idea for another site:

the stellar neighbourhood

Here's a suggestion for another website, on the lines of this one but for the "nearby" interstellar scene.

Stid: Wait, before you go on: how near is "nearby"? That word - in the absence of any natural frontier - isn't going to save the proposed new site from dissipating into generality as it rambles off into the interstellar vastness... unless, somehow, you give it shape.

extent

Zendexor: I was thinking, "stellar neighbourhood" could mean "out as far as the most distant named star."

Stid: Ah, the familiar folkloric stars. Sirius, Procyon, Vega, Arcturus and so on, all the way out to Deneb. Naturally at the bright end of the scale, with high intrinsic luminosity, spectral type F, A or B, these stars are precisely the ones most likely too hot and short-lived to have planets with intelligent life; on the other hand they do have instant name-glamour, and I can visualise, now, the kind of website we're most likely talking about: a celebration of all that cutely unrealistic sf featuring planets and aliens around Rigel and Betelgeuse and so on. You're going to have fun, Zendexor.

Zendexor: I'm not, but someone is, I hope. I'm throwing the suggestion into the arena, in the hope that it will be picked up by a webmaster with more time to spare than I have.

Harlei: Stid, you mentioned Deneb, but isn't that a bit far for the "neighbourhood"?

Stid: Not a bit of it! 2500 light-years away; that's only one fourtieth the size of the Galaxy. Stars with names are all close by as galactic distances go.

Zendexor: I agree with Stid here: you could count Deneb as the "stellar neighbourhood". You could, in fact, regard it as the frontier. That would permit the inclusion of some famous nebulae and star clusters within the site's permissible range. You could then have pages on the Pleiades (see Samuel R Delany's Nova) and the Horsehead Nebula (see Asimov's The Stars Like Dust)...

Stid: Before we get carried away, might I suggest an alternative? Doubtless the Sun was born alongside other stars in a molecular cloud... Don't tell me, I know, that association has long since dispersed. But - might it have left traces? Wisps of slightly greater than usual concentration in the interstellar medium? You could use that as an excuse for a smaller range... say as far as Aldebaran.

Zendexor: A nice idea, but forget it, Stid. The Rigellians and Denebians would be up in arms - it would never do. Let's not exacerbate interstellar tensions. Rather, let's draw up a preliminary list of sources to give a start to the site... always in the hope that someone might take up the suggestions and add to them.

named stars

The sources listed here are of literary references to stars which have proper names. The stories don't always have scenes actually set around those stars; e.g. Wasp is set in the Sirian Empire, not at Sirius itself; but it thereby shows that star's importance. Similarly there's not much about Vega in Agent of Vega, but you feel it somehow... So anyhow, here's a preliminary listing. I'll no doubt be adding to it as more stuff occurrs to me.

Achernar - Edmund Cooper, Transit

Alcyone - Hal Clement, Cycle of Fire; planet Abyormen.

Aldebaran - E E 'Doc' Smith, Galactic Patrol, in which the Lensman meets the Wheelmen of Aldebaran I. Clifford D Simak, Time And Again, in which reported deaths on Aldebaran XII are an ominous worry for an administrator on Earth.

Algol - H P Lovecraft, Beyond the Wall of Sleep.

Alioth - Clark Ashton Smith, The Ocean World of Alioth (synopsis and draft of opening)

Altair - Hal Clement, Close to Critical; the film Forbidden Planet (set on Altair IV);
Leigh Brackett, The Woman From Altair.

Antares - Edmond Hamilton, Kaldar, World of Antares; The Star Kings and Return to the Stars; and Starman Come Home / The Sun Smasher; Donald Wandrei, The Red Brain.

Arcturus - David Lindsay, A Voyage to Arcturus; planet Tormance.

Canopus - Frank Herbert, Dune; planet Arrakis. Has the planet which is the seat of the Council of Suns in Edmond Hamilton's Within the Nebula; and the planet Throon, capital of the Mid-Galactic Empire, in the same author's The Star Kings and its sequel Return to the Stars.

Capella - Jack Vance, Emphyrio; planet Maastricht.

Deneb - source of the peril to humanity in Sentinels From Space by Eric Frank Russell.
According to the later Captain Future stories, the people of Deneb were (alas for those of us fed up with COMOLD) the fountainhead of humanity, ancestors of all the humanoid races in the universe.

Fomalhaut - Edmond Hamilton, The Star Kings and Return to the Stars.

The Hyades - Edmond Hamilton, Doomstar.

Mira - John W Campbell, The Ultimate Weapon.

Polaris - Clark Ashton Smith, The Red World of Polaris.

