1908 - Terra, um azul, pontinho brilhante
romance de 1908 de William Hope Hodgson A Casa na Fronteira está disponível em Projeto Gutenberg :
I drew nigher to our system, and now I could see the shine of Jupiter. Later, I distinguished the cold, blue gleam of the earthlight . . . I had a moment of bewilderment. All about the sun there seemed to be bright, objects, moving in rapid orbits. Inward, nigh to the savage glory of the sun, there circled two darting points of light, and, further off, there flew a blue, shining speck, that I knew to be the earth. It circled the sun in a space that seemed to be no more than an earth-minute.
1925 - Terra, a Estrela Verde
A novela "Quando a Estrela Verde Minguou" por Nictzin Dyalhis (nome verdadeiro!) foi publicado pela primeira vez em Weird Tales , abril de 1925 . Esta história é notável pela primeira menção conhecida de uma arma fictícia chamada "blaster", ou "blastor" como Dyalhis soletrou. O titular "Estrela Verde" é o planeta Terra (ou "Aerth") visto de Vênus (ou "Venhez"):
That something was radically wrong with our neighbor, everybody already knew, for many years before the green light of Aerth had become perceptibly dimmer. Little attention, however, had been paid at first, for, by interplanetary law, each planet's dwellers remained at home, unless their presence was requested elsewhere. And no call had come to us nor to any other world from Aerth; so we had put it down to some purely natural cause with which, doubtless, the Aerthons were perfectly capable of coping without outside help or interference.
But year by year the green light waned in the night skies until finally it vanished utterly.
1939 - Earth, o Speck Verde (sugerido em um comentário por @Ubik)
O conto "Marooned off Vesta" por Isaac Asimov foi publicado pela primeira vez em Amazing Stories , março de 1939 . Infelizmente, não tenho uma cópia desse problema. A citação a seguir é de uma reimpressão dessa história em O Melhor da Incrível ( Joseph Ross , ed.), Doubleday, 1967:
He gazed about him. For the first time since the crash he saw the stars, instead of the vision of bloated Vesta which their porthole afforded. Eagerly, he searched the skies for the little green speck that was Earth. It had often amused him that Earth should always be the first object sought for by space-travelers when star-gazing. However, his search was in vain. From where he lay Earth was invisible. It, as well as the Sun, must be hidden behind Vesta.
Quando a história foi reimpressa em O melhor de Isaac Asimov entre outras revisões, o "ponto verde" tornou-se um "pontinho azul-branco". O que se segue é citado de uma edição de bolso de 1976, mas o texto é presumivelmente o mesmo que no capa dura original de 1973:
He gazed about him. For the first time since the crash he saw the stars instead of the vision of Vesta which their porthole afforded. Eagerly he searched the skies for the little blue-white speck that was Earth. It had often amused him that Earth should always be the first object sought by space travelers when stargazing, but the humor of the situation did not strike him now. However, his search was in vain. From where he lay, Earth was invisible. It, as well as the Sun, must be hidden behind Vesta.
1942 - Terra, o mundo azul
O conto "Perigo do Mundo Azul" por Robert Abernathy foi publicado pela primeira vez em Planet Stories , Winter 1942 (disponível no Arquivo da Internet , bem antes das primeiras imagens de satélite da Terra. O "Mundo Azul" do título é de fato o Planeta Terra. Aqui está o começo da história:
There are those who have criticized the wisdom of the members of the First Earth Expedition in returning to Mars so precipitately, without completing the observations and explorations which it had been intended they should make. For some time now, we who were with the Expedition and knew the real reason for that return have chosen to ignore these few but noisy individuals; but latterly some of the hot-headed younger generation, but lately out of the egg and unwilling to trust to the wisdom of their elders, have begun to talk of launching a second expedition to the Blue Planet.
Therefore, I, Shapplo with the Long Proboscis, interpreter to the First Expedition, have been commissioned by the crew of the Earth Rocket to tell the full and unexpurgated story of our adventures on Earth, and the reasons for our contention that the planet must forever remain closed to Martian colonization.