Stars outside of our Solar System and their planets have been featured as settings in works of fiction since at least the 1854 novel Star ou Psi de Cassiopée (English title: Star: Psi Cassiopeia) by C. I. Defontenay, which depicts aliens living in the planetary system around Psi Cassiopeiae. Most of these fictional stars and planets do not vary significantly from the Sun and Earth, respectively. Exceptions include anthropomorphized stars and planets with sentience, planets without stars, and circumbinary planets in multiple-star systems where the orbital mechanics can lead to exotic day–night or seasonal cycles. Besides systems of fictional stars, several real ones have also made appearances in fiction, with the nearest one—Alpha Centauri—receiving particular attention.
See also: Black holes in fiction and Supernovae in fiction |
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.[1] 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.[1][3][4] A handful of works depict lifeforms on or even inside of stars, such as the 1980 novel Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward and the 1993 novel Flux by Stephen Baxter, respectively; in both of these stories, the stars in question are neutron stars.[3][5] Some stories including Bob Shaw's 1975 novel Orbitsville depict stars being enclosed by Dyson spheres.[3]
Most extrasolar planets in fiction are similar to Earth—referred to in the Star Trek franchise as Class M planets—though there are several exceptions.[6]
An early example of an entirely different kind of planet is found in Hal Clement's 1953 novel Mission of Gravity, where the planet Mesklin's rapid rotation causes it to be shaped roughly like a flat disk and gravity is consequently about 200 times weaker at the equator than it is at the poles.[6][7][8] Another disk-shaped planet is the Discworld of Terry Pratchett's 1983–2015 book series of that name, a flat world which is carried on the backs of elephants that are in turn carried on the back of a turtle, with the arrangement orbited by the world's sun.[6][9]
Various exotic planetary shapes appear in fiction.[10] Cubic planets appear in some works, one example being Bizarro World in the Superman franchise.[6][10] A contact-binary double planet appears in the 1982 novel Rocheworld by Robert L. Forward.[10][11][12][13]
Circumbinary planets, sometimes nicknamed "Tatooine worlds" after the Star Wars planet,[14] have attracted attention from science fiction writers in terms of what kind of life would exist on planets orbiting more than one sun.[11] Isaac Asimov's 1941 short story "Nightfall" portrays a planet in a multiple star system which is consequently in daylight from at least one of its six suns for millennia at a time.[5][15] Hal Clement's 1957 novel Cycle of Fire depicts a planet in circumbinary orbit where the seasons last for decades and different species dominate the hot and cold parts of the year,[6][11][16] and Brian Aldiss' 1982–1985 Helliconia trilogy is set on a planet in a binary star system where the orbital mechanics lead to century-long seasons.[6][16][17] The 1985 anthology Medea: Harlan's World is a collaborative effort between Harlan Ellison and several other science fiction writers consisting of several stories set on the same circumbinary planet.[6][11]
Other types of planets in fiction include starless ones as in the 1934 short story "The Sunless World" by Neil R. Jones and the 1977 novel Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin,[11][18] and sentient ones as in the 1961 novel Solaris by Stanisław Lem and its 1972 and 2002 film adaptations.[4][6][19] Sentient planets are relatively rarely portrayed in fiction when compared to sentient stars, but the related concept of an entire planetary ecosphere as a single organism—known as the Gaia hypothesis—is not uncommon; one such example is found in Isaac Asimov's 1982 novel Foundation's Edge.[4][20] Science fiction writers sometimes use exobiology as a form of worldbuilding, describing alien ecosystems and how humans do or do not fit into them; the desert planet Arrakis in Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune is a particularly detailed example thereof.[6][21]
The Alpha Centauri system is the closest star system to Earth—with Proxima Centauri being the closest of the system's stars—which has given it a special position in science fiction literature. Several stories of the first interstellar journeys have featured it as the intended destination. Among the earliest examples are the 1931 short story "Across the Void" by Leslie F. Stone and the 1935 short story "Proxima Centauri" by Murray Leinster.[1][22] The spacecraft in the latter reaches its destination in less than a decade but has the capacity to function as a 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,[23][24] and the 1997 novel Alpha Centauri by William Barton and Michael Capobianco portrays such a mission being endangered by terrorists.[1][25]
Psi Cassiopeiae made one of the earliest appearances as a setting in a work of fiction of any star system in the 1854 novel Star ou Psi de Cassiopée (English title: Star: Psi Cassiopeia) by C. I. Defontenay.[1][2][26] The novel, described by science fiction editor David Pringle as "the first detailed evocation of an alien solar system",[27] depicts immortal aliens inhabiting the planets orbiting the stars.[26][28][11][29]
The Tau Ceti system is a common setting in science fiction.[30][31] James Nicoll, writing for Tor.com, attributes this to a confluence of factors that make it the nearest star (at approximately 12 light-years) that could plausibly have a planetary system with habitable planets, including having a favourable brightness and being a solitary rather than multiple star.[31] In 2015, Andrew Liptak 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 and Larry Niven cited the star's similarity to the Sun, while Kim Stanley Robinson pointed to the recent discovery of several exoplanets around Tau Ceti.[30]