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, which makes it the most popular extraterrestrial setting in science fiction other than the Moon and planets.

Titan in literature

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

• 1935: "Flight on Titan", a short story by Stanley G. Weinbaum
• 1951: Titan is the Sol System home base of the parasitic aliens who attempt to take control of Earth in The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein.
• 1954: There is a novel by Alan E. Nourse, the American Science Fiction writer, that appeared in English on December 1954 called Trouble on Titan, translated into French as Revolte sur Titan in 1971.
• 1959: Kurt Vonnegut's novel The Sirens of Titan features a journey that climaxes on Titan.
• 1963: In Philip K. Dick's post-apocalyptic novel The Game-Players of Titan, 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 Earth, against opponents who are from Titan.
• 1960s: In the German pulp science fiction series Perry Rhodan, Titan has a prison and advanced medical facilities.
• 1976: In Arthur C. Clarke's novel Imperial Earth, 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.
• 1977: Titan is the home of extraterrestrial intelligence in Joan D. Vinge's Hugo-winning novelette Eyes of Amber.
• 1979: In John Varley's science fiction novel Titan, later expanded with Wizard (1980) and Demon (1984) into the Gaea trilogy, an expedition to explore the moons of Saturn is captured by a giant, intelligent super-organism.
• 1983: In James P. Hogan's novel Code of the Lifemaker, Titan is inhabited by a race of Clanking Replicators
• 1986: Stanisław Lem's novel Fiasco starts with several chapters set on Titan, with a character ending up frozen on the surface for several hundred years.
• 1997: In Stephen Baxter's novel Titan, a NASA mission to Titan must struggle to survive after a disastrous landing.
• 2000: In Michael McCollum's novel, The Clouds of Saturn, Titan is a homeworld of Envon and Kimber Crawford, and Arvin Taggart.

Titan in cinema and television

• 1962: In Space Patrol episode "The Glowing Eggs of Titan" Husky's discovery of a luminous egg of the Saturnian moon of Titan could prove to be the solution of the Martian energy crisis. While Dart and his crew are on an egg gathering mission, Slim falls and damages his air line. As he waits to be rescued he hears a strange humming...
• 1977: The Doctor Who serial, The Invisible Enemy takes place partly on a manned base on Titan
• 1985: In the Transformers episode "The God Gambit", Titan is home to a primitive civilization of humanoids who worship Transformers as gods.
• 1985 In the horror film Creature, Titan is where ancient aliens preserved dormant creatures from all over the galaxy.
• 1988: In the BBC television show Red Dwarf, 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.
• 1992: In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Chain of Command", Titan's Turn was described as a daring spacecraft maneuver around Titan. It was often carried out by pilots flying between Jupiter and Saturn.
• 1997: In the film Gattaca, Titan is the goal for a manned space mission, which is seen lifting off in the final sequence.
• 2001: In the television show Starhunter, Titan features prominently as the former home of the character Dante, and is the site of a large colony.

Titan in comics and anime

• 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.
• In the 2000 AD comic series Judge Dredd, Titan is used as a penal colony, but, due to a writer's error, is in orbit around Jupiter. This was later explained as being due to a scientific experiment in teleportation.
• In the anime Cowboy Bebop (1998), Titan was once the site of a war over hydrocarbon extraction. It is unclear whether there was a colony on the moon.
• In the anime Aim for the Top 2! (2004), 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 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 Titanian is Saturn Girl, a founding member of the 30th Century Legion of Super Heroes.

Titan in 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 Knights 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.
• Interplay's game Hardwar (1998) takes place in a fictionalized city called Misplaced Optimism, which is on Titan.
• Some levels 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.
• Titan served as the final level of the game Solar Eclipse for the Sega Saturn. It was the central front for the LaGrange Mining Operation, which was spread out over Saturn's seven largest moons and was 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 rereleased 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.

See also

• Titan