Titan in fiction

Titan is the largest moon of Saturn. It has a substantial atmosphere and is the most Earth-like satellite in the Solar System, making it a popular science fiction setting.

Literature

Artistic representation of a view from the surface of Titan, with dune fields, lakes, channels and Saturn in the background.

• Flight on Titan (1935), short story by Stanley G. Weinbaum. A couple from Earth struggles through the frigid, windswept Titanian landscape.
• Sojarr of Titan (1941), novel by Manly Wade Wellman.
• The Puppet Masters (1951) by Robert A. Heinlein. Titan is the home of an elf-like species, which has been enslaved by parasitic aliens who can control them. These "puppet masters" attempt to take over the Earth by controlling human beings, who counter-attack with the intention of emancipating the "elves".
• The Rolling Stones (1952), novel by Robert A. Heinlein. The family Stone heads for Titan Base, colony.
• Trouble on Titan (1954), novel by Alan E. Nourse. Famously features a jet which uses the methane/ammonia atmosphere as fuel.
• Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958), novel by Isaac Asimov. Humans from the Sirius system establish a settlement on Titan as a provocation against the Earth government. Lucky Starr and Bigman Jones have to avert an interstellar war. Also features an emergency landing inside Enceladus which is correctly described as mostly ice.
• The Sirens of Titan (1959), novel by Kurt Vonnegut. Features a journey that climaxes on Titan.
• The Game-Players of Titan (1963), novel by Philip K. Dick. A neurotic and suicidal man named Pete Garden must roll a three in Bluff, the game that's become a blinding obsession for the last inhabitants of post-apocalyptic Earth, against opponents who are from Titan.
• Perry Rhodan (1960s), German pulp science fiction series. Titan has a prison and advanced medical facilities.
• World of Ptavvs (1966), Known Space novel by Larry Niven. Titan is one of the few worlds in the solar system (along with Earth and Mars), which is not under jurisdiction of the Belt government. It is the site of the Titan Hotel, a honeymoon retreat for wealthy flatlander couples.
• Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers (1973), spoof Space Opera novel by Harry Harrison. Titan is the home of Bug-eyed monsters which kidnap the heroine.
• Imperial Earth (1976), novel by Arthur C. Clarke. Titan is home to a human colony with a population of 250,000 and provides an important role in the Solar System's economics; Titan's atmosphere supplies the hydrogen needed to support interplanetary travel.
• If the Stars Are Gods (1977), novel by Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund. Astronaut Bradley Reynolds makes direct contact with an alien artificial intelligence spread across Titan's surface.
• Eyes of Amber (1977), novelette by Joan D. Vinge. Titan is the home of extraterrestrial intelligence, the Tropemen.
• Titan (1979), novel by John Varley. An expedition to explore the moons of Saturn is captured by a giant, intelligent super-organism. Sequels include Wizard (1980) and Demon (1984) (Gaea trilogy).
• Code of the Lifemaker (1983), novel by James P. Hogan. Titan is inhabited by a race of Clanking Replicators
• Fiasco (1986), novel by Stanisław Lem. The first several chapters are set on Titan, with a character ending up frozen on the surface for several hundred years.
• Saturnalia (1986), novel by Grant Callin. Titan is one of the locations of an alien artifact. A fictional volcano, Mons Gargantua is described in the book as being so large as to even dwarf Olympus Mons.
• Mars trilogy (1996) by Kim Stanley Robinson. Nitrogen from Titan is used in the Terraforming of Mars.
• Titan (1997), novel by Stephen Baxter. A NASA mission to Titan must struggle to survive after a disastrous landing. Contains vivid depictions of a journey through the Saturnian system.
• Alpha Centauri (1997) by William Barton and Michael Capobianco. Titan is the birthplace of Maeru kai Ortega ("Kai"), one of the novel's primary point-of-view characters.
• The Clouds of Saturn (2000), novel by Michael McCollum. Titan is the homeworld of Envon and Kimber Crawford, and Arvin Taggart.
• Justice Squad (2005), web serial. Titan becomes home to the remnants of the extraterrestrial Xrax people.
• Titan (2006), novel by Ben Bova. Part of the Grand Tour series. Titan is being explored by an artificially intelligent rover which mysteriously begins malfunctioning, while a mobile human Space Colony explores the Rings and other moons.
• Audience of One (2007), short story about First Contact.
• Communion of Dreams (2007), a novel by Jim Downey. A mysterious alien artifact is discovered on Titan that has strange effects on anyone who observes it.
• Ontario Lacus (2008), novel by J. Matthew Neal. A microorganism with fantastic regenerative powers is discovered in a hydrocarbon lake on Titan, and is perverted by a scientist into a variety of devastating weapons.