Procyon - John and Dorothy Cowey, Goma's Follicles (for Procyon IV); Edmund Cooper, Seed of Light (for Procyon II). The interstellar generation-ship in Brian Aldiss' Non-Stop has been to Procyon.

Rigel - John Brunner, The Long Result; Eric Frank Russell, Next Of Kin; Jack Vance, the Demon Princes series (for the 'Rigel Concourse': 26 planets, the initial letters of their names running from A to Z); Edmond Hamilton, Starman Come Home / The Sun Smasher.

Sirius - Larry Niven, The World of Ptavvs, planet-sized moon Jinx; Eric Frank Russell, Wasp, planet Diracta; Jack Vance, Space Opera,the "Sirius Planet" episode; Robert G Temple, The Sirius Mystery (perhaps the most respectable of "Alien Visitors" speculations); Edmund Cooper, Seed of Light (in which a generation-starship from Earth visits a planet that turns out to be deadly); John Coleman Burroughs and Hulbert Burroughs, The Lightning Men, planet Nova Terra.

Vega - James Blish, Earthman, Come Home features the sinister Vegan Orbital Fort; James H Schmitz, Agent of Vega - planet Jeltad; Jack Vance, the Demon Princes series (planets Aloysius, Boniface, Cuthbert); the friendly Hazers of Clifford Simak's Way Station come from Vega XXI; the general in Edmond Hamilton's Battle for the Stars has a home on Vega Four; and Vega figures largely as an advanced governing world in Heinlein's young-adult novel Have Spacesuit - Will Travel. An interesting non-organic intelligence inhabits the minerals of Vega Five in John Rackham's Computer's Mate.

designated stars

This section is for stars which are referred to by designation - i.e. a Greek letter plus the genitive of the constellation, or other identifier. Authors keener on scientific plausibility, who would turn up their noses at the thought of setting their tales around Vega, are likely to be happier with Tau Ceti or Epsilon Eridani.

Alpha Centauri - Leigh Brackett, Alpha Centauri or Die! Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Footfall. A E van Vogt, Far Centaurus.

Beta Centauri - Poul Anderson, A Sun Invisible.

61 Cygni - Clifford D Simak, Time and Again.

Eta Piscium - for the planet Kolama in Jack Vance's Magnus Ridolph story The Spa of the Stars; Vance refers to it as "Eta Pisces".

Pi Aquarii - for the planet Moritaba in Jack Vance's The King of Thieves, a Magnus Ridolph story to be found in the collection The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph.

Pi Sagittarii - for the planet Kokod in Jack Vance's The Kokod Warriors, one of his tales featuring the detective / troubleshooter Magnus Ridolph.

Proxima Centauri - the tale of that name by Murray Leinster. Plus Now Wait for Last Year by Philip K Dick.

S Doradus - The Storm by A E van Vogt. Note that this superluminous giant star is in the Large Magellanic Cloud, though in the van Vogt tale it's placed incorrectly in the Lesser Cloud. Either way, it's not what we usually think of as the stellar neighbourhood; yet because of its brilliance it stands out sufficiently to have been given an individual designation.

Tau Ceti - John Greer, Star's Reach ; Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed.

themes

So far, we've sketched out an idea for a site in which, just as Solar System Heritage is about the literary characters of worlds in our System, the Stellar Neighbourhood Heritage would mainly consist in exploration of the characters of various well-known, named stars.

Here are some further thoughts regarding themes to be pursued.

You could explore "crosswise"... e.g. in thematic pages on "Type A Stars" or "Type F Stars", etc. Poul Anderson's Hunters of the Sky Cave is a memorable attempt to portray life forms which evolved (if I remember correctly) round an F star.

A page on Dark Nebulae... e.g. the Coal Sack and the Horsehead; Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye as well as Asimov's The Stars Like Dust; and the good old villains from the Dark Nebula in Edmond Hamilton's The Star Kings.

Of course you'd want a whacking great page on Niven's Known Space series, a topic tailor-made for a Stellar Neighbourhood site.

modernity

Stid: Well, your eyes are lighting up as the ideas start to flow, Zendexor! Looks like quite a job, but you're no doubt eager to wade into it. I wish you every success.

Zendexor: I told you, I have no absolutely intention of undertaking the project myself. Looking after the OSS is more than enough for me without the OSN as well. I'm simply sketching out some of the possibilities, so that someone else may take them up. But if that does happen, I'd be happy to support the new site with contributions.

Harlei: "OSN", you say? Not the New SN too?

Zendexor: Ah, now that's a point. A vital point, which I could have made at the start. Do we actually need the word "Old" here? No, actually we don't! Our current dreams still envelop the stars! Space probes haven't snapped away the romantic views of the stars as they have those of the planets. (And in John Greer's view, they never will, because we'll never really get out there.) Even the old ideas of life around Vega and Sirius might be true after all. So we're in the happy position of being able to avoid contradictions to all our visions of what those stars' worlds may be like.

