The prospect of the Sun exploding in this manner has been used in a number of disaster stories, though it was recognized early on that the immense destructive power would leave little to no hope of survival;[2][3][4] the 1903 short story "The End of the World" by Simon Newcomb depicts a few survivors in the immediate aftermath,[2][5] and the 1971 short story "Inconstant Moon" by Larry Niven portrays reactions to the realization that the Sun may have exploded and the end of all human life on Earth consequently being imminent.[3][4][6] Once the concept of space travel became widespread in science fiction—thus permitting evacuation of the Earth—stories envisioning such an event to be survivable for human civilization emerged, such as John W. Campbell's 1930 short story "The Voice of the Void".[2] A couple of works such as the 1998 novel Aftermath by Charles Sheffield also depict more distant supernovae threatening Earth.[4] Besides humans, alien civilizations are also subject to the dangers of supernovae in works like the 1967 short story "Day of Burning" by Poul Anderson, where humans try to evacuate a planet inhabited by a pre-spacefaring society threatened by a supernova, and the 1955 short story "The Star" by Arthur C. Clarke where an alien species is found to have gone extinct some two millennia ago when their star exploded.[4][7]
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