Stars in fiction

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Stars outside of the Solar System have been featured as settings in works of fiction since at least the 1600s.

Early depictions

Among the earliest depictions of stars as locations that can be visited is

pulp era of science fiction.[1][2]

As objects in the sky

Stars, and their positions in the

end of the universe.[3][5]

Properties

Stars, although there is a certain poetical reference to them in much science fiction, do not actually feature in much depth in most SF stories. There are a couple of notable exceptions. [...] However, in the main, the stars themselves remain relatively untouched in the pages of SF, and exist simply as a means of providing light and warmth to planets they we may wish to visit or colonize.

George Mann, The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, "Stars" entry[6]

For the most part, stars in fiction vary only in size and colour. Exceptions to this are rare and appear comparatively lately in the history of science fiction.[2] A toroidal star is featured in Donald Malcolm's 1964 short story "Beyond the Reach of Storms".[1][2] Sentient stars are depicted in Olaf Stapledon's 1937 novel Star Maker among others.[2][3][7] Some stories including Bob Shaw's 1975 novel Orbitsville depict stars being enclosed by Dyson spheres.[3]

Neutron stars

See also: Black holes in fiction and Supernovae in fiction

Neutron stars, extremely dense remnants of stars that have undergone supernova events, appear in several works of fiction.[2][5][8] These objects are characterized by very strong gravitational fields yet comparatively small sizes on the order of a few kilometers or miles, resulting in extreme tidal forces in their proximity.[5][8][9][10] In Larry Niven's 1966 short story "Neutron Star", a spacefarer is thus imperiled when the spacecraft approaches such a star too closely and the difference in gravitational pull between the near and far end threatens to rip it apart.[8][9][10] In Gregory Benford's 1978 novel The Stars in Shroud, a neutron star is used for gravity assist maneuvers.[8][10] Neutron stars are depicted as harbouring life on the surface and interior, respectively, in Robert L. Forward's 1980 novel Dragon's Egg and Stephen Baxter's 1993 novel Flux.[3][5] Neutron star mergers release enormous amounts of radiation that could cause extinction events at interstellar distances; such an event devastates Earth in Greg Egan's 1997 novel Diaspora, and the anticipation thereof is portrayed in Baxter's 2000 novel Manifold: Space and the 2005–2006 television series Threshold.[8]

Real stars

Real stars make occasional appearances in science fiction, sometimes with

Journal of Science Communication analysed a sample of 142 fictional exoplanets, nearly a third of which described as orbiting real stars, and found "an absence of influence of whether or not the planet setting is in a real star system on other worldbuilding characteristics".[12]

The

generation starship if needed; the use of an actual generation starship headed for the system was later depicted in the 1944 novel Far Centaurus by A. E. van Vogt,[13][14] and the 1997 novel Alpha Centauri by William Barton and Michael Capobianco portrays such a mission being endangered by terrorists.[2][15] Conversely, Liu Cixin's 2006 novel The Three-Body Problem depicts aliens from Alpha Centauri coming to Earth.[3]

The

multiple star.[17] In 2015, Andrew Liptak [Wikidata] interviewed several authors about why they used Tau Ceti for their stories; in addition to the star's relative proximity to Earth, Ursula K. Le Guin (who wrote The Dispossessed, 1974) and Larry Niven (The Legacy of Heorot, 1987, with Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes) cited the star's similarity to the Sun, while Kim Stanley Robinson (Aurora, 2015) pointed to the recent discovery of several exoplanets around Tau Ceti.[16]

See also

A photomontage of the eight planets and the MoonNeptune in fictionUranus in fictionSaturn in fictionJupiter in fictionMars in fictionEarth in science fictionMoon in science fictionVenus in fictionMercury in fiction
Clicking on a planet leads to the article about its depiction in fiction.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Stableford, Brian; Langford, David (2021). "Stars". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 2021-11-22.
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-0-415-97460-8
    .
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-1-4408-6617-3
    .
  4. ^ Stableford, Brian (2015). "Astronomy". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 2024-04-30.
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-0-313-32952-4
    .
  6. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7867-0887-1
    .
  7. ^ Stableford, Brian; Langford, David (2022). "Living Worlds". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 2024-04-14.
  8. ^ a b c d e Peter, Nicholls; Langford, David (2014). "Neutron Stars". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 2024-05-01.
  9. ^
    ISBN 978-3-031-33950-9
    .
  10. ^
    OCLC 8689657
    .
  11. ^ Miller, Ron (2011-11-18). "Imaginary Exoplanets". Reactor. Archived from the original on 2024-04-23. Retrieved 2024-04-23.
  12. ISSN 1824-2049
    .
  13. ^ Peter, Nicholls; Langford, David (2019). "Generation Starships". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 2021-12-02.
  14. ISBN 978-0-471-70410-2
    . The first great science-fiction story in which Alpha Centauri played a major role may have been a 1944 tale by A. E. van Vogt. I read it in a much later anthology when I was a kid. The title of the tale—including the sound of that title—was what really filled me with admiration and has stuck with me ever since: "Far Centaurus." Although the name Proxima Centauri basically means "near Centaurus," the title of the story is appropriate because the tale tells of a first spaceship journey that would take many generations to complete—"'Tis for far Centaurus we sail!"
  15. ISBN 978-0-8108-4938-9
    . Alpha Centauri (1997), in which terrorists plague the colony ship which is humankind's last hope
  16. ^ a b Liptak, Andrew (2015-07-20). "Visiting Tau Ceti with 4 Science Fiction Authors". B&N Reads. Archived from the original on 2024-04-14. Retrieved 2024-04-15.
  17. ^ a b Nicoll, James Davis (2023-09-20). "Star Power: Five Classic SF Works Featuring Tau Ceti". Reactor. Archived from the original on 2024-04-14. Retrieved 2024-04-15.

Further reading

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