History Main / WorldInTheSky

* ''VideoGame/{{Bug}}'' has each level look like a series of huge FloatingPlatforms, and if you fell off any of them, you went splat.. in mid-air, as there was actually no ground below. [[spoiler:Subverted as the entire level took place on a stage set, as Bug was a movie star]].

* The ''VideoGame/LittleTailBronx'' series takes place on floating islands that the inhabitants travel between using airships. The surface world is blocked by an electrified cloud sea. ''VideoGame/{{Solatorobo}}'' reveals that they're [[spoiler:the remnants of a [[AfterTheEnd Post-Apocalyptic Earth]]]]

* ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'': Inhabited gas giants (e.g. Jupiter, Saturn), ice giants (e.g. Uranus, Neptune) and Cytherean planets (e.g. Venus) are like this. Because this setting aims to be as realistic as possible, the landmasses are artificial instead of natural, using balloons to remain in the air: for this reason they are known as "[[https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4f181b2caeccf bubblehabs]]".

* ''ComicBook/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy'': The initial depiction of the 31st century version of Jupiter depicted it as having land. With Jupiter, this is utterly impossible. By the 90s, this had changed to depicting them as domed cities hovering in the upper atmosphere. Of course, science has now proven that with [[DeathWorld Jupiter]], this would still be incredibly impossible.

* ''VideoGame/GranblueFantasy'' has the Phatagrande Skydom, where the citizens are known as skyfarers, and the main method of transportation between the floating islands are airships.

* ''LightNovel/WorldEndWhatDoYouDoAtTheEndOfTheWorldAreYouBusyWillYouSaveUs'': The Floating Islands were created for the specific purpose of keeping the surviving races safe from the seventeen Beasts that inhabit the surface world below, long after all humans (called here as the Emnetwyte) have gone extinct bar one.

* ''Dragon Hunters'' (fr."Chasseurs de dragons"), the full-lenght CGI prequel to the 2D animated series of the same name shows this kind of setting in all its beauty and picturesqueness.

* ''WesternAnimation/Dragon Hunters'' (fr."Chasseurs de dragons"), the full-lenght CGI prequel to the 2D animated series of the same name shows this kind of setting in all its beauty and picturesqueness.

* ''WesternAnimation/Dragon Hunters'' ("Chasseurs de dragons"), the full-lenght CGI prequel to the 2D animated series of the same name shows this kind of setting in all its beauty and picturesqueness.

Impossible[[note]]or nearly impossible -- see ''Literature/TheIntegralTrees''[[/note]] under physics resembling ours, worlds of this type are ''usually'' found exclusively in fantasy. What keeps them hovering? Where does the gravity come from? What's keeping the atmosphere in place? What, if anything, is there at the "bottom" of these worlds? [[LostTechnology Nobody knows]], but maybe AWizardDidIt, or it may be AnotherDimension or an ElementalPlane where things don't work quite by the rules of regular physics.. Do not expect the outcome of falling off the side of one of these pieces to be properly explored.

This is less a {{World Shape|s}}, and more a series of world pieces. Landmasses, with or without internal seas, [[FloatingContinent float suspended in an atmosphere]]. They can range in size from tiny "islands" to huge continents with vast civilizations.

Impossible[[note]]or nearly impossible -- see ''Literature/TheIntegralTrees''[[/note]] under physics resembling ours, worlds of this type are ''usually'' found exclusively in fantasy. What keeps them hovering? Where does the gravity come from? What's keeping the atmosphere in place? What, if anything, is there at the "bottom" of these worlds? [[LostTechnology Nobody knows]], but maybe AWizardDidIt. Do not expect the outcome of falling off the side of one of these pieces to be properly explored. Sci-fi versions will generally be landmass floating inside gas giant's atmosphere.

Sometimes, a World in the Sky may be placed above a more conventional world which, for whichever reason, is largely or entirely uninhabitable. In some cases, the World in the Sky may have been created or settled specifically to escape whatever made the original surface unsuitable for life. Other times, it may be in AnotherDimension or an ElementalPlane where things don't work quite by the rules of regular physics.

* ''VideoGame/TimeOfDefiance'' is built around this trope.

** There's also the old fan-made map "skylands". No points for guessing why it's called that.

* ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'': A twist in ''Pokémon Platinum'': the Distortion World consists of floating islands, not all of which share the same gravitational orientation. At one point you get to Surf ''vertically'' between two islands.

* ''VideoGame/{{Solatorobo}}'' takes place in the same universe as Tail Concerto, and also reveals that the floating islands [[spoiler: are actually the remenants of a [[AfterTheEnd Post-Apocalyptic Earth]]]]

* ''VideoGame/TailConcerto'' takes place on an archipelago of floating islands, surrounded by an impenetrable air reef (or "Airleaf", as the game misromanizes it, but then again, Creator/{{Atlus}} translations weren't ''always'' well-researched back then).

