Talk:Fictional planets of the Solar System

Article Title

Shouldn't this article be titled Fictional planets of Sol? Specifying "trans-Neptunian" seems awful far to go to make a point that some no longer consider Pluto a planet. And not all fictional Sol-orbiting planets are strictly trans-Neptunian, q.v., Mondas and other fictional twin Earths. Kjaer (talk) 00:17, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

The primary reason for moving this page to Fictional planets of Sol is the logical inconsistancy of having an article on fictional planets (excluding planets of Sol) and an article on only Trans-Neptunian planets, but not on other fictional planets. It is somewhat like having an article on Fictional Invertebrate and an Article on Fictional warm-blooded vertebrates But no article that includes fictional cold-blooded vertebrates. Where would dragons (presumably reptiles) go? There would seem to be two options. Making an article for infra-Neptunian planets, or expanding this article to cover all planets of Sol. The first choice is simply arbitrary. No one would naturally come up with such a category as fictional planets of Sol that are not further out than Neptune. The only reason to even suggest an article on infra-Neptunian planets is because there is an article on trans-neptunian planets. That title exists because of the category of "tenth" planets. But there is no necessary connection between a planet's number of discovery and its location. There could be and have been imagined other planets such as an earth twin on a long orbit or a former planet in the asteroid belt that would count as tenth planets or planet X's but which are non-trans-Neptunian.

The bottom line is that it makes no sense to have a broad category (fictional planets) and a sub-sub category (fictional planets (of Sol (further out than Neptune))) unless one first has the sub category (fictional planets (of Sol)). If I am unaware, and there is some other article on Fictional Planets of Sol, please direct me to it. Kjaer (talk) 16:42, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

1. This is an encyclopedia, not an Asimov novel. It's called "The Sun."

2. Fictional Fifth planets are listed here; fictional counter-Earths are listed here.

3. Pluto is officially no longer a planet. That may change, but until it does, that's what Wikipedia should reflect. Serendi^podous 17:23, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Your links to the other pages was helpful. I'll add a redirect later. (BTW, Sun is ambiguous, Sol is not.) Sorry to make you explain yourself on this article that you own. Kjaer (talk) 17:39, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't own it, but you made a drastic change to an article without a) discussing it first, b) ensuring that it was necessary, or c) bothering to finish what you started. If you're going to take something like that on, do it properly. And "Sun" is only ambiguous in science fiction. Officially, our Solar System's parent star is called "the Sun." Only when we start inhabiting other star systems (and thus experience other stars' sunlight) will the ambiguity you raised become an issue, but that's not for a while yet. Serendi^podous 17:44, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Not a redirect?

I invite you to search "Fictional Trans-neptunian planets" & open the redirect page, then try & tag its talk page without ending up here... Best of luck. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 07:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

That's not a redirect. The search engine is programmed to read lower-case letters and sub them for capitals. If there's only lower case letters in the query, it just sends you straight to the right page.Serendi^podous 14:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Trans-Neptunian article rearrangement needed

This region of the Solar System does not follow the style of the rest of the Solar System in Fiction articles. I would like to propose:

• a new article is created, 'Trans-Neptunian objects in fiction'. This article will initially be relatively small, but I'm sure it will grow. For example, I can immediately think of Charlie Stross's 2008 novel Saturn's Children which partly takes place on Eris.
• Pluto in fiction has a small section in the new article and is a 'See also'. Same for this article, Fictional Trans-Neptunian planets.
• In the Astronomical locations in fiction category navigator, Pluto and this article are placed in brackets after Trans-Neptunian objects, in the same way that Fifth planet goes after Asteroids.

Iridia (talk) 11:29, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Since there were no immediate objections, I have implemented these changes. Iridia (talk) 09:21, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Why does this article not have a link to the Planets in fiction navigator anymore? Serendi^podous 10:17, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I noticed a bit of a disconnect, since almost all of the articles in the Astronomical locations in fiction navigator are about fictional use of real planets. But this article is on completely fictional trans-Neptunian planets in fiction (ee, that's a mouthful), so I wasn't quite sure what to call it and hadn't fixed that up yet. It needs something succinct. Want to call it 'fictional planet X', or just 'Planet X'? Iridia (talk) 11:24, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I put 'Planet X', but I can't get it to go the same size as Pluto just before it. Please help? Iridia (talk) 11:43, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. BTW, Counter-Earth and the fifth planet are not real either. Serendi^podous 14:05, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Well, no - of course they aren't real (that's why I put almost all ;) - it's just that it feels strange having fictional locations mixed in with the genuine astronomical locations. I mean, isn't that why Category:Fictional astronomical locations exists? Iridia (talk) 09:07, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I suppose we could follow through on that guy's suggestion and merge all the fictional Solar System planets into one article. Serendi^podous 16:18, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, missed seeing your reply. Merging would make an absolutely enormous article, though! There are several ways it could be done: either a small article mainly containing 'see this other article' links on the style of Solar System in fiction, called 'Fictional Solar System planets', or enlarge the section in Fictional planets. Iridia (talk) 05:13, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Fictional planets of the Solar System

