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"This category [science fiction] excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy."
- Robert Heinlein
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| Prison Planet | ||
| A planet (or planetoid) that serves as a jail for solar system offenders. |
As far as I know, the first use of the phrase "prison planet".
| Gray was charged with having stolen the real coil and substituted a blank for it. He knew better; soon realized that the whole affair was a conspiracy between the terrestrials and their Venusian underlings to defraud the stockholders, but upon Gray alone rested the blame. He was convicted and sentenced to five years on the prison planet, Ganymede. Upon his release he became a tramp, wandering from planet to planet, until at last he became one of the Controllers of Gernser. |
| Technovelgy from The Venus Germ,
by R.F. Starzl (w/F. Pragnell). Published by Wonder Stories in 1932 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the earliest use of the idea Prison Planet (Penal Settlement) from Revolt on Inferno (1931) by Victor Rousseau. See also 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.
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'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
