Printed Word Resources
Here at Silicon Spaceships, we don't have any formal education in geology or planetary sciences. I am very much in debt to the scientiest who have taken the itme and effort to write so others may learn. Here is what I found to be most useful.
A Traveler's Guide To Mars by Dr. William Hartmann. This is a great introduction to Mars. It covers lots of different topics and has a ton of pictures. Once you've seen something interesting in the book, you can use GeoVirgil to look at more data.
Venus Revealed by Dr. David Harry Grinspoon. This is a great book to start with. Indeed, it is the first book on Venus I read. Venus Revealed is intended for the lay public and is very well written. It has a lot of information on the history of Venusian observation, the Magellan probe, etc.
Atlas Of Venus by Dr. Peter Cattermole and Dr. Patrick Moore. A nice book that gives a brief overview of many topics - from the Mayans to the early probes through Magellan. It has lots of images from Magellan so you can get an idea what the surface looks like.
Venus: TheGeological Story by Dr. Peter Cattermole. A wonderful, detailed book. There is a lot of information about all the different kinds of terrain on Venus. It can be difficult to read, but is worth the effort. The cover has a computer generated perspective view of the surface created by NASA. Sadly, the photo description fails to mention variation in altitude has been exarated by at least a factor of 10. Venus is actually a very flat place and doesn't look like the cover photo.
Worlds Apart: A Textbook on Planetary Sciences by Fr. Guy Consolmango and Dr. Martha Schaefer. This is a very nicely organized text book. Each chapter focuses on a separate body in the solar system. Each chapter also introduces relavent topices in planetary sciences needed to understand the body. From nucleosynthesis to rock forming minerals to impact crater formation isostasy to atmosphere to orbital mechanics. The great number of topics and the detail they are covered in make this book a real joy.
Principles of Geophysics by Dr. Norman Sleep and Dr. Kazuya Fujita. A very thick, detailed math heavy text book. It makes a nice reference when you need a lot of detail on specific topics. Although the differential equations can be too much for many, it is vitial information when you need it.
The Planet Venus by Dr. Mikhail Marov and Dr. David Grinspoon. A detailed review of what we know about Venus. It has more information on the Venusian atmosphere that other books. It makes a nice reference.
Venus II: Geology, Geophysics, Atmosphere and Solar Wind Environment edited by Dr. S. W. Bougher, Dr. D.M. Hunten and Dr. R. J. Phillips. This +1300 page book is a collection of papers from conference on Venus in 1996. You'll have to spend a lot of time with the above books before you can make sense of this one.
Journal of Geophysical Research (Planetary) (also known as JGR(E)) published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). This is the main English language research journal for planetary research scientists. You can find it at a good university library or subscribe to it.