Jovian (fiction)

Updated on Oct 19, 2023

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In science fiction, a Jovian is an inhabitant of the planet Jupiter.

Jovians in literature

In H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos (1928–...), Jupiter was the one-time home of the flying polyps.

The Conquest of Two Worlds (1932) by Edmond Hamilton. Humans explore the solar system and discover intelligent life on Mars and Jupiter, and proceed to ruthlessly conquer and subjugate it. Jupiter is a humid jungle world with high gravity. The natives are friendly, hairless beings with thick hands and legs ending in flippers, small heads and large dark eyes.

In Isaac Asimov's short story Victory Unintentional (1942), human colonists on Ganymede send robots to Jupiter to contact the Jovians, who are planning a war with the humans.

In Poul Anderson's Three Worlds to Conquer, sympathetic Centaur-like Jovians are in danger of extinction by cruel invaders from another region of the planet. At the same time their friends, the human colonists of Ganymede, are threatened by a powerful space warship commanded by a dictatorial militarist. Eventually, the two groups find ingenious ways to help each other defeat their respective enemies.

In Skeleton Men of Jupiter (1943), the eleventh and last Barsoom book by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the hero John Carter is kidnapped and taken to Jupiter (also called "Sasoom" in the Barsoom franchise) by its inhabitants called the Morgors (also called "Skeleton Men" because they look like walking human skeletons). Jupiter is described as a harsh world warmed only by volcanoes, with forests of sentient trees.

Arthur C. Clarke's A Meeting with Medusa (1972) proposes giant mile sized medusa-like creatures living in Jupiter's atmosphere.

Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two (1982) depicts city-sized, cloud-like creatures, squid-like animals, and creatures resembling terrestrial aircraft.

Ben Bova's novel Jupiter (2001) also features massive whale-like creatures kilometers long living in the liquid stage of Jupiter's atmosphere and are pictured as being intelligent.

In the Larklight Trilogy by Philip Reeve, Jupiter's moons are inhabited by a variety of races. The planet itself has sentient storms the largest of which, Old Thunderhead, is worshipped as a God. The planet also possesses floating creatures that resemble animals in Earth's oceans.

The Gobsmacking Galaxy, an entry in the children's non-fiction series The Knowledge written by Kjartan Poskitt, humorously describes hypothetical alien life forms which might evolve on planets in the solar system; the Jovian is portrayed as a creature comparable to a massive hot air balloon which has learned to subsist on the radiation in Jupiter's atmosphere.

In comics

In the Marvel comic book series Guardians of the Galaxy, Charlie-27 is from Jupiter and, being genetically engineered to survive in Jupiter's high gravity, which according to this is 11 times stronger than that of Earth, is stronger and tougher than a normal human. He is the last Jovian; all the others were wiped out by the Badoon invasion in the 31st century.

In Indian cartoonist Pran's Chacha Chaudhary series, one of the main characters Sabu is a Jupiter native, but lives on earth with his best pal Chacha Chaudhary. Whenever Sabu is angry, it causes a volcanic eruption on the surface of Jupiter.

In the original timeline of the Gundam metaverse, space colonies were established near Jupiter in order to harvest the planet's helium 3 as a power source. Generations later, the colonists rebelled against Earth, forming a "Jupiter Empire". All members referred to themselves as Jovians, and a select few even provoked their opponents by claiming that they were like sci-fi aliens, having been born apart from the human race on earth. The events of this war against the Jovians are depicted in the manga Crossbone Gundam.

In All-Star comics #13, Starman finds Jupiter to be inhabited by flying people. By creating a giant cosmic rod, Starman helps them send dangerous matter from the Great Red Spot into space, and is rewarded by being given the means to make metal invisible.

In Marvel Family #36, the Marvels go to Jupiter, which according to this story has gravity 300 times stronger than Earth (it actually has gravity nearly 2.3 times stronger), meaning they are much shorter than humans. They are an advanced and peaceful race, capable of interplanetary travel, and their scientific equipment helps the Marvels discover the nature of the Invaders from Infinity, which resemble giant fireballs, (see List of Captain Marvel (DC Comics) enemies). The Jovians are forced to evacuate after their fleet is defeated by the Invaders, but after the Invaders are contained and destroyed they get back to Jupiter, and tell the Marvels they will be their friends.

As a boy, Clark Kent meets an eight-armed inhabitant of Jupiter publicly promoting an "Interplanetary Circus" (Adv No. 198, Mar 1954: "The Super-Carnival from Space").

In animated film and television

The plot of the anime Martian Successor Nadesico (1996) revolves around a mysterious invasion force based on Jupiter, named the "Jovian Lizards", or simply the "Jovians", and the attempts of Earth's forces, and specifically the ship Nadesico, to subdue this invasion.

In the Looney Tunes short Jumpin' Jupiter (1955), Porky and Sylvester's desert campground is sliced away and towed into outer space by a green, bird-like Jovian searching for earthly animal life. But Porky remains blissfully unaware, leaving Sylvester to be terrorized by the alien. In another episode this bird creature appears to be from Mars.

In Mobile Suit Gundam, specifically Victory Gundam and Crossbone Gundam, the main enemies are from Jupiter and are known as the Jovian Fleet.

In video games

The character Xûr from Destiny (2014) is a Jovian, but not necessarily from Jupiter. The game classifies Jovians as a race of transformed humans that live in the darkness beyond "The Reef".

In philosophy

The Danish physicist and philosopher Hans Christian Ørsted discussed the scientific, moral, and aesthetic convictions of the inhabitants of Jupiter in a thought experiment in the essay "All Existence a Dominion of Reason" of 1846.

References

Jovian (fiction) Wikipedia

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