Science fiction and the death of the sun

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

History of Science and Religion

  • Debate over the article’s framing that the scientific method “replaced” religion only in the Enlightenment.
  • Some argue proto‑scientific thinking and sophisticated technical knowledge existed in antiquity, but others respond that institutionalized experimental method and the social primacy of scientific explanations are distinctly early‑modern.
  • Clarifications that older categories like “philosophy” bundled what are now science, theology, and other fields, so thinking in terms of one “trumping” the other is anachronistic.
  • Mention of long‑running tensions between reason and religious authority, but agreement that systematic experimentation became central only in the 17th–18th centuries.

Controversial Mid‑Century SF Editor

  • Question raised about a “now‑disgraced” figure mentioned in the article.
  • Replies list racist and pro‑segregation views, defenses of slavery, promotion of pseudoscience and an early self‑help/”church” movement.
  • One commenter frames him as a contrarian who challenged consensus and sees modern criticism of him as ignorant; others push back, noting the topics he chose to “challenge” on (e.g., segregation).

Defining and Omitting the “Dying Earth” Genre

  • Multiple commenters note that some of the best‑known far‑future, dying‑Earth novels are omitted from the article, despite being central influences on tabletop RPGs and fantasy gaming.
  • One suggestion: the author may be using “dying‑earth genre” in a narrower sense (bleak, pre‑fusion astrophysics stories) and treating later works more as sword‑and‑sorcery or hybrid science‑fantasy.
  • Others think the chosen label clashes with existing genre usage and confuses readers.

Additional Works and Media About a Dying Sun

  • Numerous recommendations extending the article’s survey:
    • Far‑future novels featuring multiple human species and a final solar catastrophe.
    • Sword‑and‑sorcery‑flavored epics on frozen Earths with dim white dwarfs and gelatinous seas.
    • A Chinese novella and blockbuster films about physically moving Earth to survive stellar danger, with some readers uneasy about perceived authoritarian overtones.
    • A contemporary‑set novel where a protective “spin” hides a dead sun.
    • A classic where energy exchange with a parallel universe threatens to destroy the Sun.
  • Several readers highlight a major far‑future series with an unreliable narrator and a sun altered by an artificial singularity, arguing it is indispensable to the topic.

Films, Games, and Gothic Space Aesthetics

  • The film about “restarting” the Sun is praised for cast, tension, and visuals but criticized for bad astrophysics and a jarring late‑film genre shift.
  • Disagreement over its merit: some view it as excellent B‑grade disaster SF, others find it plodding, derivative, and scientifically absurd.
  • Another film about a haunted FTL ship is repeatedly linked to a grimdark tabletop setting; production notes reveal the ship’s design was literally derived from cathedral imagery, inspiring “techno‑medieval” and dying‑stars RPGs.
  • Other recommendations: additional claustrophobic SF/horror films, an episode of a tech‑anthology series with questionable “work from space” logic, and a game about accelerated stellar death and heat‑death loops.

Robots vs Humans in Space Missions

  • One side argues that critical missions (like “reigniting” the Sun) should be manned: robots fail frequently, humans improvise under novel conditions, and human lives raise the bar on engineering rigor.
  • Others counter with historical robotic lunar landings, risky early crewed missions, and recent lander mishaps, suggesting that:
    • Human presence does not remove software dependence.
    • In many failure modes, there is no realistic in‑situ “MacGyver” option.
  • Ethical debate arises over how to value human vs robotic mission risk; some reject putting a finite price on human life, others invoke trolley‑problem style reasoning.

Interpreting Older Cosmologies and Scientific Timelines

  • Readers discuss how earlier SF misread today looks “wrong” because the science changed (e.g., mistaking heat‑death endings for red‑giant scenarios).
  • One commenter notes a historical cosmology in which comets periodically “refuel” the Sun, killing life here but renewing it elsewhere.
  • Another argues an older fantasy novel’s red sun is actually a long‑cooled star, based on textual details about its cold, static appearance.
  • There’s reflection on how recently basic ideas (atomic reality, estimated atomic mass, plate tectonics) were solidified, with one detailed mini‑history of 19th‑century work that made atoms quantitatively real.

Optimism vs Pessimism About Humanity’s Far Future

  • Some see the dying‑sun trope as oddly pessimistic: if humans survive billions of years, we’d likely:
    • Spread through space.
    • Live mainly in large space habitats rather than on planets.
    • Possibly move Earth outward or engineer the Sun.
  • Skeptics argue this assumes unlimited progress:
    • Interstellar colonization is slow, costly, and yields little material return.
    • Terraforming is harder than building habitats, but both require vast resources.
    • Adjusting stellar evolution or planetary orbits may be energetically and politically infeasible even over immense timescales.
    • Technological growth probably saturates under resource and complexity limits.
  • Counter‑argument: over millions of years, new techniques could emerge; historical experience (only a few centuries of modern science) is too short to bound the ultimate ceiling.

Miscellaneous

  • Brief note that earlier SF and fantasy works intersect through mutual references to lunar and Martian voyages.
  • One reader nostalgically searches for a decades‑old short story about an astronaut discovering a supernovaed Sun and returning to a scorched Earth where non‑human life persists; others suggest consulting old library catalogues or specialized forums.