Film and television

• "The Glowing Eggs of Titan" (1962), episode Space Patrol TV series. Husky's discovery of a luminous egg of the Saturnian moon of Titan could prove to be the solution of the Martian energy crisis.
• The Invisible Enemy (1977), a Doctor Who serial. Takes place partly on a manned base on Titan. Titan's methane atmosphere bursts into flames after the Doctor releases vast amounts of oxygen as a trap.
• Transformers G1 (1985), TV series. In the episode, The God Gambit, a group of people, known as Titans, live on Titan and have a belief in the Sky Gods. This, however, is only a ruse from the temple workers to deceive the people and give them harsh laws. Talaria and her group of rebels attempt to stop them. Talaria's group and the people worship the Decepticons when they arrive, who deem themselves as gods and hold Cosmos, who they were chasing, captive. Jazz and Perceptor, with the help of Omega Supreme, rescue Cosmos and Talaria (who Jazz had developed a special relationship with) and free the peoples of the Decepticons ruse. They rebuild their homes on another side of the moon, as the side with the temple on it was burned.
• Creature 1985, horror film. Titan is where ancient aliens preserved dormant creatures from all over the galaxy.
• Red Dwarf (1988), BBC TV series. The character Lister illegally imports a cat from Titan that, through the action of hard radiation over millions of years, becomes the progenitor of a well-dressed, but not particularly intelligent species called Felis sapiens. In the first series Lister also often sings a song mentioning Titan, as well as Ganymede.
• "Chain of Command" (1992), Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. Titan's Turn is a daring spacecraft maneuver around Titan, often carried out by pilots flying between Jupiter and Saturn.
• The U.S.S. Titan is the name of William T. Riker's first command as noted in Star Trek Nemesis, the Titan in this case belongs to a class of United Federation of Planets Starfleet ships named after moons in the Terran System, that class being the Luna Class.
• Gattaca (1997), film. Titan is the goal for a manned space mission, which is seen lifting off in the final sequence.
• Starhunter (2001), TV series. Titan features prominently as the former home of the character Dante, and is the site of a large colony.
• Star Trek (2009). The crew of the USS Enterprise use Titan's atmosphere to hide the ship from the Romulans.

Comics and anime

• Judge Dredd, part of the 2000 AD comic series. Titan is used as a penal colony, but, due to a writer's error, is placed in orbit around Jupiter. This was later explained as being due to a scientific experiment in teleportation. This was revealled in the Games Workshop adventure for the Judge Dredd Roleplaying Game - Judgement Day (Not to be mistaken for the Zombie Takeover) where the Judges discover that the soul of Judge Caligula is still alive and is attempting to take over Megacity 1. The players in their investigation get to go to Titan. In the introduction that tells the GM about Titan, it reveals about the Teleportation Experiment that went wrong. (A fact that was said in the White Dwarf review of this adventure to be a very neat solution to the writer's error.)
• Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers) (1974). The Yamato crew land on Titan to mine "titanite", a mineral necessary for energy transmission units.
• "The God Gambit" (1985), episode of Transformers animated cartoon. Titan is home to a primitive civilization of humanoids who worship Transformers as gods.
• "Money is Everything" (1986), episode of Transformers animated cartoon. In the year 2006, Titan has been terraformed by humans.
• Cowboy Bebop (1998), anime. Titan was the site of a war over hydrocarbon extraction in the year 2068. It is unclear whether there was a colony on the moon.
• Chi-Chian comics, animated series, and roleplaying game by Voltaire. The albino character Nahm flees from her oppressive childhood on Titan, which is home to a colony of bigoted genetic purists.
• In the animated TV show Futurama, titanium mines on Titan cave in, causing the value of titanium to skyrocket, convincing Bender to sell most of his body, save his own head.
• Aim for the Top 2! (2004), anime. Titan is the location of the Titan Variable Gravity Well. A living habitat exists on Titan to house the team attempting to extract the artifact as well featuring plush facilities for visiting members of Topless and their Buster Machines.
• In the Marvel Comics Universe, Titan is home to a colony of Eternals, a godlike race of men and women, and also spawned the super villain Thanos, and the final resting place of Mar-vell
• In the DC Comics Universe, Titan is home to a race of telepaths. Depending on what part of the continuity you are reading, they may have been seeded there in the late 20th century as a colony by Lar Gand (variously known as Mon-El, Valor and M'Onel). The most prominent example of a DC hero from Titan is Saturn Girl, a founding member of the 30th Century Legion of Super Heroes.

