OK, in honor of this reasonably impressive blizzard we’re having here on the East coast, I present to you: the top 10 ice planets. All media fair game.
By the way, I nominate “ice planet” — not the movie, the idea — for top 10 things that need both a Wikipedia entry and a TV Tropes entry. (Right now in TV Tropes it falls under “Single Setting Planet.”) Yeah, I know, if I want it I should write it and not bitch about it.
1. Hoth. I’ll see you in hell.
2. Narnia under the White Witch. It’s always winter, never Christmas.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIgd4czEZiA&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
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3. Snowball Earth. This probably actually happened. See, during an Ice Age, once the Earth’s albedo gets over a certain point, it reflects so much light (as opposed to absorbing it as heat) that it stays in a highly stable state of full glaciation … anyway.
4. Rura Penthe (Star Trek VI) and Delta Vega (Star Trek XI). They have to share a spot, since they’re not all that fully realized qua ice planets. But still. They’re pretty icy.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc_jYAtfDis&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
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5. Pluto. Yeah, it’s real, so what? Thing’s still made of ice. Or partly. If I had to pick the best fictional context for Pluto, it’d have to be the part in Larry Niven’s World of Ptavvs (top 10 greatest titles ever!) where somebody tries to land a rocket on it, and it turns out that a lot of the frozen gases are flammable, and the whole planet catches on fire.
6. Niflheim. The primorial world of mist and ice in Norse mythology. Those Norse, they knew from ice. Brought to you by D’Aulaire’s Book of Norse Myths.
7. Super Mario Brothers 2, Ice Level.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ox8veftvmQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
8. EDN III in Lost Planet. It was Halo, but Japanese, and really cold.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm_LaCTAJp4&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
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9. I’m running out of steam. The end of AI, I guess? When it gets really cold? And Haley Joel snuggles with his mommy?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0y93yzhctc&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
10. “Darkness,” by Lord Byron. Lord Byron, bitchez. This should be #1, except it’s more dramatic to end on it.
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went–and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires–and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings–the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum’d,
And men were gather’d round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other’s face …
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