The planet Venus has been used as a setting in fiction since before the 19th century. Its impenetrable cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface; the planet was often depicted as warmer than Earth but still habitable by humans. Depictions of Venus as a lush, verdant paradise, an oceanic planet, or fetid swampland, often inhabited by dinosaur-like beasts or other monsters, became common in early pulp science fiction, particularly between the 1930s and 1950s. Some other stories portrayed it as a desert, or invented more exotic settings. The absence of a common vision resulted in Venus not developing a coherent fictional mythology, in contrast to the image of Mars in fiction. When portrayed, the native sentient inhabitants, Venusians, were ge