| Spatial anomalies in fiction |
|---|
Black holes in fiction •Portable hole •Teleportation in fiction •Wormholes in fiction •Stargate •Warp drive •Hyperspace •Time travel in fiction |
 Science fiction portal |
Black holes, objects whose gravity is so strong that nothing—including light—can escape them, have been depicted in fiction since at least thepulp era of science fiction, before the termblack hole was coined. A common portrayal at the time was of black holes as hazards to spacefarers, a motif that has also recurred in later works.
The concept of black holes became popular in science and fiction alike in the 1960s. Authors quickly seized upon therelativistic effect ofgravitational time dilation, whereby time passes more slowly closer to a black hole due to its immense gravitational field. Black holes also became a popular means ofspace travel in science fiction, especially when the notion ofwormholes emerged as a relatively plausible way to achievefaster-than-light travel. In this concept, a black hole is connected to its theoretical opposite, a so-calledwhite hole, and as such acts as a gateway to another point in space which might be very distant from the point of entry. More exotically, the point of emergence is occasionally portrayed as another point in time—thus enablingtime travel—or even an entirelydifferent universe.
More fanciful depictions of black holes that do not correspond to their known or predicted properties also appear. As nothing inside theevent horizon—the distance away from the black hole where theescape velocity exceeds thespeed of light—can be observed from the outside, authors have been free to employartistic license when depicting the interiors of black holes. A small number of works also portray black holes as being sentient.
Besidesstellar-mass black holes,supermassive and especiallymicro black holes also make occasional appearances. Supermassive black holes are a common feature of modernspace opera. Recurring themes in stories depicting micro black holes includespaceship propulsion, threatening or causing the destruction of the Earth, and serving as a source of gravity inouter-space settlements.
[V]irtually the whole ofgravitational physics can be understood usingNewtonian theory. As far as real-worldastrophysics goes, the most important exception to this is the existence of black holes. It's probably no coincidence that black holes also happen to be by far the most popular astrophysical phenomena found inscience fiction.
The general concept ofblack holes, objects whose gravity is so strong that nothing—including light—can escape them, was first proposed byJohn Michell in 1783 and developed further in the framework ofAlbert Einstein's theory ofgeneral relativity byKarl Schwarzschild in 1916.[2][3][4][5] Serious scientific attention remained relatively limited until the 1960s, the same decade the termblack hole was coined,[a] though objects with the overall characteristics of black holes had made appearances in fiction decades earlier during thepulp era of science fiction.[2][3][4][5][6] Examples of this includeE. E. Smith's 1928 novelThe Skylark of Space with its "black sun",Frank K. Kelly [Wikidata]'s 1935 short story "Starship Invincible" with its "Hole in Space", andNat Schachner's 1938 short story "Negative Space"—all of which portray the black holesavant la lettre as hazards to spacefarers.[2][3] Later works that still predate the adoption of the current terminology includeFred Saberhagen's 1965 short story "Masque of the Red Shift" with its "hypermass" and the 1967Star Trek episode "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" with its "black star".[4][6]
Once black holes gained mainstream popularity, many of the early works featuring black holes focused on the concept ofgravitational time dilation, whereby time passes more slowly closer to a black hole due to the effects of general relativity.[3][5] One consequence of this is that the process of crossing theevent horizon—the distance away from the black hole where theescape velocity exceeds thespeed of light—appears to an outside observer to take an infinite amount of time.[4][7] InPoul Anderson's 1968 short story "Kyrie", atelepathic scream from a being falling into a black hole thus becomes drawn out for eternity.[4][7][8] Similarly, a spaceship appears forever immovable at the event horizon inBrian Aldiss's 1976 short story "The Dark Soul of the Night".[3][7] InFrederik Pohl's 1977 novelGateway, an astronaut is wracked withsurvivor's guilt over the deaths of his companions during an encounter with a black hole, compounded by the process appearing to still be ongoing.[4][7] Later sequels in Pohl'sHeechee Saga, from the 1980 novelBeyond the Blue Event Horizon onward, portray time dilation being exploited byaliens who reside near a black hole to experience the passage of time more slowly than the rest of the universe;[2][4][5][9] other aliens do likewise inDavid Brin's 1984 short story "The Crystal Spheres" while waiting for the universe to be more filled with life. InAlastair Reynolds's 2000 novelRevelation Space, aliens use the relativistic effect to hide.[10] InBill Johnson's 1982 short story "Meet Me at Apogee", travel to various levels of time dilation is commercialized and used by people with incurable diseases, among others.[10] In the 2014 filmInterstellar, aplanet orbits a black hole so closely that it experiences extreme time dilation, with time passing approximately 60,000 times slower than on Earth.[6][11]