I suggest merging this article with the fictional sections of Vulcan (hypothetical planet), Counter-Earth, and Phaeton (hypothetical planet) under the title Fictional planets of the Solar System. Such an article would not be "absolutely enormous"; it would also avoid some of the confusion between hypotheses that were seriously proposed (at one time) and fictional treatments of the same. RandomCritic (talk) 06:27, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

You'd also have to include Asteroids in fiction#Fifth planet. There is a wrinkle in that Vulcan, Phaeton and Counter-Earth aren't "fictional" in the strictest sense of the word; they're hypothetical planets used fictitiously. Of course, the same could be said of Planet X, but the name "Planet X" has far wider resonances than just Lowell's hypothesis: Ghidorah isn't from Lowell's planet. In fact, looking at the Planet X section rigorously, I see no actual references to Planet X as per Lowell, and indeed many of the objects named aren't even Trans-Neptunian. I would suggest moving non-Trans-Neptunian 'Planet X'-es to Planet X (disambiguation) Serendi^podous 06:48, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I suspect a lot of the Planet X's aren't even supposed to be in the Solar System. I'll check what I can. RandomCritic (talk) 16:45, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Suggest name change

to Hypothetical Solar System planets in fiction as current title implies that Vulcan, Planet X et al are fictional; they are not. Serendi^podous 20:19, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. For one thing, the proposed name is even longer and more unwieldy than the present name. For another, the proposal (a) doesn't fit the current article (which now includes fictional planets of the Solar System that are not based on hypothetical planets at all); and (b) the distinction is overdetermined. It's not really disputed that these hypothetical planets do not actually exist; and with a very few exceptions, they had stopped being 'hypothetical' (and were simply disproven) many decades before they appeared in fiction. What's the difference between a fictional planet based on a debunked theory and a plain old fictional planet?

By way of comparison -- there was a (brief) period when "lost" continents and ocean-spanning landbridges could be contemplated as really possible explanations for certain phenomena; consider "Lemuria". In the sense "a continent or landbridge hypothesized to explain certain biological or geological phenomena relating Madagascar, India, Indonesia", Lemuria is not, I suppose, a fictional continent. But the instantiations of Lemuria appearing in various works of pulp fiction are fictional continents, in all details, not just "hypothetical continents in fiction".

I suppose the Mars and Venus of early science fiction writers are largely fictional in many respects, but they still share some characteristics with the real Mars and Venus: Barsoom may have canals, but it also has polar caps and deserts and shares with the real Mars its orbit, diameter, mass, and gravity. They are thus not "fictional planets", but real planets with some (or many) fictional characteristics. But what characteristics does a fictional Phaëton or counter-Earth share with the "real" thing? None at all, because there are no characteristics to share.

In any case, I think the text of the article makes clear, where appropriate, that we are talking about fictional instantiations of hypotheses (or, in a lot of cases, of crank theories), and that they don't thereby make the hypotheses "fictional". But if you feel that isn't clear enough, feel free to rewrite the text in a way that makes it clear. But I don't think the title of the article is itself problematic, and I think that an emendation would likely be more problematic -- suggesting, for instance, that the "Hestia" of Judge Dredd was ever seriously proposed as a hypothetical planet.RandomCritic (talk) 01:22, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

...*slow clap* --Kizor 18:25, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

OK. How about Hypothetical planets in fiction, since there are no fictionalised hypothetical extrasolar planets? Serendi^podous 13:43, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

The problem is the use of "hypothetical", IMO. These (AFAI can tell) are purely fictional (as opposed to Barsoom, say, or the wet Venus of Ark of Venus & Podykane of Mars, IIRC). "Hypothetical" planets could reasonably include Pluto, & would certainly include all the candidates for "Planet X". Which is another page entire. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 17:45, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Hesikos

If anyone is curating this page, please add Hesikos, presumably under "Elsewhere in the Solar System". I'm a very newbie editor and not sure how to link to the existing Hesikos page while following this page's formatting. Thanks Shannock9 (talk) 00:15, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't know anything about this book, so I can't add anything you don't provide. So it would be simpler if you just added the material. Serendi^podous 17:26, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for your encouragement. --Shannock9 (talk) 05:36, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Minerva

Minerva, an alternative Mars : Harry Turtledove, "A World Of Difference" (1990) - see Turtledove page. 94.30.84.71 (talk) 09:35, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Htrae

Htrae (Bizarro World) is listed in the Counter-Earth section. There have been multiple continuities where this world exists, but I'm not aware of any of them using the Counter-Earth location, or even in the solar system at all. If a source does say this, then feel free to restore my deletion, perhaps with a clarification that says which continuity we're talking about. Joule36e5 (talk) 11:12, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

