MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

At the end of its nine year mission in 2018, the Kepler spacecraft had discovered almost three thousand solar systems. Many of these solar systems are like ours: one star in the center with rocky inner planets and icy giant outer planets. Others include strange configurations which were not expected, including multi-star systems and “hot Jupiters,” massive planets in tight orbits around their stars. The science of discovering planets in other solar systems is very recent, with the first found in 1992. But science fiction and fantasy authors have not been waiting around to be informed by astronomy. They have been imagining what other planetary systems might look like for decades, if not millennia. I will compare fantastic solar systems, from the binary star system of Star Wars’ (1977) Tatooine, to the always sunny desert planet of Pitch Black (2000), to the multiple moons of Etheria in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018) with what we know to exist elsewhere in our universe and with what is even possible to exist. In almost all cases, they are not physically possible. I argue that planets are shown with multiple moons or stars as a way to be instantly recognizable as strange and alien. Ironically, these “alien” worlds are much more reflective of Earth than the truly unusual possibilities seen in nature.