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Do you know how (almost) every cyberpunk story happens in a dark rainy night? No matter how long a timeframe the story takes place in, it's always rainy and dark. How realistic is it to have a planet like this? To make it more clear, this is a planet that has 3 things about it:

  1. It's always rainy on it
  2. It's always dark on it
  3. A human being can live on it and walk outside without a spacesuit/air tank/etc.

After posting this I got the related question of How can I explain a planet with perpetual rain? which answers #1 well enough for my taste, but that still leaves #2 in a way that isn't a problem with #3. How can a planet be always dark, yet warm enough for a human being to live outside on the planet's surface?

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cypher
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  • The planet itself could be warm enough to give enough heat for life despite the perpetual darkness from perpetual rain while the rain could be because of the planet's heat constantly evaporating a large oceanic water source(probably larger than earth's, evaporating without assistance from the sun) and perpetually introducing a heckin' load of moisture-bearing clouds into the atmosphere that cool into water droplets as they rise away from the planet and begin raining... but I don't know how sound such logic is so I'm going to keep this as a comment until my reason is confirmed. – Lemming Feb 07 '22 at 12:36
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    Cyberpunks are like slugs and snails. They don't come out when it is warm and sunny and dry. – Starfish Prime Feb 07 '22 at 12:46
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    Weird, the last cyberpunk book I've read took place in the sunny desert city of Alexandria, Egypt. Didn't make it any less cyberpunk – Cumehtar Feb 07 '22 at 12:56
  • @JoinJBHonCodidact you're right, edited for sci-based – cypher Feb 07 '22 at 13:18
  • I assume you'd like this to be a normal, naturally-occurring planet, so anything along the lines of "they're on a giant holodeck" or "it's set in a cavern containing a whole city" is not suitable? – Cadence Feb 07 '22 at 13:37
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    @Cadence and relatedly, seeing as cyberpunkery is inevitably set in Cyberpunk City, should the planet also be an ecumenopolis? – Starfish Prime Feb 07 '22 at 13:44
  • @Cadence yes Naturally is preferable – cypher Feb 07 '22 at 14:17
  • Aha a science based question about cyberpunk. +1 great idea :p I keep reading here – Goodies Feb 07 '22 at 19:54
  • How about?: human visible light (a) not much emitted by star, or (b) absorbed or reflected by upper atmosphere, or (c) by dust etc between star and planet; but (d) infrared passed through, absorbed by planet surface or lower levels of atmosphere? // Native life would probably evolve to use other frequencies for vision, but humans from elsewhere might sweat in the dark. // If cannot find natural materials scenario for this, could be unnatural, engineered: climate control run amuck. – Krazy Glew Feb 08 '22 at 04:11
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    Your question says "dark rainy night". Night being the key word. That doesn't mean there aren't also days, just that the story arc mostly revolves around night time events. I have only read/watched a few cyberpunk style stores, however they all still had day time, at least a little bit, it just wasn't often part of the storyline. Unless you specifically want to make yours always night for a specific reason, I don't think it needs to be that way. – rooby Feb 08 '22 at 05:18
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    Does this answer your question? How can I explain a planet with perpetual rain? – coagmano Feb 08 '22 at 06:54
  • @coagmano Rain is only half of it, the other part is that it's always dark... it has to always be dark on that planet so that answer isn't complete enough. – cypher Feb 08 '22 at 11:32
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    You mean like London ? – dna Feb 08 '22 at 14:05
  • What about a planet that always faces at its sun in the same direction, so it's allways day on one half and night on the other, and the "day-half" has such extreme conditions that makes human life on it almost impossible? – Josh Part Feb 08 '22 at 19:27
  • The proposed duplicate (and answers to it) does not address the condition of perpetual night stated in this question. – Otkin Feb 08 '22 at 20:05

7 Answers7

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The City Creates its own Climate.

CyberPunk stories happen in big cities. So you only need the cities to be dark and rainy. Not the whole planet. Here is why:

2. The city has narrow streets and tall buildings. Not much light reaches the streets.

1. There are loads of industrial factories around the city. They spit out heaps of steam and exhaust gasses. Similar to a rain forest these gasses hit the colder air above, and condense and create rain. Bonus points for pollution also making the streets darker.

