TheSun has appeared as asetting in fiction at least sinceclassical antiquity, but for a long time it received relatively sporadic attention. Many of the early depictions viewed it as an essentiallyEarth-like and thus potentiallyhabitable body—a once-common belief aboutcelestial objects in general known as theplurality of worlds—and depicted various kinds of solar inhabitants. As more became known about the Sun through advances inastronomy, 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 bynuclear fusion, the prevailing assumption among writers was thatcombustion 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 indisaster stories, with occasional attempts at averting disaster by reigniting the Sun. Another common way for the Sun to cause destruction is by exploding ("goingnova"), and other mechanisms such assolar 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 ofsolar power andsuperpowers. Thesolar wind is also used forpropulsion by spacecraft equipped withsolar 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 ofChristopher Columbus doing the same with alunar eclipse in 1504. When audiences grew weary of thistrope 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, andtheir 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 inscience fiction, particularly in comparison todepictions of Mars andVenus;[1] saysscience fiction bibliographerRichard Bleiler, "Perhaps because it is generally taken for granted, the fictive potential of the Sun has barely been tapped".[2]
Althoughthe Moon was visited early and often in science fiction, the fictive potential of the Sun was not explored until relatively late.
TheSun received comparatively little specific attention inearly science fiction;[2] prior to the late 1800s, whenMars became the most popularcelestial object in fiction, the Sun was a distant second to theMoon.[3] A large proportion of the works that nevertheless did focus on the Sun portrayed it as having inhabitants.[2][4][5][6] InLucian of Samosata's workA True Story from the second century CE, described byscience fiction scholarGary Westfahl as the first depiction ofspace travel in fiction, the inhabitants of the Sun are at war with those of the Moon.[6] Later stories with an inhabited Sun includeAthanasius Kircher's 1656 workItinerarium exstaticum[4][7][8] andCyrano de Bergerac's posthumously published 1662 novelComical History of the States and Empires of the Sun [fr].[2][6][9] In the 1700s, solar inhabitants were depicted by French authorsChevalier de Béthune [Wikidata], whose 1750 novelRelation du Monde de Mercure describes them ruling over the inhabitants ofMercury,[10] andMarie-Anne de Roumier-Robert, whose 1765 novelVoyage de Milord Céton dans les sept planètes portrays a society on the Sun characterized byequality of the sexes.[11]
The concept of theplurality of worlds—the notion that otherheavenly bodies should be essentiallyEarth-like and thereforehabitable—endured in fiction with regard to the Sun well into the 1800s.[4][5] These works includeGeorge Fowler's 1813 novelA Flight to the Moon; or, The Vision of Randalthus, the anonymously published 1837 novelJourneys into the Moon, Several Planets and the Sun, andJoel R. Peabody's 1838 novelA World of Wonders.[2][4][5][6] Even in the early 1900s, when the temperature of the surface of the Sun had been determined byspectroscopic measurement, the portrayal of the Sun as inhabited persisted in some works ofjuvenile fiction such asJohn Mastin [Wikidata]'s 1909 novelThrough the Sun in an Airship andDonald Horner [Wikidata]'s 1910 novelBy Aeroplane to the Sun.[2][4][5][6]
In the 1900s, as it became evident that no conventional organisms could possibly survive the conditions on the Sun, more exotic solar lifeforms started appearing in fiction.[5][6] Some of these live inside the Sun itself rather than onits surface, as in short stories likeJack Williamson's 1935 "Islands of the Sun",Raymond Z. Gallun's 1935 "Nova Solis", andHenry J. Kostkos's 1936 "We of the Sun".[5][6] Others take up residence elsewhere in theSolar System: inLeigh Brackett's 1942 short story "Child of the Sun", anintelligent alien from the Sun lives in thehollow interior of the fictional planetVulcan inside the orbit of Mercury,[6][12][13] and the titular creatures ofOlaf Stapledon's 1947 novelThe Flames are lizard-like solar beings residing insideigneous rocks on Earth.[2][6][14]Arthur C. Clarke's 1958 short story "Out of the Sun" features life "formed of tangles of magnetic flux on the surface of our Sun",[4][5][6][15] andEdmond Hamilton's 1962 short story "Sunfire!" depicts anenergy-based lifeform living in the Sun'scorona.[5][16][17]
