction

A popular setting for science fiction writers, there are many examples of the planet Mercury in fiction. Recurring themes include the dangers of being exposed to solar radiation and the possibility of escaping excessive radiation by staying within the planet's slow-moving terminator (the boundary between day and night). Another recurring theme is autocratic governments, perhaps because of an association of Mercury with hot-temperedness.

Eric Rucker Eddison's series of fantasy novels, starting with The Worm Ouroboros (1922), is set on Mercury. However, the name is used purely for its exotic value, without regard to facts known about it at the time. H. P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time (1936) briefly mentions the planet:

Later, as the Earth's span closed, the transferred minds (of the Great Race of Yith) would again migrate through time and space —to another stopping place in the bodies of the bulbous vegetable entities of Mercury.

Isaac Asimov wrote several stories which take place on Mercury. The short story "Runaround" in the collection I, Robot (1950) involves a robot specially designed to cope with the intense solar radiation on the planet. The short story "The Dying Night" (1956) is a murder mystery in which astronomers from Mercury, the Moon, and a fictitious space station are implicated in a murder. The dynamics and living conditions of each of these locations is key to discovering which astronomer is guilty. Another story by Asimov is the juvenile novel Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956). Asimov wrote all of these stories before astronomers knew that the planet was not tideally locked; in each story, he portrays Mercury as having a permanent day-side and night-side.

Arthur C. Clarke's Islands in the Sky (1952) includes a description of a terrifying creature that lives on what was then believed to be the permanently dark nightside with only occasional visits to the twilight zone. In his novel Rendezvous with Rama (1973), Mercury is ruled by a hot-tempered government of metal miners that tries to destroy the alien spacecraft Rama. The novel shares its background of a colonized Solar System with several others, especially Imperial Earth.

In several novels and short stories by Kim Stanley Robinson, especially 'Mercurial' in The Planet on the Table (1986) and Blue Mars (1996), Mercury is the home of a vast city called Terminator. To avoid the dangerous solar radiation, the city rolls around the planet's equator on tracks, keeping pace with the planet's rotation so that the Sun never rises fully above the horizon. The motive power comes from solar heat expanding the rails on the day side. The city is ruled by an autocratic dictator called the Lion of Mercury.

Bill Watterson's comic strip Calvin and Hobbes included a story extended across several daily strips, in which Calvin and his classmate Susie must give a presentation about Mercury to their class. Calvin's contribution, typically, is replete with "creative liberties": "The planet Mercury is named for a Roman god with winged feet. Mercury was the god of flowers and bouquets, which is why he is today a registered trademark of FTD florists..."

Other stories which takes place on Mercury include:

• Alan E. Nourse's short story 'Brightside Crossing' (Galaxy, 1956), a narrative of a survivor of one such attempt which had become the ultimate sporting feat.
• Kurt Vonnegut's novel The Sirens of Titan (1959), where mindless creatures called harmoniums inhabit the caves of Mercury.
• Ray Cummings' Tama, Princess of Mercury (1966).
• In the anime Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury is a soldier representing the planet.

The planet has also been a setting for several television series. In the animated television series Exosquad (1993), Mercury served as Exofleet's temporary base during the reconquest of the "Homeworlds" (Venus, Earth, and Mars). In a Star Trek: Voyager show-within-a-show, The Adventures of Captain Proton (first appearing in Night in 1998), Dr. Chaotica was a villain who wanted to conquer the people of Earth and force them to work in the mines of Mercury. An episode of Futurama had Mercury's circumference faithfully represented by a "road sign" giving distance to the only vehicle service station on the planet, where Fry and Amy are stuck when her vehicle runs out of fuel. In the television show Invader Zim (2001), Mercury is turned into a prototype giant spaceship by the extinct Mercurites.