3. The pollution gas is too high up to reach the streets and breath in. It only hits people in the form of acid rain which, while dangerous, is less of a danger to breath in. Better technology ensures the pollution is cleaner than modern pollution. We have environmental boards for that sort of thing for cripes sake! The exhausts are mostly steam and a mix of high-tech chemicals, microplastics and nanobots that do not cause immediate lung irritation. Rather they cause long term cancers, genetic problems, and depression, in order to generate business for the Dystopian Pharmaceutical Industry, which makes generous donations to the environmental board. But there is nothing that will cause immediate discomfort to a resident.

Daron
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    If you want your cyberpunk to have space travel, rocket exhaust is also a handy source of particulates to spur on cloud formation. – Cadence Feb 07 '22 at 13:57
  • The problem with that is that there will be a time of day where the sun is directly above the street and once it's 90 degrees overhead it doesn't matter how tall the buildings are as it will shine directly down to the street – cypher Feb 07 '22 at 14:16
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    @cypher If the city is far enough from the equator then the Sun is never directly overhead. – Daron Feb 07 '22 at 14:27
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    See also, Kowloon Walled City. – Starfish Prime Feb 07 '22 at 14:36
  • If there are overhangs or high bridges between buildings, streets even in equatorial cities may be hidden from the sun by buildings above. – prosfilaes Feb 07 '22 at 19:38
  • Neuromancer is set on Earth, and opens with the famous line "The sky above the port was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel." The image is deliberately not a healthy, natural sky - pollution is the obvious answer. – codeMonkey Feb 07 '22 at 20:12
  • Go with a dome. Hitler was planning on building a huge domed rally hall, but it had almost no ventilation. Experts say all that human breath would have caused it to cloud over and precipitate. And that can cover perpetual darkness as well. It even makes sense in a desert. Save that water... – DWKraus Feb 07 '22 at 21:12
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    @cypher If it's always rainy, it's always cloudy, doubly so if the rain is fed by pollution. And having the clouds break at a key moment may be a thematic climax (unless you're going for the grimdark kind of punk, then it just never happens). – No Name Feb 08 '22 at 01:13
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    @KRyan, it's to match the numbering in the question. – Martha Feb 08 '22 at 19:12
  • IIRC both Trantor and Coruscant were meant to have their own climates/weather in the larger open spaces of the sub-levels. – Joe Bloggs Feb 09 '22 at 13:33
5

This is a doozey!

You don't specify how dark you want the planet, but the idea of a habitable planet that doesn't have a sun (vegetation...) is hard for me to swallow. That means either a dim sun so you can have vegetation or a lot of cloud/dust cover to block out most of the visible light. The benefit of the cloud/dust cover solution is that you're trapping heat. So, how do we get a ton of cloud cover?

Well, unless you have a steady stream of ice-asteroids breaking up in the atmosphere to provide "rain," you need either something pushing water into the air (the geysers from the selected answer you linked to) or you need something along the lines of evaporation. Blocking or limiting sunlight makes traditional evaporation difficult... but if you have geysers, would one not have vast swaths of volcanism? I'm not talking a penny-ante ring-of-fire kind of volcanism. I'm talking about a healthy Yellowstone Caldera worth of boiling magma right in the middle of the ocean boiling water into humidity galore kind of volcanism! And you want a dozen of them planet-wide! Provide higher-altitude land masses for the lush vegetation and you have a dark and rainy planet that's also warm.

Could a human inhabit such a planet without some kind of suit? Other than a bathing suit? Or a wet suit? Sure! But they might have moss growing in their lungs. Let's ignore that.