The Sun has been a source of destruction or the threat thereof in many stories, most commonly either by fading or exploding.[2][4][5][6] In the rarescience fiction films where the Sun is a central point of focus, it seldom plays any other role.[18]
The dimming or extinction of the Sun has been a recurring theme.[2][4][5][6] The earliest such stories were inspired by the assumption that the heat and light of the Sun were products ofcombustion, and that the fuel sustaining it would eventually run out.[4][19] PhysicistLord Kelvin estimated in 1862 that the Sun would fade within a few million years, a timeframe that was later incorporated in stories byCamille Flammarion andH. G. Wells, among others.[5] In Flammarion's 1894 novelOmega: The Last Days of the World, humanity survives an encounter with acomet but succumbs to the dimming of the Sun thousands of years later,[2][5][20][21] while thetime traveller in Wells's 1895 novelThe Time Machine discovers a cooled and reddened Sun over a barren Earth in thefar future.[2][5][22][23] Similarly,stories about the end of the world involving the death of the Sun were written in the early 1900s by among othersGeorge C. Wallis, whose 1901 short story "The Last Days of Earth" depicts the last survivors leaving a frozen Earth for apotentially habitable planet in another planetary system,[4][5][24] andWilliam Hope Hodgson, whose 1908 novelThe House on the Borderland describes one character's vision of the destruction of both the Earth and Sun.[2][4][5][25]
By the 1920s, the combustion hypothesis had fallen out of favour. The new explanation was that the Sun was fuelled bynuclear fusion, an understanding that was pioneered by the work of astrophysicistArthur Eddington.[4][5] As a result,science fiction authors started incorporating much longer solar lifespans in their stories, withJ. B. S. Haldane's 1927 work "The Last Judgment" and Olaf Stapledon's 1930 novelLast and First Men both outlining thefuture evolution of humanity throughout millions of years of variation in solarluminosity.[4][5][26][27] Stories depicting the Sun waning nevertheless kept appearing, such asClark Ashton Smith's stories about the fictional future continentZothique starting with the 1932 short story "The Empire of the Necromancers",[2][6] andJack Vance'sDying Earth series starting with the 1950 anthologyThe Dying Earth which also gave its name to thedying Earth subgenre of science fiction.[2][4][28][29]Nat Schachner's 1934 short story "When the Sun Dies" describes the entire Earth freezing over in the 1980s as a result of a reduction in solar activity,[2][6][30] and in Arthur C. Clarke's 1949 short story "History Lesson", futureVenusians find humanity extinct due to the environmental changes brought about by the Sun fading.[6][31][32] Clarke also touched upon the subject in the 1938 poem "The Twilight of the Sun" and the 1979 novelThe Fountains of Paradise.[6] In a variation on the theme,Fritz Leiber's 1951 short story "A Pail of Air" depicts Earth having been pulled away from the gravitational influence of the Sun and thus turned into arogue planet, with a climate so cold that air has frozen and needs to be collected and thawed to turn it gaseous and breathable.[2][33] Edmond Hamilton's 1934 short story "Thundering Worlds" sees all the planets leaving the Solar System to find a new star as the Sun dies,[4][34] while his 1963comic book story "Superman Under the Red Sun" depictsSuperman travelling into the far future and losing hissuperpowers as a result of theaging red Sun.[6]Eric C. Williams's 1965 short story "Sunout" depicts scientists reacting to the realization that the Sun is about to go out and they are powerless to do anything about it.[4][35] In the 2019 filmThe Wandering Earth, the death of the Sun prompts humanity to relocate the entire Earth to a newplanetary system.[36]
A handful of stories describe efforts to reignite the fading Sun.[2][4][5] In Clark Ashton Smith's 1954 short story "Phoenix" (writtenc. 1935), this is accomplished by detonating severalnuclear weapons on the Sun's surface.[4][5][37] InGene Wolfe's 1980–1983 four-volume novelThe Book of the New Sun and its sequels, awhite hole is used to reinvigorate the dying Sun.[2][4][5][38] The concept of using an explosive device for this purpose is also explored in the 2007 filmSunshine.[1][4][36]
