25 of the best fictional planets to visit

8. Asgard (Thor)

In Norse mythology, Asgard is the realm of the gods, located somewhere just outside of human reach. In the Marvel comics version of Asgard, it is still a fantastic, glittering settlement, but this time it’s technically populated by aliens. Beautiful, super-powered aliens, to be sure, but make no mistakes: in the comics, Asgard is an alien planet.

To be fair, there are a few fairytale-like elements still connected to Marvel’s Asgard. Most people travel there via the Bifrost Bridge, which is a beautiful but still poorly understood interdimensional portal of sorts. Asgard itself, as most completely seen in the Thor: Ragnarok film and many comics pages isn’t even spherical. It’s a flat disk with water spilling off the edges, much like Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

Safety issues

By the way, people can very definitely fall off the edge of Asgard or the bridge connecting it to the Bifrost. Asgardians Loki and Odin do so at least once, though they come back so quickly that it almost doesn’t matter. Still, somebody really should think about installing some railings along the bridge.

With a little bit of hand-waving, Asgard’s gravity manages to keep its people and waterways from flying off into space. That’s pretty useful, especially once you realize both how beautiful Asgard is and how technologically advanced its people are. Like many other civilizations in this listing, Asgardians really seem to have invested in architectural schools. The city of Asgard boasts golden towers that soar high above craggy rock faces.

The Hall of Asgard is especially Instagram-worthy, with its intricate detailing and regular ceremonies. If you’re especially sneaky, you might even make it down into Odin’s Vault, which holds many different cool and oftentimes dangerous artifacts. If you’re not so sneaky, yet try to head into Asgard’s basement anyway, you might also be posting pics of some of the fanciest jail cells in all of the Nine Realms.