"Surveying a Dying Sun", cover of If, November 1953
The Sun has appeared as a setting in fiction at least since classical antiquity, but for a long time it received relatively sporadic attention. Many of the early depictions viewed it as an essentially Earth-like and thus potentially habitable body—a once-common belief about celestial objects in general known as the plurality of worlds—and depicted various kinds of solar inhabitants. As more became known about the Sun through advances in astronomy, in particular its temperature, solar inhabitants fell out of favour save for the occasional more exotic alien lifeforms. Instead, many stories focused on the eventual death of the Sun and the havoc it would wreak upon life on Earth. Before it was understood that the Sun is powered by nuclear fusion, the prevailing assumption among writers was that combustion was the source of its heat and light, and it was expected to run out of fuel relatively soon. Even after the true source of the Sun's energy was determined in the 1920s, the dimming or extinction of the Sun remained a recurring theme in disaster stories, with occasional attempts at averting disaster by reigniting the Sun. Another common way for the Sun to cause destruction is by exploding ("going nova"), and other mechanisms such as solar flares also appear on occasion.
Besides being a source of destruction, the Sun has been used in fiction as a source of power—both in the form of solar power and superpowers. The solar wind is also used for propulsion by spacecraft equipped with solar sails. Solar eclipses have appeared in a large number of stories, in the earliest ones often used as a ruse by characters who know that they can be predicted mathematically against those who do not by pretending to cause them, perhaps inspired by the story of Christopher Columbus doing the same with a lunar eclipse in 1504. When audiences grew weary of this trope by the 1930s or 1940s, eclipses became much more rare in fiction writing, though they saw a comeback towards the end of the century as harbingers of social upheaval. Sunspots, and their 11-year cycle of frequency in occurrence, appear in a small number of works. The Sun poses a danger to spacecraft that approach it closely, a situation that occurs by necessity or design in several stories. It is sometimes depicted as being sentient, though this is rare compared to other stars getting the same treatment. Overall, the Sun remains relatively uncommon as a point of focus in science fiction, particularly in comparison to depictions of Mars and Venus;[1] says science fiction bibliographer Richard Bleiler, "Perhaps because it is generally taken for granted, the fictive potential of the Sun has barely been tapped".[2]
^Caryad; Römer, Thomas; Zingsem, Vera (2014). "Rote Riesen und kalte Sonnen" [Red Giants and Cold Suns]. Wanderer am Himmel: Die Welt der Planeten in Astronomie und Mythologie [Wanderers in the Sky: The World of the Planets in Astronomy and Mythology] (in German). Springer-Verlag. p. 38. ISBN 978-3-642-55343-1.
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