Stars in fiction

Stars outside of the Solar System have been featured as settings in works of fiction since at least the 1600s, though this did not become commonplace until the pulp era of science fiction. Stars themselves are rarely a point of focus in fiction, their most common role being an indirect one as hosts of planetary systems. In stories where stars nevertheless do get specific attention, they play a variety of roles. Their appearance as points of light in the sky is significant in several stories where there are too many, too few, or an unexpected arrangement of them; in fantasy, they often serve as omens. Stars also appear as sources of power, be it the heat and light of their emanating radiation or superpowers. Certain stages of stellar evolution have received particular attention: supernovae, neutron stars, and black holes. Stars being depicted as sentient beings—whether portrayed as supernatural entities, personified in human form, or simply anthropomorphized as having intelligence—is a recurring theme. Real stars occasionally make appearances in science fiction, especially the nearest: the Alpha Centauri system, often portrayed as the destination of the first interstellar voyage. Tau Ceti, a relatively-nearby star regarded as a plausible candidate for harbouring habitable planets, is also popular.

Among the earliest depictions of stars as locations that can be visited is Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle's 1686 work Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds). The centuries that followed saw further such portrayals in Emanuel Swedenborg's 1758 work De Telluribus in Mundo Nostro Solari (Concerning the Earths in Our Solar System), C. I. Defontenay's 1854 novel Star ou Psi de Cassiopée (Star: Psi Cassiopeia), and Camille Flammarion's 1887 novel Lumen, but they remained rare throughout this time period. The early 1900s saw a few further interstellar voyages with Robert William Cole's 1900 novel The Struggle for Empire: A Story of the Year 2236, Jean Delaire [Wikidata]'s 1904 novel Around a Distant Star, and William Shuler Harris [Wikidata]'s 1905 novel Life in a Thousand Worlds before the concept became popular in the pulp era of science fiction.

Stars, and their positions in the night sky as seen from Earth, have long been regarded as holding a particular significance to humans. Constellations have been integrated into various mythologies, and the pseudoscience of astrology posits that the positions of the stars can be used to predict the future. Astrology very rarely features in science fiction (other than as a subject of satire), Piers Anthony's 1969 novel Macroscope being one of the few exceptions. Observations of stars as literal objects, points of light in the sky, nevertheless play important roles in several stories. In Isaac Asimov's 1941 short story "Nightfall", the first sight of a star-filled night sky, from a planet that is otherwise in daylight from at least one of its many suns for millennia at a time, drives people to madness. The opposite occurrence, of the stars disappearing from view, appears in Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 short story "The Nine Billion Names of God" and heralds the end of the universe. Poul Anderson's 1967 short story "Starfog" is set on a planet in a star cluster so dense that the night sky is entirely filled with stars, while his 1966 novel World Without Stars (a.k.a. The Ancient Gods) is set on a world so remote the night sky is virtually devoid of stars. Unfamiliar arrangements of stars in the sky are sometimes used to establish that the action does not take place on Earth. In fantasy, stars mainly serve as omens—though many such "stars" are in fact planets.

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.

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. A toroidal star is depicted in Donald Malcolm's 1964 short story "Beyond the Reach of Storms", while stars in the shape of two interlinked toruses appear in Terry Pratchett's 1976 novel The Dark Side of the Sun as the result of large-scale engineering by a cryptic race of advanced aliens.

The main function stars serve in fiction is as hosts of planetary systems. Unusual stellar properties are sometimes explored through the effect they have on the orbiting planets, though this is comparatively rare. In Hal Clement's 1946 short story "Cold Front", a planet's meteorological conditions are determined not just by the properties of its own atmosphere, but also variations in the star's atmosphere. In Vernor Vinge's 1999 novel A Deepness in the Sky, a variable star leaves the inhabitants of one of its planets in lengthy periods of hibernation during its phases of decreased output. The effect existing in a multiple star system might have on planets, on the other hand, has received significant attention in fiction.

Another role stars play in fiction is as sources of power. One concept for maximizing this potential is enclosing the entire star in a Dyson sphere, thus making it possible to harness all of its energy output rather than just the fraction emitted in a particular direction. Such objects were first formally proposed by Freeman Dyson in 1960 and have since been depicted in works of fiction such as Bob Shaw's 1975 novel Orbitsville. Variations on the concept also appear, for instance a half-sphere of the same kind as in Larry Niven and Gregory Benford's 2012 novel Bowl of Heaven, where the open half allows the star to be used for propulsion through space via a so-called Shkadov thruster. Other works envision the creation of artificial stars to provide energy. In Arthur C. Clarke's 1951 novel The Sands of Mars, the Martian moon Phobos is turned into a star in an effort to terraform Mars, while Clarke's 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two conversely depicts the planet Jupiter being turned into a star for the benefit of its moon Europa. In comic books, the source of Superman's superpowers is the light from a yellow star like the Sun.

Advances in astronomy in the 1900s led to the development of theories of stellar evolution. This provided an explanation for the appearance of new stars in the sky, which had been observed for centuries. These "novae" or "supernovae" are caused by stars exploding, a concept that appeared in fiction throughout the century. The new understanding of stellar lifecycles also predicted entirely new types of objects: collapsed stars known as neutron stars and black holes, which became popular in science fiction during the second half of the century.