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

Contents 1 Literature 2 Film 3 Television 4 Radio 5 Anime 6 Video games 7 Music 8 Websites 9 See also

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.

The Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs features armadas of airships of different sizes used by the Red and Black Martian races. Barsoomian airships are not lighter-than-air but use technology based on one of the two kinds of Martian "ray". Burroughs' Pellucidar series also features a rigid airship of the usual design, which enters the realm within the Earth's core via the hole connecting the Earth's outside to its innards, near the North Pole.

In Man's Mortality (written by Michael Arlen in 1933), the aircraft of 1983 are still called "airships", and retain the traditional shape, but are held aloft not by buoyant gas, but by an "anti-gravity gyro", which the author describes only as a box, smaller than a present-day automobile engine, bolted to the deck at the center of gravity of the ship.

After the invention of the airplane, airships were largely forgotten by mainstream fiction, and today appear mainly in historical fiction (such as Len Deighton's 1987 novel Winter) 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.

Various books of alternate history which depict worlds in which the British Empire survives as a political entity assume that that would entail also the survival of the dirigible as the main or only way of travelling by air. These include the aforementioned The Warlord of the Air (Michael Moorcock), as well as The Two Georges (Harry Turtledove and Richard Dreyfuss),Great Work of Time (John Crowley), The Peshawar Lancers (S.M. Stirling) and At the Narrow Passage (Richard C. Meredith).

Poul Anderson's 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 (Northern Lights, 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. The novel The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin also portrays airships as the dominant means of air transport, apparently chosen by a society with scarce energy resources and little emphasis on travelling quickly.

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.

In The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, airships are highlighted as the best mode of aerial transport during a zombie outbreak. In World War Z, by the same author and set in the near, post-apocalyptic future, the America's Civil Air Patrol maintains a fleet of airships - referred to as "D-17 combat dirigibles".

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

In the manga Hellsing, the Millennium organization, an army of Nazis invades London using several abnormally gigantic airships, referred to as "Air Cruisers," 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.

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

Thomas Pynchon's 2006 novel Against the Day opens with the crew of the dirigible Inconvenience, headed for the Chicago World's Fair of 1893.

The popular name of Lithuanian national dish cepelinai (potato dumplings stuffed with meat) is derived from the word Zeppelin due to the resemblance of the shape.

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 the 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 (1991) features the fictional Zeppelin Luxembourg.

Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1992) features a small but very high class airship that transports Nemo to and from Slumberland.

The Mummy Returns (2001) features an airship used to travel throughout Egypt.

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

Flyboys (2006) includes a fight against a World War I-era Zeppelin.

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'

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

In the friends episode "The one with the memorial service", Chandler posts on an alumni site that Ross is dead after being hit by a blimp.

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 propellor 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 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 Anatoray and Disith. 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.

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 the game Skies of Arcadia, airships can be either small fishing ships, or massive iron-clad warships with cannons, magical cannons, rock-resistant armour, bedrooms, kitchens, and massive control rooms.

The story of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura starts with protagonist surviving crash of a civilian zeppelin, destroyed by attack of two aircraft.

Several levels of Prince of Persia 3D are set in an enormous and complex airship (referred to as a dirigible in the game).

Mario Bros. 3 introduces airships as the main vessels of travel for King Bowser's children. In Super Mario World, navigating through a sunken airship level is a prerequisite for entry to Bowser's domain.

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 of small F9C Sparrowhawk fighter aircraft.

The entire third chapter of Ninja Gaiden takes place in a massive airship.

In the Icewind Dale series the gnome alchemist Oswald Fiddlebender has and operates an airship. In the second game Icewind Dale II the ship is damaged and the player has to find the magical ingredients to restore it.

Various games in the Sonic the Hedgehog series feature airships, usually as a base of operations for Sonic's main antagonist, Dr. Eggman.

In the RTS-game, "Rise of Legends," the Vinci civilization utilizes airships for supplying their troops. They also mount cannons on some for use as siege weapons.

In the free mmorpg Maple Story airships are used to transport players between the twin islands of ossyria and victoria (a regular ship is used to transport the player between maple and victoria islands and victoria and florinia island) these ships are often under siege by sky pirates and balrogs

Zeppelins are a form of transportation in the Blizzard Warcraft franchise, particularly the real-time strategy games Warcraft II and Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, as well as the MMORPG World of Warcraft. They are mainly for the Horde side, as they are located and transport to the Horde cities of Grom'Gol, Ogrimmar, and Undercity. They arrive and leave at roughly 5 minute intervals and there is transportation for each city at each tower. The Goblins who run this service insist that they are completely safe, but ban the use of smoking, and fire spells even though they use non-flammable helium, burning wood and cloth are still a danger to the zepplin's structural integrity.

In 1934, the calypsonian, Attilla the Hun recorded "Graf Zeppelin" commemorating the airship's visit to Trinidad while on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Chicago for the World Fair. His song lyrics aptly catches the awe of the watching crowds as he poetically describes "How wonderful the work of man could be/ To see that huge object in the air/ Maintaining perfect equilibrium in the atmosphere/ Wonderfully, beautifully, gloriously/ Decidedly defying all the laws of gravity". The young diarist on board - Alicia Momsen Miller - (sister of Billy, the Zeppelin Baby)[1] wrote of that exact occasion: " On Sunday, over Trinidad, people in yachts and sailboats waved to us, and looking down, we could see fish and sharks swimming in the clear water below."

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

Popular hard rock band Led Zeppelin derived its name (according to one version of the story) from a quip made by The Who drummer Keith Moon about the band going down like "a lead Zeppelin." Led Zeppelin's manager, Peter Grant, decided to change "Lead Zeppelin" to "Led Zeppelin" to avoid confusion over the pronunciation of 'lead' as 'leed.' Their first album, Led Zeppelin, features an artist's rendition of the Hindenburg disaster, created by artist George Hardie.

Rock band Pink Floyd used two airships, known as the Division Belle blimps to promote their 1994 P.U.L.S.E. world tour. One airship travelled across America and the other across Europe. The two differed slightly in design, the American blimp was the larger of the two with Storm Thorgerson's artwork painted onto it whereas the European blimp was slightly smaller and made to look like a fish. When it travelled at night it was lit up by two 1,000 Watt lamps to give the illusion of a giant, tropical sea creature floating across the sky. The American blimp was billed as the worlds largest blimp when it took to the skies in 1994. After the promotion for the tour finished it was cut into 4"x4" squares and sold to fans. The European blimp remained it action for many years afterwards and did promotional flights for Philips and Hofbrau Beer.

Zeppelins were recently used heavily in the Doctor Who episodes Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel, where zeppelins were used in a parallel universe London as a common form of transport.

Zeppelins are used in Phillip Reeve's Hungry City Chronicles where they are used as the primary means of transport between the mobile cities. They are also used as a weapon, the book describes great fleets of Air-Destroyers and other zeppelins.

Zeppelins were also used in the Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials as a major form of transport in one of the multiple parallel universes present.

MozillaZine, a website about the Mozilla project, uses an airship as its logo.

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• Zeppelin