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"I was perfectly satisfied to write science fiction knowing that it would pay very little, that it would be seen by only a very few people."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Prison Planet (Penal Settlement) | ||
| A prison so far from Earth. |
Probably the earliest reference to the idea of a prison planet.
| "...for the conspirators there remained nothing but hopeless exile on Inferno, the Doom Planet. It was well called Inferno, for no earthly penal settlement could have exceeded it in horrors. The outermost member of the solar system, lying far beyond Pluto, it traversed so immense an orbit that it was believed to complete it only after a period of thirty thousand years... This was the destination of the prisoners, because exile to Inferno was an hundredfold worse than death, The very name conveyed unspeakable horror. |
| Technovelgy from Revolt on Inferno,
by Victor Rousseau. Published by Miracle Science and Fantasy Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the asteroid prison from One Against the Legion (1939) by Jack Williamson, the Alcatraz of Space from Reunion on Ganymede (1938) by Clifford Simak, the Moon as prison from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) by Robert Heinlein, zero-time jail from A World Out of Time (1976) by Larry Niven and Brainlock from Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) by William Gibson.
A variation on "prison planet" is the phrase "space prison". The first use of the phrase "space prison" was probably in "Crossroads of Space" by Arthur Stangland in 1932.
However, Tom Godwin was probably the first to use it to describe a real place, as opposed to using it as a metaphor, in his novel Space Prison, published in 1960.
"Thoroughbreds of Earth they were, incarcerating themselves in this space prison, making it possible for ships to make the two billion-mile trip without using too much valuable space for fuel."
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'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
