The Outward Urge is a science fiction fix-up novel by British writer John Wyndham.

It tells the story, with chapters at 50-year intervals, of the exploration of the Solar System, with space stations in Earth orbit, then Moon bases, and landings on Mars in 2094, Venus in 2144, and the asteroids.

[2] In 1994, "Ticker" Troon is killed foiling a Soviet missile attack on a British space station, and is later awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.

Only after hundreds of years, with radioactivity going down, do expeditions from the south start carefully exploring and preparing to re-colonise the ravaged northern hemisphere.

Mars is described fairly accurately as a desert planet with no Martians, but there are plant forms in the bottom of the canali (which are implied to be a natural phenomenon).

Military conflict in space plays an important part in the novel, first between the Soviet Union and the West, and later between Brazil and Australia.