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Several stories depict the Sun exploding, or "goingnova".[2][4] It was recognized early on that the immense destructive power of such an event would leave little to no hope of survival for humanity, and so whileSimon Newcomb's 1903 short story "The End of the World" depicts a few survivors in the immediate aftermath,[39][40]Hugh Kingsmill's 1924 short story also entitled "The End of the World" instead focuses on the anticipation of the destruction of the Earth.[4][5] According to science fiction scholarBrian Stableford, writing in the 2006 workScience Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia, it was thus not until the concept of space travel became widespread in science fiction—hence making evacuation of the Earth a conceivable prospect—that such stories became popular.[39] InJohn W. Campbell's 1930 short story "The Voice of the Void" humanity leaves Earth ahead of this disaster,[39][41] while inJoseph W. Skidmore [Wikidata]'s 1931 short story "Dramatis Personae" the Sun explodes without warning, leaving a few people already in spaceships as the only survivors.[39][42] In Arthur C. Clarke's 1946 short story "Rescue Party", aliens come to Earth to save humanity from the violent demise of the Sun only to find that evacuation has already been undertaken,[2][4][5][6][43] whereas in his 1954 short story "No Morning After", the aliens' warning goes unheeded.[6][44]J. T. McIntosh's 1954 novelOne in Three Hundred deals with the allocation of the limited capacity aboard the evacuating spaceships.[4][5][45] The Sun exploding occasionally appears as a background event to explain why humanity has abandoned Earth in favour ofcolonizing the cosmos,[46] one example beingTheodore Sturgeon's 1956 short story "The Skills of Xanadu".[39][47] InNorman Spinrad's 1966 novelThe Solarians, the Sun is intentionally made to explode in an act of interstellar warfare,[4][5][39] while inLarry Niven's 1971 short story "The Fourth Profession" aliens plan to induce such an event to use as a power source for space travel.[2][48] InEdward Wellen's 1971 novelHijack, theMafia is duped into abandoning Earth by being misled that the Sun will turn into a nova.[4][5][49]Connie Willis's 1979 short story "Daisy, in the Sun" is acoming-of-ageparable that relates a young girlgetting her first period to the imminent end of the world.[5][50][51][52] It is now recognized that the Sun cannot explode in this manner as the necessary stellar conditions are not met.[a][46][53]
The heat of the Sun dooms life on Earth when the Earth's orbit is disrupted inJohn Hawkins's 1938 short story "Ark of Fire", the 1961 filmThe Day the Earth Caught Fire, and the 1961 episode "The Midnight Sun" of the television showThe Twilight Zone.[2][4][18] More fancifully,Clare Winger Harris's 1928 short story "The Menace of Mars" depicts an increase in heat from the Sun threatening the Earth as a result of a general cosmological change in the properties of the universe, which leads Mars to adjust Earth's orbit to serve as ashield against the Sun's radiation.[2][54]
Solar storms such assolar flares appear in some stories.[5] In Larry Niven's 1971 short story "Inconstant Moon", the sudden brightening of the Moon in thenight sky leads the characters to conclude that the Sun has undergone a nova event that will destroy all life on Earth, though they later realize that a large solar flare would also produce that effect and that all hope might not be lost.[2][4][5][55] The 1990 filmSolar Crisis depicts a mission to bomb the Sun to avert the destruction that could be caused by an immense predicted solar flare,[18][36] while the 2005 novelSunstorm by Arthur C. Clarke andStephen Baxter portrays mankind constructing a large shielding object at the Sun–Earth L1Lagrange point as protection against the threat posed by a similar event.[4][5][56] InDavid Koepp's 2022 novelAurora, acoronal mass ejection threatens to end human civilization; the book appears alongside Niven's "Inconstant Moon" on a list of science fiction works with relatively scientifically plausible depictions of the Sun compiled by astronomerAndrew Fraknoi.[57]