JBH
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  • Tidally locked planet? One side is permanently scorched, the other half a hellscape of ice. The only actually inhabitable place is the dawn/dusk ring between the two extremes. And the rich people can afford the nicer, adequately bright Zones, but that's not where the cyberpunk stories happen, those happen in the poorer zones, further away from the sun-side – Hobbamok Feb 08 '22 at 12:19
  • @Hobbamok Are you suggesting that as an alternative solution? That'd be cool! You should post it as an answer. – JBH Feb 08 '22 at 21:59
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    Yeah, I don't know why I didn't write it as its own answer, will do :) – Hobbamok Feb 09 '22 at 09:00
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Lucky sun, lucky orbit, happy cyberpunks

Your planet is in tidal lock (one side to the sun 1:1) orbiting around a relaxed, brown dwarf. There is some UV, but that's only on the bright side. That side is 600 degrees, no cyberpunk will live there.. the dark side is cold and variant (see below)

Between the dark side and the bright side of the planet there is a large, moderate zone, but the cyberpunks don't like it, for its hot climate and the reddish-orange evening light. The moderate zone is only used for agriculture and populated by robots.

Vulcanoes

This planet has a lot of vulcanism, cyberpunks love it. On a good cyberpunk planet you need fireworks and your regular spectacular disaster.

Near some volcanoes, the temperature is nice. On top of them there is snow. When the colony started, they had winter sport resorts, these are abandoned nowadays. Cyberpunks don't do sports. The volcanism provides plenty of heat. There is no energy problem and cyberpunks live indoors, near their computers. There is some traffic between the cities, but life is mainly online.

Open mega structure to circulate the water.

Their cities are all on the dark side. The atmosphere, containing lots of water damp, remains contained an open, spider-shaped mega structure. The mega structure, spanning the dark hemisphere, looks like a huge spider, consisting of straight walls. Corridors extend to the moderate zone, where the agriculture is. It has blowers along these corridors, moving air and moisture to the plants. Wind and clouds move through these corridors, melt the water and when it arrives, misty rain will feed the plants. These blowers generate a loud, continuous noise, cyberpunks love it.

The mega structure has a central part of about 400km diameter, which contains 6 volcanoes with nice temperature. There are several cities, where extra water is synthesized and evaporated. The water damp concentration is highest there, it will go up and find the cold atmosphere. It condensates and falls down as snow, that will melt underways. Result is a constant, slight rain.

Party all day

Your cyberpunks are vegetarian (of course), their robots harvest food in the twilight zone and the inhabitants prefer to remain in the dark cities, having parties.

Goodies
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On Earth you might be looking at a combination of catastrophic climate change (which we're on course for) and desperate attempts to geoengineer around it.

This might mean that:

a) The warmth in the atmosphere causes more evaporation which has resulted in a huge amount of cloud cover. To try and mitigate the amount of heat and keep the surface survivable humans have released a huge amount of reflective gasses into the high atmosphere, resulting in greatly reduced sunlight even during the day.

b) The force of the storms roaring across the landscape has forced the building of Arcologies- massive cooled domes cover our cities, darkened against the blazing sun. The evaporation from the cities strikes the domes and condenses, falling back as a relentless rain on the benighted neon-lit streets.

glenatron
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A Tidally locked planet.

One side is permanently scorched, the other half a hellscape of ice. The only actually inhabitable place is the dawn/dusk ring between the two extremes. It's ridiculous to think that an entire planet would have to be so homogenous, an entire planet-wide city, just desert all around, all jungle? Star Wars did us dirty here.

But no, it's a regular planet, tidally locked. The areas with permanent intense sunlight are used as farmlands and/or resort places for the rich, and the further you get towards the dark side the poorer everyone becomes on average, because everyone who can afford to moves towards the sun. [Optional: Gated Communities, a classist metro (if it even exists) and so on prevent poorer people from doing day trips towards the sun, meaning they stay in the twilight their entire live if they don't make it rich.] And this intense pressure to "make it", to see the sun (for more than a couple of hours a week), is what brings about the cliché scene of cyberpunk crime-professionals, big deals and odd jobs.

Hobbamok
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Heavy air pollution and remaining pollution and radiation from previous wars( probably nuclear wars) in Cyberpunk stories along the lack of trees may had made daytime dark and gloomy.

But it varies from story to story. in Cyberpunk 2077 the weaher is sunny and it rarely rains and there are a lot of vegetation.

Sabrine Crystal
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Go watch the movie "Angela's Ashes". The majority of the scenes are set in gloomy rainy weather. Here's a website that documents most/least sunny areas. Have fun with it.

Not Entirely Serious
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