If you were ever unlucky enough to have to visit the planet Venus (and ideal place for futuristic gulags), you would find yourself in a "New World" with a desolate, rocky and flat landscape and crushing atmospheric pressure (the first Soviet Venera probes were crushed by the high pressure of the atmosphere before they could reach the surface). If you land on solid ground and look up to the sky you wouldn't see the sun even on the clearest day, for the clouds are thick, heavy and opaque, and the surface lit as on a day with heavy overcast on the planet Earth.