More long-lasting changes in solar output appear inArthur G. Stangland [Wikidata]'s 1932 short story "50th Century Revolt", where an increase in solar activity forces humanity to slow therotation of the Earth to asynchronous rotation—where the same side of the Earth faces the Sun at all times, thus protecting the other half of the planet from the scorching heat—for two millennia until the Sun dims again,[5][58] andGeorge O. Smith's 1953 novelTroubled Star, where aliens seek to turn the Sun into avariable star.[4][5]
The Sun hidesCounter-Earth—a planet diametrically opposite Earth in its orbit—in some stories includingEdgar Wallace's 1929 novelPlanetoid 127 andJohn Norman'sGor series starting with the 1966 novelTarnsman of Gor.[2][59] This Counter-Earth is inhabited by counterparts of the people of Earth in the 1969 filmDoppelgänger (a.k.a.Journey to the Far Side of the Sun) and by a society of women in the 1950s comic stripTwin Earths.[2][18][59] The 1972 anthologyThe Day the Sun Stood Still contains three different short stories (byPoul Anderson,Robert Silverberg, andGordon R. Dickson) where the Sun stops in the sky as in the biblicalBook of Joshua.[4][60]
Theenergy output of the Sun was harnessed forpower production in fiction as early asHugo Gernsback's 1911 novelRalph 124C 41+ and in several stories since, withRobert A. Heinlein's 1940 short story "Let There Be Light" describing economically viablesolar panels andIsaac Asimov's 1941 short story "Reason" (later included in the 1950fix-up novelI, Robot) depictingsolar power produced in space but consumed on Earth.[6][61] Other works have depictedsolar arrays in closeorbits around the Sun itself;[1]Murray Leinster's 1931 short story "The Power Planet" features a variant that usesthermoelectric rather thanphotovoltaic principles.[61] The Sun is also the source of comic booksuperhero Superman's superpowers,[36] as well as those ofsupervillainsSun Girl fromDC Comics andSolarr fromMarvel Comics.[6]
Following German astronomerLudwig Biermann's 1951 discovery of thesolar wind—a stream ofcharged particles from the Sun—stories emerged about spacecraft withsolar sails. These devices capture the small amount of pressure pointing away from the Sun exerted by the solar wind, as well as theradiation pressure from thesunlight itself, and use it for propulsion.[1][5][6][62][63] The idea was popular in 1960s science fiction, appearing among others in Jack Vance's 1962 short story "Gateway to Strangeness" andCordwainer Smith's 1963 short story "Think Blue, Count Two".[62] Arthur C. Clarke's 1964 short story "Sunjammer" (a.k.a. "The Wind from the Sun") depicts a race to the Moon between solar sail-propelled spacecraft.[5][6][62][64] Robert A. Heinlein had earlier written about a proto-variation on the concept using aninertialess drive.[62] The 1990 anthologyProject Solar Sail edited by Clarke andDavid Brin collects various stories and essays about solar sails.[6][62]
Solar eclipses areplot points in many stories.[5][65] The earliest work of fiction in which an eclipse appears is the ancientSumerianc. 2100 BCEEpic of Gilgamesh.[65] Using knowledge of the underlying astronomy to be able to predict eclipses mathematically is a commontrope—according to Stableford, it "became a key method by which European explorers could impress superstitious native populations in adventure stories".[5] Several sources attribute the popularity of this trope to the possibly-apocryphal story ofChristopher Columbus using foreknowledge of theMarch 1504 lunar eclipse to defuse a situation of increasingly strained relations with theArawak people onJamaica by pretending to cause the eclipse.[65][66][67][68][69]H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novelKing Solomon's Mines originally featured a solar eclipse in this manner, though later editions substituted alunar eclipse to address the issue of the event having a several-hour duration, whereas solar eclipses last for a maximum of a few minutes.[5][65] In a variation on the theme,Mark Twain's 1889 novelA Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court depicts a time traveller using an almanac in this way to impress the people inMedieval Britain and become a person of influence.[5][65] The eclipse prediction motif recurred in fiction until the 1930s or 1940s, by which time it fell out of favour.[65] Eclipses continued to appear, but much more rarely.[5] InWilliam Lemkin's 1930 short story "The Eclipse Special", scientists construct an aircraft that will allow them to move with the eclipse's path of totality and remain in the Sun'sumbra for longer in order to extend the amount of time available to study the eclipse.[5][70] The 1961 filmBarabbas portrays thecrucifixion darkness during the biblicalcrucifixion of Jesus as a solar eclipse, and the scene was filmed during thesolar eclipse of February 15, 1961.[65] According to science fiction scholarLisa Yaszek, the decades around the turn of the millennium saw the emergence of a trend whereinmarginalized groups "experience a reversal of fortunes when the Moon takes center stage and blots out the Sun".[65]