Black holes have also been portrayed as ways to travel through space.[5][7][12][13] In particular, they often serve as a means to achievefaster-than-light travel.[3][5][7][13] The proposed mechanism involves travelling through thesingularity at the center of a black hole and emerging at some other, perhaps very distant, place in the universe.[5][7] More exotically, the point of emergence is occasionally portrayed as another point in time—thus enablingtime travel—or even an entirelydifferent universe.[1][5][14] To explain why the immense gravitational field of the black hole does not crush the travellers and their vessels, the special theorized properties ofrotating black holes are sometimes invoked by authors;[5][7] astrophysicistsSteven D. Bloom andAndrew May argue that the strongtidal forces would nevertheless invariably be fatal, May pointing specifically tospaghettification.[1][14] According toThe Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, early stories employing black holes for this purpose tended to use alternative terminology to obfuscate the underlying issues.[5] Thus,Joe Haldeman's 1974fix-up novelThe Forever War, where a network of black holes is used for interstellar warfare, calls them "collapsars", whileGeorge R. R. Martin's 1972 short story "The Second Kind of Loneliness" has a "nullspace vortex".[5][10][12]
Speculation that black holes might be connected to their hypothetical opposites,white holes, followed in the 1970s—the resulting arrangement being known as awormhole.[2][3][15][16] Wormholes were appealing to writers due to their relative theoretical plausibility as a means of faster-than-light travel,[7] and they were further popularized by speculative works of non-fiction such asAdrian Berry's 1977 bookThe Iron Sun: Crossing the Universe Through Black Holes.[3][5] Black holes and associated wormholes thus quickly became commonplace in fiction; according toscience fiction scholarBrian Stableford, writing in the 2006 workScience Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia, "wormholes became the most fashionable mode ofinterstellar travel in the last decades of the twentieth century".[3][5]Ian Wallace's 1979 novelHeller's Leap is amurder mystery involving a journey through a black hole.[5][17]Joan D. Vinge's 1980 novelThe Snow Queen is set on acircumbinary planet where a black hole between thebinary stars serves as the gateway between the system and the outside world,[5][12][18] whilePaul Preuss's 1980 novelThe Gates of Heaven and its 1981 follow-upRe-Entry feature black holes that are used for travel through both space and time.[3][4][19] In the 1989anime filmGaraga, humancolonization of the cosmos is enabled by interstellar gateways associated with black holes.[20] The entire Earth is transported through a wormhole inRoger MacBride Allen's 1990 novelThe Ring of Charon.[3][5] Travel between universes is depicted in Pohl andJack Williamson's 1991 novelThe Singers of Time,[5] the concept having earlier made a more fanciful appearance in the 1975 filmThe Giant Spider Invasion, where the spiders of the title arrive at Earth through a black hole.[4][21] In the 2009 filmStar Trek, a black hole created to neutralize asupernova threat has the side-effect of transporting two nearby spaceships into the past, where they end upaltering the course of history.[6] InBolivian science fiction writerGiovanna Rivero's 2012 novelHelena 2022: La vera crónica de un naufragio en el tiempo, a spaceship ends up in 1630s Italy as a result of an accidental encounter with a black hole.[22]
Black holes need not necessarily bestellar-mass; the decisive factor is whether sufficient mass is contained within a small enough space—theSchwarzschild radius.[1][5][6][14] The principal mechanism of black hole formation is thegravitational collapse of amassive star, but other origins have been hypothesized, including so-calledprimordial black holes forming shortly after theBig Bang.[1][12][14] Primordial black holes could theoretically be of virtually any conceivable size, though the smallest ones would by now have evaporated into nothing due to thequantum mechanical effect known asHawking radiation.[1][3][5][12]
The concept ofmicro black holes was first theorized scientifically in the 1970s, and quickly became popular in science fiction.[4][5][12] InLarry Niven's 1974 short story "The Hole Man", a microscopic black hole is used as a murder weapon by exploiting the tidal effects at short range,[1][3][10] and in Niven's 1975 short story "The Borderland of Sol", one is used byspace pirates to capture spaceships.[4][10][12] Small black holes areused to power spaceship propulsion inArthur C. Clarke's 1975 novelImperial Earth,Charles Sheffield's 1978 short story "Killing Vector", and the 1997 filmEvent Horizon.[2][3][5][10][13] Artificial black holes that are created unintentionally at nuclear facilities appear inMichael McCollum's 1979 short story "Scoop" andMartin Caidin's 1980 novelStar Bright.[2][3] InDavid Langford's 1982 novelThe Space Eater, a small black hole is used as a weapon against a rebellious planet.[2][3][23] Earth is endangered by miniature black holes inGregory Benford's 1985 novelArtifact,Thomas Thurston Thomas's 1986 novelThe Doomsday Effect, and Brin's 1990 novelEarth, and the planet's destruction in this way forms part of the backstory inDan Simmons's 1989 novelHyperion,[2][3][4] while theMoon's destruction by a small black hole is depicted inPaul J. McAuley's 1990 short story "How We Lost the Moon" and is suspected to have occurred inNeal Stephenson's 2015 novelSeveneves.[2][5][10] Small black holes are used as a way to provide anartificial gravity of sorts by placing them insideinhabited structures orsettled asteroids in Sheffield's 1989 novelProteus Unbound, Reynolds's 2008 novelHouse of Suns, andIain M. Banks's 2010 novelSurface Detail.[2][5] The titular material inWil McCarthy's 2000 novelThe Collapsium is made up of a lattice of micro black holes and makesteleportation possible.[3][4][5][13]