Games

• An Apple II game called Titan Empire had human inhabitants of this moon attempting to take over the solar system.
• In the table-top science fiction game Warhammer 40,000, the Grey Knight Space Marines chapter keep their Fortress-Monastery on Titan.
• In the Commodore 64 computer game Project Firestart, the setting of the story is located on a scientific space vessel which is floating near Titan in the Saturn system.
• In the Activision game Battlezone (1998), Titan is the site of a Soviet base and several battles between the American, Soviet, and "Fury" forces.
• The game Flashback (1992) takes place mostly on Titan.
• Gremlin Interactive's game Hardwar (1998) takes place in a fictionalized city called Misplaced Optimism, which is on Titan.
• Level 15 of Descent (1994), as well as its second sequel, Descent 3 (2000), take place on Titan. In Descent the player is in a mine, while in Descent 3 the player travels to a proving ground.
• In Starlancer, Titan is the site of a major, decisive battle between Alliance and Coalition forces.
• In the Playstation game Colony Wars, Titan is the base of a Navy supergun. The League destroy Titan in the process of eradicating the weapon.
• Titan serves as the final level of the game Solar Eclipse for the Sega Saturn. It is the central front for the LaGrange Mining Operation, which is spread out over Saturn's seven largest moons and controlled by the AI program "IRIS".
• The plot of Huygen's Disclosure, published in 1996 by SegaSoft, actually involves not only Titan, but the pending arrival of the Huygens probe. It did not depict Titan realistically.
• In the game Legacy of Time, third game in the Journeyman Project series, Titan is home to a prison colony.
• An Amiga adventure game Suspicious Cargo published by Gremlin.
• Originally released for the Commodore 64, and later re-released for Windows, Mines of Titan is an RPG set in the 22nd Century where the player must assemble a team to determine the fate of the city of Proscenium, with which all contact as been lost.
• In the Brazilian strategic game Outlive, Titan is a unique moon rich in minerals and resources.
• In Mass Effect, Titan is being used by the Human Systems Alliance as a hostile environment training facility for marines, as well as a source of hydrocarbons.
• In Titan Attacks, a game by Puppy Games, Titan is home to an evil alien race.
• In Battletech Titan has a major yard complex originally built by the Terran Hegemony, and later controlled by ComStar for several years after the rest of the system is taken by the Word of Blake.
• In Klingon Academy Titan is a possible destination for the player in the simulated level involving a Klingon invasion of the Sol system.
• In the Master Levels for Doom II expansion pack for Doom II, one of the levels, Titan Manor, takes place on Titan.

Music

• Titan is a song on Hammerfall's latest album, dealing with the quest to colonize Titan after a disaster on Earth.
• Sirens of Titan is a song on Al Stewart's album Modern Times, inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's novel.
• Astronomy Domine is a song by Pink Floyd. Titan is mentioned in the line 'Neptune, Titan, stars can frighten'
• Titan is a song on Brave Saint Saturn's album The Light of Things Hoped For. The song uses the moon in a larger album-wide storyline as a metaphor for sin and corruption.