* ''TabletopGame/SwashbucklersOfTheSevenSkies'' takes place within a dome thousands of miles across, filled with floating islands ranging from near-continents with their own seas to tiny islets. There's a region called the Sky of Stones filled with floating boulders.

* The titular location of ''Anime/DoraemonNobitaAndTheKingdomOfClouds'' is a city built by a race of technologically advanced ancient humans in the skies, using their technology to turn clouds into solid ground for them to construct their cities upon.

* The islands in ''Manga/{{Radiant}}'' aren't floating, they're at the top of very high and narrow mountains, but the effect is similar. Zeppelins and hot-air balloons are the most common transportations (as well as flying broomsticks for sorcerers).

* The [=CrossGen=] Comics title ''Meridian'' had a society of inhabited floating islands above an inhabited planetary surface; there was little contact between the two areas, though they were aware of each other's existence.

* In ''Literature/{{Faller}}'' by Will [=McIntosh=], Earth gets ''turned into'' this by some physicists trying to use a zero-point energy phenomenon they don't fully understand.

* In ''Literature/MinlasFlowers'' by Creator/AlastairReynolds, the protagonist is forced to land on a world with dozens of floating continents: the shattered remnants of a shield designed to camouflage the actual surface from the AbsoluteXenophobe Huskers. The camouflage fragments have some form of anti-gravity, allowing them to hover several thousand meters in the air, where they have flipped over and subsequently gathered water and vegetation. The fragments hold a human society that uses zeppelins and primitive airplanes for travel.
* In ''Literature/ThePlayerOfGames'', one of the character wants to '''build''' one of those, because it would cooler than the artificial worlds usually made by the Culture (which just show how blasé the Culture citizens can be: [[RingWorldPlanet Ring Worlds]] and sapient spaceships with hundreds of millions of people living inside can be deemed ''boring''). The Culture's technology would allow it to build such a world, except that it would be a lot of energy and matter lost on a whim.
* ''[[Literature/{{Skyward}} ReDawn]]'': The titular homeworld of the UrDail is a gas giant, with the UrDail themselves living on continent-sized trees that float in ReDawn's upper atmosphere, processing the planet's toxic atmosphere into breathable air in addition to providing something to build on. The actual planetary surface is only visited by miners in protective gear.

* ''Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse'': Thor's "homeworld" Asgard is little more than a medium-sized city, surrounded by a compact landscape of oceans and craggy mountains, all of it floating freely in space. Said oceans cascade over the edges into the void, and the whole arrangement appears to have a diameter in the tens of kilometers, give or take, with many of the world's edges being easily visible from the shore. Question like "where does the seawater come from?" or "where do they grow all that food?" are never addressed, but can probably be handwaved with the Asgardians' advanced {{Magitek}}.

[[quoteright:300:[[WesternAnimation/{{Skyland}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/skyland_3405.jpg]]]]

* ''TabletopGame/ProseDescriptiveQualities'': ''Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies'' takes place within a dome thousands of miles across, filled with floating islands ranging from near-continents with their own seas to tiny islets. There's a region called the Sky of Stones filled with floating boulders.

* ''Literature/TheIntegralTrees'': An unusual, [[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness real-physics]] variation occurs in the form of the "smoke ring". This is a toroidal cloud of gas and matter which orbits a very low-output neutron star, which in turn orbits a sun-like star in a binary configuration. It includes a ring of breathable atmosphere, in which reside a number of flying plants and animals, including some humans who've "[[LostColony gone native]]".

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* ''Literature/{{TP}}'' has a relatively hard example. Possibly inspired by the same discovery of Io's gas "doughnut". One of the antagonists keeps teleporting a kidnapped boy to different planets ForTheEvulz and one of the planets is a similar air torus, where everybody keeps falling indefinitely. It's inhabited by seemingly hostile archaeopteryx-like creatures. Later another antagonist gets stuck there forever.[[note]]To be more precise, the rescued boy hit him with the device that was used to track him through multiple planets and bring him back to Earth. The device teleported the villain and itself. By the time the protagonists or police could build another such device all traces dissipated.[[/note]] Archaeopteryxes turn out to be sentient and possess teleporter technology, but don't see humans as worth contacting -- they treat their guest as a pet and keep him in a pen. Oh, and it was overuse of teleporters that destroyed their rocky planet and twisted gravity to hold its atmosphere in a torus.

* The ==CrossGen== Comics title ''Meridian'' had a society of inhabited floating islands above an inhabited planetary surface; there was little contact between the two areas, though they were aware of each other's existence.