At the opposite end of the spectrum, black holes can have masses comparable to that of an entiregalaxy.[1]Supermassive black holes, with masses that can be in excess of billions of times themass of the Sun, are thought toexist in the center of most galaxies.[5][14] Sufficiently large and massive black holes would have a low averagedensity and could theoretically contain intact stars and planets within their event horizons.[5][12] An enormous low-density black hole of this kind appears inBarry N. Malzberg's 1975 novelGalaxies.[9][12] In Benford'sGalactic Center Saga, starting with the 1977 novelIn the Ocean of Night, the vicinity of the supermassive black hole at theGalactic Center of theMilky Way makes an attractive destination for spacefaring civilizations due to the high concentration of stars that can serve as sources of energy in the region; a similar use is found for a regular-sized black hole in Benford's 1986 short story "As Big as the Ritz", where itsaccretion disk provides amplesolar energy for a space habitat.[2][3][24] McAuley's 1991 novelEternal Light involves a journey to the central supermassive black hole to investigate ahypervelocity star on a trajectory towards theSolar System.[3][25][26] According toThe Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, "theimmense black hole at the galactic core has become almost acliché of contemporaryspace opera" such asGreg Egan's 2008 novelIncandescence.[5]
The pulp-era motif of black holes posing danger to spacefarers resurfaced decades later, following the popularization of black holes in fiction.[2][3] In the 1975Space: 1999 episode "Black Sun", one threatens to destroy the Moonas it travels through space; the episode was one of those included inEdwin Charles Tubb's 1975novelizationBreakaway.[2][14][27] InIsaac Asimov's 1976 short story "Old-fashioned", astronauts surmise that an unseen object keeping them in orbit must be a modestly-sized black hole, having wreaked havoc with their spaceship through tidal forces.[1] InEdward Bryant's 1976 novelCinnabar, a computer self-destructs by intentionally entering a black hole.[2][4] InMildred Downey Broxon's 1978 short story "Singularity", scientists study a civilization on a planet that will shortly be destroyed by an approaching black hole.[3][28]John Varley's 1978 short story "The Black Hole Passes" depicts an outpost in theOort cloud being imperiled by a small black hole.[3][10][29] InStephen Baxter's 1993 short story "Pilot", a spaceshipextracts energy from a rotating black hole'sergosphere to widen its event horizon and cause a pursuer to fall into it.[3][10] Black holes also appear as obstacles in the 2007 video gameSuper Mario Galaxy.[30]
Because what lies beyond the event horizon is unknown and by definition unobservable from outside, authors have been free to employartistic license when depicting the interiors of black holes.[5][11][13] The 1979 filmThe Black Hole, noted for its inaccurate portrayal of the known properties of black holes, depicts the inside as an otherworldly place bearing the hallmarks ofChristian conceptions of theafterlife.[3][4][9][11] In Benford's 1990 novelBeyond the Fall of Night, a sequel to Clarke's 1948 novelAgainst the Fall of Night, the inside of a black hole is used as a prison, a role it also serves inAlan Moore andDave Gibbons's 1985Superman comic book story "For the Man Who Has Everything".[2][5] Alien lifeforms inhabit the interior of a black hole in McCarthy's 1995 novelFlies from the Amber.[2][3] Expeditions into black holes to explore the interior are depicted inGeoffrey A. Landis's 1998 short story "Approaching Perimelasma" and Egan's 1998 short story "The Planck Dive".[4][10]
In much the same way as stars—and, to a lesser extent, planets—have beenanthropomorphized as living and thinking beings, so have black holes.[2][4][31] An intelligent, talking black hole appears in Varley's 1977 short story "Lollipop and the Tar Baby".[5][32] In Sheffield'sProteus Unbound, microscopic black holes are determined to contain intelligence through signals emanating from them.[5][33] In Benford's 2000 novelEater, a black hole that is sentient as a result of electromagnetic interactions in its accretion disk seeks to devour the Solar System.[4][5][13]
Astronomical locations in fiction | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solar System |
|  | ||||
| Other | ||||||
| Outline | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subgenres |
| ||||||||||||||
| Culture | |||||||||||||||
| Media |
| ||||||||||||||
| Themes |
| ||||||||||||||
| Related | |||||||||||||||
| Types | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Size | ||||
| Formation | ||||
| Properties |
| |||
| Issues | ||||
| Metrics | ||||
| Alternatives | ||||
| Analogs | ||||
| Lists | ||||
| Related |
| |||
| Notable |
| |||
