Talk:Solar System in fiction

	Speculative fiction portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Science Fiction, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of science fiction on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Science FictionWikipedia:WikiProject Science FictionTemplate:WikiProject Science Fictionscience fiction
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Astronomy Bottom‑importance

	Astronomy portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Astronomy, which collaborates on articles related to Astronomy on Wikipedia.AstronomyWikipedia:WikiProject AstronomyTemplate:WikiProject AstronomyAstronomy
Bottom	This article has been rated as Bottom-importance on the project's importance scale.

On 17 March 2025, it was proposed that this article be moved to Solar System in literature before 1900. The result of the discussion was not moved.

Requested move 17 March 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 15:46, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Solar System in fiction → Solar System in literature before 1900 – The article covers the literature before 1900 thoroughly: expanding it with the literature post-1900 plus other types of fiction (like films) would make it very long. E.g. the article Mars in fiction is also very long, but much of it isn't covered in the "solar system" article at all, even though they are among the best known examples of Mars in fiction and should be included even in a much shorter article on the Solar System in fiction. The few, rather random entries of post-1900 literature can easily be removed, like I did here. Fram (talk) 10:52, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose This article is part of a series alongside Mars in fiction and the like. I have been working on it roughly chronologically for a while, which is the reason it now mostly covers pre-1900 stuff. I'm going to keep on working on it, but I suppose I'll adjust my approach to adding content first and polishing it later rather than adding a more "finished" version right away to make it move along more quickly. The article is not going to become too long by expanding it through to the present—it's just slightly longer than 3,000 words now. It's just a matter of giving each aspect its due weight in WP:PROPORTION to the coverage in the sources. TompaDompa (talk) 11:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per TompaDompa, who has been working up these pages for a long time. Presented as a unit they comprise a functional and notable academic collection, so letting TD shape the series by titling and formatting the pages according to their vision works best for the encyclopedia. Note that they've brought almost all of this collection to feature status. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:49, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- Well, let's not overstate things. Mars in fiction, Sun in fiction, and Venus in fiction are WP:Featured articles (and the last one was brought there through collaboration between me and Piotrus). The rest (save for this one, which I'm currently working on) are WP:Good articles, and Earth in science fiction was brought there by Piotrus—though the rest are indeed by me. TompaDompa (talk) 18:38, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per above. I don't think making a list of every single fictional work that has featured the Solar System is what we should be doing, and not what this page is doing. That it's tilted one way is because the secondary sources are tilted that way. And that is fine. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:39, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Arbitrary narrowing down of the topic. Of course, if we tried to list all works, we would need many subarticles, but that would also be terrible fancruft. TompaDompa is (re?)writing this as a proper prose-based overview, with focus only on key works (discussed as such by cited sources), and AFAIK, no cited source has a pre-20th century focus. I am not strictly oppose to someone writing an article about a proposed pre-1900 focus, but there's zero need to force this article here into that path. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:41, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn´t forcing the article down that path, the article was extremely slanted towards pre1900 literature and completely ignored other media (one 1902 film, o e obscure post1900 book, no comics, no videogames, no tv, ...) An article title should match the contents. Fram (talk) 06:03, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We are certainly in agreement that title and contents should match. When they do not, the options are to either change the title or change the contents. Which is the better alternative comes down to a number of considerations, including article length and how the sources treat the topic. Restricting the scope chronologically isn't unthinkable—Marjorie Hope Nicolson's Voyages to the Moon (which, despite the title, also covers excursions to other celestial objects) stops at the invention of the balloon in the 1780s (well, kind of—there's a brief epilogue that mentions e.g. Poe, Verne, Wells, and Lewis),^[a] for instance. In this particular case, however, I think the preferable option by far is to keep expanding the article as I was already doing. That's based both on my assessment of the relevant sources and cohesion with related articles. TompaDompa (talk) 08:25, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am under the impression that the article is not finished yet, and more examples of 20th and 21st century media would be added. I'd agree that other media (examples of modern film, video games, comics, TV) should be added. The Expanse, Cowboy Bebop, for example, strike me as very relevant and very famous stories. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:28, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It seems very weird to work nearly six months on this in draftspace, and then decide to move it to mainspace when it deals at length with one subtopic, and barely or not at all with all other subtopics. But considering that their supposedly "good article" Moon in science fiction doesn't even mention Tintin, I don't have high hopes for this either. Fram (talk) 09:17, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I'll admit to not being particularly impressed with that early article of mine a few years down the road, and I have been meaning to work more on it for some time now. You'll notice that this article on the Solar System in fiction contains a fair amount of information that would be relevant to the Moon in science fiction article but has not been added there—that's me not having gotten round to it yet. I will say that the sources I had located at the time I was working towards making that a WP:Good article actually did not mention Tintin, though ones I have since come across do (and the principal source on the topic that I have located since that mentions Tintin wasn't even published at the time of the WP:Good article nomination).

I'll also add that the reason I worked on it in draftspace is that you moved it there less than an hour after its creation while it was actively being worked on. A bit of patience would have gone a long way, then as now. TompaDompa (talk) 10:22, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well said. More fixing, less complaining, is always a good approach. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:56, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

^ The title of the second edition, which was otherwise unaltered, describes the scope pretty clearly: Voyages to the Moon: Discourse on Voyages to the Moon, the Sun, the Planets and Other Worlds Generally, Written by Divers Authors from the Earliest Times to the Time of the First Balloon Ascensions Made during the Years 1783-1784 with Remarks on their Sources and an Epilogue about a few Selected Later Works of this Kind; to which is Appended a Bibliography of 133 Works up to the Year 1784 with an Added Listing of 58 Books and Articles Dealing with the Theme Itself and with Related Sciences.

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

[1] The title of the second edition, which was otherwise unaltered, describes the scope pretty clearly: Voyages to the Moon: Discourse on Voyages to the Moon, the Sun, the Planets and Other Worlds Generally, Written by Divers Authors from the Earliest Times to the Time of the First Balloon Ascensions Made during the Years 1783-1784 with Remarks on their Sources and an Epilogue about a few Selected Later Works of this Kind; to which is Appended a Bibliography of 133 Works up to the Year 1784 with an Added Listing of 58 Books and Articles Dealing with the Theme Itself and with Related Sciences.

[a]