Airships in culture sumarizes the part airships play in society and popular culture.

Fiction

Literature

Airships were a popular theme in scientific romance (prototypical science fiction) and adventure fiction published in the late 19th century and the earliest years of the 20th century. The theme of aeronautical exploration was most famously explored in this period by Jules Verne (The Clipper of the Clouds) and H. G. Wells (The War in the Air).

Mark Twain wrote a short story called "Tom Sawyer Aeronaut." The small ship could move under its own power, as well as using an early concept of Jet stream.

The ABC series by Rudyard Kipling is set in a world where airships are commonly used both for freight and passenger service, as well as for preventing civil unrest using powerful sonic weapons.

"The A.B.C., that semi-elected, semi-nominated body of a few score persons, controls the Planet. Transportation is Civilisation, our motto runs. Theoretically we do what we please, so long as we do not interfere with the traffic and all it implies. Practically, the A.B.C. confirms or annuls all international arrangements, and, to judge from its last report, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little Planet only too ready to shift the whole burden of public administration on its shoulders." - From "With the Night Mail" by Rudyard Kipling

After the invention of the airplane, airships were largely forgotten by mainstream fiction, and today appear mainly in historical fiction and alternate history (particularly the steampunk genre and the work of Michael Moorcock, most notably The Warlord of the Air). In his "Anome" trilogy (The Anome aka The Faceless Man, The Brave Free Men, and The Asutra), Jack Vance depicts a system of airships tethered to unmanned monorail dolleys which keep them on fixed courses.

The short story The Sky People features a post-apocalyptic world where barbarians from the current USA pillage the decadent Meycans (nowadays Mexico) from their scientifically-developed blimps.

In Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass), parts of which take place in a parallel universe, airships are the most common method of air travel. Airships' strengths and weaknesses are well portrayed in these novels: their great lifting capacity makes them valuable for transporting supplies and soldiers, but they are easily destroyed.

In Theodore Judson's post-apocalyptic Fitzpatrick's War, the neo-feudal Yukon Confederacy makes heavy use of airships as military and civilian transports.

Kim Stanley Robinson in his Mars Trilogy envisages rigid airships being used as a major form of transport for the emerging settlements of Mars. His book Antarctica also incorporates airships.

Kenneth Oppel's novel Airborn, a young adult adventure set in an alternate history in which airship travel is common, won the 2004 Governor General's Award for children's literature. www.airborn.ca. There is also a sequel, Skybreaker.

In Philip Reeve's Hungry City Chronicles, which takes place in the distant future, airships are the primary form of travel because of the mobile nature of cities in the books. In the series, it is mentioned that airship technology had advanced beyond the imaginations of the "Ancients." Airships include freighters, sky yachts, fighter airships and immense air destroyers.

In Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, the airship is a significant and popular form of transport.

David Brin's 1990 Hugo nominated near-future, post global-warming science fiction novel, Earth (set in 2038), portrays a future where there is regular use of airships for passenger transportation.

China Miéville's Bas Lag novels (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council) feature airships ("dirigibles") as a common mode of transport; they are used as taxis and military scouts. The Scar featured two large war airships controlled by the pirate city of Armada: The Arrogance (a captured New Crobuzon airship used as a crow's nest) and the Trident.

Philip José Farmer's Riverworld novels feature a giant rigid and several non-rigid airships which are used to reach the north pole of the Riverworld.

Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel Watchmen is set in a fictitious present day where technology is influenced by the capabilities of the character Doctor Manhattan. He can manipulate subatomic particles at will to synthesise helium in limitless amounts, making dirigible airships a common phenomenon.

Airships powered by sunlight stored in magic crystals, rather than buoyant gasses, are a major feature in the later Shannara novels by Terry Brooks.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill includes a Carvorite powered airship.

Girl Genius, the graphical 'gaslamp fantasy', has airships as a primary mode of long-distance transportation. Castle Wulfenbach, a craft of truly incredible size, is referred to in the title of the second volume as an 'airship city'; it houses the capital of all Europe.

The Joe Haldeman sci-fi novel The Forever War features a blooming skyship business that provides luxury cruises for the extremely wealthy.

