| Typology Extra-terrestrial |
| Total Entries 114 |
| Representative Asteroid Witch |
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The search for life beyond the planet often takes looking beyond the Sun’s reach, to distant stars. But sometimes extraterrestrials are a lot close than even the nearest stars, and you only need to look within the Solar System itself for them. Perhaps the “Once-Green Mars” still has some greenery, or “Venus Is Wet”. Maybe one of the other moons or planets are inhabited. In short, Earth isn’t as lonely as it thinks it is. Because the different celestial bodies in the solar system are well-understood as being uninhabitable, don’t expect this to show up in hard science fiction, unless you’re dealing with some extinct race or “Extremophile Lifeforms” who can handle the more extreme conditions. In some cases, stories will write it so that intelligent aliens live in an “Underground Alien Civilization” beneath the surface, which is used as both a “Hand Wave” to explain why human probes never found anything before and as a semi-realistic way to explain how life can survive on these worlds. In “Real Life”, astronomers are interested in worlds like Mars and Europa for the potential they may have harbored life, and may still do. It’d almost certainly be microbial, but it would at least show that life is more likely to arise in the universe than previously thought. It’s more often seen in “Planetary Romance” stories. Earlier stories from before space probes were sent to investigate Venus and Mars have them as popular hosts for aliens, due to the former’s similar size to Earth suggesting it could have life (usually in a humid jungle due to being closer to the sun) and the latter thought to have had canals due to an optical illusion. This is not a case of “Colonized Solar System”. This is when worlds other than Earth in the Solar System have developed their own form of life. Super-trope of “Lunarians”, for extraterrestrials from Earth’s own moon, and “Martians”, for extraterrestrials from the red planet. Fictional planets on the other side of the Sun go under “Counter-Earth”… ~ Solar System Neighbors – TV Tropes
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