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Revert of cleanup

Randy Kryn, this is just plain obstruction. List versus prose format is a red herring here, and you know it—the issue with the version you reverted to is the lack of proper sourcing, which the article has been correctly tagged as suffering from for years. You presumably know that the list format encourages this kind of content that lacks proper sourcing, and you certainly know that rewriting articles of this kind to prose format with proper sourcing and analysis of the overarching topic, rather than plain TV Tropes-style lists, has been very effective in improving the quality of the articles and resulted in several WP:Good articles and even WP:Featured articles. If you want TV Tropes-style lists of examples with editorial WP:ANALYSIS of the fiction itself, the place you want to go to is TV Tropes, not Wikipedia. The time is well past acting like Wikipedia's WP:Core content policies do not apply to fiction-related content. TompaDompa (talk) 12:54, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Some like lists, others like full-prose analysis. The deserved good and featured articles are good and featured as examples of those who like prose and not lists. They are useful as academic studies of the topics. For finding particular examples, and quickly reading though those examples, not so much. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:27, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

That's beside the point, and you know it. I want you to explain why you thought it appropriate to remove properly-sourced material and replace it with material that lacks proper sourcing. TompaDompa (talk) 13:32, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Then source the material from the links (all you have to do is click on the link and you have your sourcing). The point I'm making is that you've taken many nice list articles, made them into academic articles (featured, which I agree with, for academic purposes), and didn't also leave a list page for those who like the topic presented in that way. That's the point. We've had this discussion before and you keep on prosing and featuring. And when I want to add something appropriate, such as at the Sun in fiction talk page, I have to ask you if it's already on the page somewhere (in that instance a perfectly fine example, Ring, where half the notable book is a work of Sun in fiction, but wasn't allowed for some reason due to sourcing you didn't like). Randy Kryn (talk) 13:39, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Then you know what, since it seems you are about to prose this into a feature (more power to ya) I'll revert and let you do your thing which you are very good at, but will ask that this page, and other pages which you have list-to-prosed also provide a fork into a list article with the material as presented here before the addition, thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:51, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Come on, now. You (should) know that verification is not the only sourcing requirement there is. There are also things like due weight—we don't mention things about topics that sources on that topic deem irrelevant. We don't permit articles to be based on primary sources, even if those primary sources verify every single thing the article states. Plot-only descriptions of works of fiction are expressly forbidden (see WP:NOTPLOT). And so on. If you revisit the Sun in fiction example, you'll find that I did not simply "not like" the sourcing, I explained that based on the overall literature on the overarching topic it is a very WP:MINORASPECT whose inclusion would be difficult to justify.

What you are describing is a TV Tropes page. Now I like TV Tropes, but they do things completely differently than we do here at Wikipedia. TV Tropes does not require sources, TV Tropes encourages original thought, TV Tropes does not care about notability (the mantra there is "There Is no Such Thing as Notability"), and so on. Trying to apply a TV Tropes approach to Wikipedia content is a "square peg, round hole" type of situation. I would personally be in favour of linking to TV Tropes in the "External links" section in much the same way we do with IMDb links (and I would also be in favour of linking to Wikia/Fandom in this way), but I suppose a broader consensus would be needed to implement that.

Maybe it's possible to write list articles on these kinds of topics in the format you prefer while also abiding by Wikipedia's overall WP:Policies and guidelines, but nobody has yet demonstrated this to be the case. I'm very skeptical myself—I try to imagine what a WP:Featured list of that kind would look like, and I keep running into a few problems, mainly where to put the threshold for inclusion and what/how much information to present about each entry. Both of those things need to reflect the sources on the topic and maintain a proper balance of WP:ASPECTS. I think it's pretty clear that in most cases we cannot present an exhaustive set of X in fiction/popular culture/whatever, so we need to establish some sort of inclusion (and perhaps also exclusion) criteria that are unambiguous, objective, and supported by reliable sources per WP:LISTCRITERIA. Likewise, each entry would need to provide sufficient context to explain how and why it is an example of X in fiction/popular culture/whatever that should appear on the list without being disproportionate either in the context of that particular entry or compared to other entries. All the while we need to avoid performing any editorial WP:ANALYSIS or interpretation of the works themselves. This would not, to put it mildly, be trivial, and it puts extremely high requirements on the sources. Such sources, I daresay, simply do not exist for these topics (or at least the majority of them). If we fundamentally cannot even in principle bring an article up to WP:Featured content standards, then we should not have such an article in the first place (which is not to say that the topic should not be covered on Wikipedia in some other form on some other article). TompaDompa (talk) 21:44, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

image at bottom doesn't work on mobile

The image of the planets where if you click it leads to pages about them doesn't work on mobile. TheT.N.T.BOOM! (talk) 11:10, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Hm. It works for me. Might depend on the device and/or browser? TompaDompa (talk) 19:48, 9 April 2024 (UTC)