The 11-yearsolar cycle ofsunspot activity appears in a small number of works such asClifford D. Simak's 1940 short story "Sunspot Purge" andPhilip Latham's 1959 short story "Disturbing Sun".[4][5] In Robert A. Heinlein's 1952 short story "The Year of the Jackpot", this cycle is one of many that herald the end of the world when they align.[4][71][72]Hyman Kaner [Wikidata]'s 1946 novelThe Sun Queen is set on a sunspot, where two humans from Earth encounter two factions at war.[4][5][73] Inscience fiction horror films, sunspots are occasionally invoked as the cause of various types of abnormal phenomena such aszombies andmass delusions.[18]
The Sun appears as a hazard to spaceships that approach it too closely in some stories.[4][5] InJohn W. Campbell's 1935 short story "Blindness", a scientist studies the Sun at close range in order to solve the mysteries ofnuclear energy at great personal cost, only to find that the method for getting there was worth more than the discoveries made.[6][74]Willy Ley's 1937 short story "At the Perihelion" involves a close approach to the Sun as part of an escape from Mars,[4][5][75] andCharles L. Harness's 1949 novelThe Paradox Men (a.k.a.Flight into Yesterday) is aspace opera that climaxes with a swordfight atop a space station on the surface of the Sun.[4][5][76][77] InRay Bradbury's 1953 short story "The Golden Apples of the Sun", a crewed solarsample-return mission requires a spaceship to be cooled to near-absolute zero to endure the extreme heat during the critical phase.[4][6][18][78] A fleet of near-Sun spacecraft that modulate the solar output forweather control purposes appears inTheodore L. Thomas's 1962 short story "The Weather Man".[4][5][79] David Brin's 1980 novelSundiver revolves around ahard science fiction journey into the Sun.[4][5][80][81]
Some works depict the Sun as being sentient.[2][4][6][83] According toThe Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, this is more commonly applied to other stars;[4] in Olaf Stapledon's 1937 novelStar Maker, all stars are sentient,[6] and inDiana Wynne Jones's 1975 novelDogsbody, both the Sun andSirius are sentient.[4][6] InGregory Benford andGordon Eklund's 1977 novelIf the Stars are Gods, aliens come to the Solar System to communicate with the Sun.[2][4][6][18] According toThe Encyclopedia of Fantasy, the Sun is usually male infictional mythologies where it ispersonified, though some exceptions exist such as thelegendarium ofJ. R. R. Tolkien, inwhose cosmology it is female.[83] The Sun is likewise female inAlasdair Gray's 1983 short story "The Problem", and concerned with her spots.[2]
Until the Schiaparelli era, the most favored destination for extraterrestrial travel remained the Moon, followed more distantly by the Sun. [...] But in the last decades of the nineteenth century, a discernible shift of locale took place. Fictional goings and comings between Earth and Mars took precedence over all other forms of the interplanetary romance.
Also in 1962 Hamilton wrote 'Sunfire,' in which an encounter with an alien being that lives in the sun's corona has all the force of a religious revelation in its effect on a human astronaut.
Hamilton had a resurgence in the magazine with a handful of superb tales, including 'Sunfire!' (Amazing, September 1962), about sentient energy life on Mercury.
Reports filed before it was understood that the Sun's radiation was the result of nuclear fusion rather than combustion often feature Earths grown cold and dark by virtue of the sun's 'burning out'
The premise that the Sun might explode – whatever the mechanism – drove a number of works in which the world was rendered uninhabitable, and was often mentioned in passing as a driver of extraterrestrial colonisation.
neither a nova nor supernova is possible for the Sun
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