Film

Hell's Angels (1930) includes scenes of zeppelin bombers in World War I.

Zeppelin (1971) Michael York film featuring a German-born British flier infiltrating a German Zeppelin mission in World War I.

The Hindenburg is a 1975 disaster movie directed by Robert Wise about the infamous destruction of the airship in 1937.

Black Sunday is a 1977 film based on a 1975 novel by Thomas Harris. In it, a psychotic blimp pilot conspires with a terrorist organization to commit an attack on the Super Bowl using the Goodyear Blimp.

A View to a Kill (1985) features an airship belonging to villain Zorin.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) features a German airship with a attached/parasite biplane which Indiana Jones and his father use as a means of escape. The airship resembles the Hindenburg and the second Graf Zeppelin.

The Rocketeer features the fictional zeppelin Luxembourg.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) opens with the fictional Hindenburg III docking at the Empire State Building.

Television

Blimps featured in the 2005 Doctor Who story The Empty Child,and Dirigibles in the 2006 Doctor Who story Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel

Radio

The R101 disaster forms the setting for the Doctor Who radio play Storm Warning

Anime

The Hayao Miyazaki film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind involves massive flying machines similar to airships, though they are more like giant airplanes. While probably being planes, they share many similarities to real airships, such as vulnerability to the elements, and how they are easily dispatched in combat by smaller, faster craft. Interestingly enough, while they have lift-producing airfoils, and while a propelor sound is heard in the background, no engine or propellor is ever shown. Some of the Tolmekian ships are clearly jet propeled, however.

Another film of Miyazaki's which makes use of airships is Castle in the Sky. This appears to be an alternate history, in which primitive airships are used for exploration and transportation. As well, the military makes use of advanced, massive airships for flying fortresses, armed with an array of powerful cannons and capable of navigating through high winds.

In the manga Hellsing, the Millennium organization, an army of Nazis invades London using several abnormally gigantic airships, referred to as "Air Crusiers," including the Hindenburg II and the Deus Ex Machina, the largest of these being considerably longer than the Palace of Westminster. One of the air cruisers is destroyed by artillery fire by Seras Victoria, while another is brought down due to general battle damage. The last remaining airship is threatened by missiles, which are intercepted, and continues to serve as Millennium's command centre during the battle.

In the anime adaptation of Howl's Moving Castle, also by Miyazaki, airships are commonly used by the military of various countries.

The anime television series Last Exile centers on airships, which are the primary weapon of war between the two rival nations Anatore and Deusis. These airships are given lighter-than-air qualities by an exotic anti-gravity technology, bestowed on the humans of this alternate world by the mysterious Guild.

In the futuristic and post-apocalyptic anime Wolf's Rain the "Nobles," who are the rulers of the city-states make use of airships to maintain their monopoly of air travel and as weapons of war. As in Last Exile the airships seem to utilize some form of anti-gravity technology instead of gas compartments. This could explain how they can be so huge, sometimes as big as a city block, and how they can wield such impressive arrays of laser weapons. They are also not shaped like traditional airships in any way, but appear more as exotic space ships.

The nation of Argentum in Simoun uses airships as flying aircraft carriers. Each airship carries approximately four dozen single-seat heavier-than-air fighters armed with machine guns.

Video games

More than a few video games, such as Crimson Skies, Skies of Arcadia, Sakura Taisen and the Final Fantasy series, utilize airships in their fictional worlds as a major mode of transportation. (In some cases (most notably in the Final Fantasy series), the "airship" is actually a ship with wings, propellers, etc.) Also, in Command & Conquer Red Alert 2, the Soviets' most lethal conventional weapons are their extremely tough but slow Kirov Airships, which act as hovering bombers. StarCraft has a Protoss airship unit called a carrier, which can carry up to eight small attack craft called interceptors, analogous to the old United States Navy airships that carried a fleet a small F9C Sparrowhawk fighter aircraft. Super Mario Bros. 3 also features airships.

Music

VNV Nation has a song called "Airships", about airships, which appears as the last track of their 2002 album Futureperfect.

Led Zeppelin's first album features the Hindenburg disaster on its cover art.

See also

Airship

Flying island

Zeppelin