SUN

   The Sun, as the energy-source which permits life to exist on Earth, was widely worshipped in the ancient world. After the Copernican Revolution it became the hub of the Universe, but with the advent of a broader view of the cosmos it lost some of its prestige. Some speculative writers of the 19th century considered it a world like any other and included it incosmic tours; examples are the anonymous Journeys into the Moon, Several Planets and the Sun (1837) and Joel R. Peabody's A World of Wonders(1838). Several early sf stories, assuming the Sun to be sustained by combustion, anticipated the day when it would burn out; examples are Camille FLAMMARION's Omega (1893-4), H.G. WELLS's THE TIME MACHINE (1895),George C. WALLIS's "The Last Days of Earth" (1901) and William Hope HODGSON's The House on the Borderland (1908) (END OF THE WORLD). Clark Ashton SMITH recalls the imagery of Hodgson's novel in "Phoenix" (1954), a poignant but anachronistic story about the reignition of the dying Sun (by the time the story was written - in the 1930s - it had long been known that the Sun produced heat by nuclear fusion), an idea ingeniously recapitulated in Gene WOLFE's Book of the New Sun series (1980-83). Although the Sun's surface temperature had been establishedspectroscopically in the 1890s, John MASTIN was still able to imagine, in Through the Sun in an Airship (1909), exactly such a voyage, and H. KANERset The Sun Queen (1946) on a sunspot.J.B.S. HALDANE's "The Last Judgment" (1927) and Olaf STAPLEDON's LAST AND FIRST MEN (1930) imagine changes inthe Sun's brilliance as crucial factors in Man's future EVOLUTION. In "Ark of Fire" (1943) by John Hawkins the Earth is moved nearer to the Sun, with predictable consequences for surface life. In numerous DISASTER stories the Sun goes nova, although some humans usually manage to escape, as in J. T. MCINTOSH's One in Three Hundred (1954). In Edmond HAMILTON's"Thundering Worlds" (1934) the 9 planets themselves become interstellar wanderers, accelerating towards a new star. In Arthur C. CLARKE's "Rescue Party" (1946) ALIENS arrive to save mankind but find that their aid isunnecessary, and in Norman SPINRAD's The Solarians (1966) the nova is induced to destroy an alien spacefleet, while the human race makes its escape. In Edward WELLEN's Hijack (1971) disinformation about such a nova is used in order to trick the Mafia into hijacking a spacefleet and blasting off for the stars. Stories which make a detailed study of reactions to the news that the Sun may go nova include Hugh KINGSMILL's "The End of the World" (1924) and Larry NIVEN's "Inconstant Moon" (1971).The hero of George O. SMITH's Troubled Star (1953) discovers that aliens want to make the Sun into a variable star so that it may serve as an interstellar lighthouse.The notion that the Sun might be the abode of life is developed in Stapledon's The Flames (1947) and Hamilton's "Sunfire!" (1962). Sun-consuming lifeforms hatch out of the planets in JackWILLIAMSON's improbable "Born of the Sun" (1934). The idea that STARS might be living beings has been developed on several occasions, but not often applied to our own Sun; Gregory BENFORD's and Gordon EKLUND's "If the Stars are Gods" (1974; incorporated into If the Stars are Gods, fixup 1977) is ambiguous in this respect. The Sun's significance as a religioussymbol is further exploited in The Day the Sun Stood Still (anth 1972) ed Robert SILVERBERG, which features 3 novellas based on the premise that themiracle granted to Joshua so that he could win a vital battle might be repeated tomorrow to persuade mankind of the reality of divine power.The Sun often figures in GENRE SF as a potential disaster area ready toconsume spaceships which stray too close; examples are Willy LEY's "At the Perihelion" (1937 as by Robert Willey; vt "A Martian Adventure"), HalCLEMENT's "Sun Spot" (1960), Poul ANDERSON's "What'll You Give?" (1963 as by Winston P. Sanders; vt "Que Donn'rez Vous?") and George Collyn's "In Passage of the Sun" (1966). The weather technicians of Theodore L.THOMAS's "The Weather Man" (1962), however, skim across the surface of the Sun in "sessile boats" in order to control its radiation output. A spate of dangerous radiation from the Sun plays a key role in Philip E. HIGH's Prodigal Sun (1964), which was presumably written around its awful titularpun; the Earth is saved through the creation of an artificial shielding layer of gas in the upper atmosphere. A spectacular close encounter by a space-station takes place in Charles L. HARNESS's Flight into Yesterday (1949; 1953; vt The Paradox Men 1955 dos), and an even more spectacularone in David BRIN's Sundiver (1980), the sf novel to date which deals most extensively and most scrupulously with modern scientific knowledge about the Sun.One curious aspect of the Sun's behaviour, the 11-year sunspot cycle discovered by Heinrich Schwabe (1789-1875) in 1851, is hypothetically correlated with Earthly events in Clifford D. SIMAK's "Sunspot Purge" (1940) and Philip LATHAM's "Disturbing Sun" (1959). TheSOLAR WIND is featured in a number of sf stories.

BS