Therefore - the Stellar Neighbourhood, pure and simple. Not the "O" SN, but the SN, full stop! Though admittedly some of the literature is delightfully old-style...

extracts

aldebaran:

From Time And Again, p8:

...he wondered about the blackened bodies lying on the riverbank on far-off Aldebaran XII and the twisted machine that was wrapped around the tree.

Three humans had died there... three humans and two androids, and androids were almost human. And humans must not die by violence unless it be by the violence of another human...

...A smashed machine and broken bodies and a great smoking gash sliced across the turf. The silver river flowed in a silence that one knew was there even in the photograph and far in the distance the spidery web of Andrelon rose against a pinkish sky...

From Time is the Simplest Thing, p123-4:

The shed... was surrounded by a high, rank growth of dead, dried weeds... It was built of the corrugated metal sheets which had been much in use for buildings of this sort before the introduction some three-score years before [of] the putty-plastic from Aldebaran VII...

alioth:

The world was the fourth of a system of seven planets that circled the great sun known as Alioth to astronomers. In their approach from outer space, the cosmic voyagers had chosen it for investigation with a view to finding fresh food... However, as they neared it, the planet was seen to consist entirely of oceans, apart from seemingly barren patches of land at the poles, and a few tiny islands... [The Ocean World of Alioth]

alpha centauri:

"...permit me to welcome you to the four planets of Centauri. It is a great moment for me, personally. From early childhood, I have been trained for the sole purpose of being your mentor and guide; and naturally I am overjoyed that the time has come when my exhaustive studies of the middle period American language and customs can be put to the practical use for which they were intended."

He didn't look overjoyed. He was wrinkling his nose in that funny way I had already noticed...

[Far Centaurus]

altair:

"...we find the strangest life forms. Remember the Chunquen?"

"Both sexes were sentient. They fought constantly."

"And that funny religion on Altair One. They thought they could travel in time."

"Yes sir. When we landed the infantry they were all gone." [The Warriors]

antares:

...Of all the stars in all the countless host that once had spotted the heavens, there remained only Antares. Antares, immensest of the stars, alone was left, the last body in the universe, inhabited by the last race ever to have consciousness, ever to live... [The Red Brain]

...Banning began to piece together a vague picture, an undreamed-of cosmic history.

The Old Empire, the Empire of the Valkars! They had ruled it from Katuun at Antares, their starships had webbed the galactic spaces, and the peoples of a myriad suns paid tribute to their power... [Starman Come Home]

...Merrick could see in the light of the two risen red moons that the giant peaks of the range were of a height unknown on earth, and that the great range itself was surprisingly regular in its circular shape. In the clefts between the mountains was white snow, but there was none on the great peaks, for they and the gigantic chasms and cliffs gleamed as though glassy-smooth, black and awesome masses.

"They look as if they were of black metal," Merrick commented to the men beside him, and was amazed at Holk's answer.

"They are metal, O Chan..." [Kaldar, World of Antares]

arcturus

He read the titles of a few of them: 'Basic Statutes of Arcturus XXIV'...

[New Folks' Home]

beta centauri:

...At full quasi-speed, he drove straight for Beta Centauri.
The sun grew and grew before him. Under magnification, he could see the disc, seething with nuclear storms, raging with... prominences, hell-blue and terrible. Eleven times the mass of Sol; fourteen hundred times the luminosity; across a full hundred and ninety light-years, one of the brightest stars in Earth's sky. He tried to whistle a tune, but the sound was too small and scared... [A Sun Invisible]

canopus:

For all that I had visited it many times before, it was with something of awe that I contemplated the great white sun, as our ship flashed on toward it. Its colossal blazing bulk, I knew, was greater far than the whole of our own little solar system, millions of times larger than our own familiar little star, infinitely the most glorious of all the swarming suns. It seemed fitting, indeed, that at Canopus had been located the seat of the great Council of Suns of which I was myself a member, representing our own little solar system in that mighty deliberative body whose members were drawn from every peopled star... [Within the Nebula]

...The enormous white disk of Canopus was sinking toward the horizon, flashing a supernal brilliance across the scene. In that transfiguring radiance, the peaks and scarps of the Glass Mountains here above the sea flung back the sunset in banners and pennons of wild glory.

And outshining even the stupendous glory of the glass peaks shone the fairy towers of Throon. Domes, minarets, graceful porticoes, these and the great buildings they adorned were of shimmering glass. Mightiest among the structures loomed the gigantic palace on whose high terrace he stood. Surrounded by wondrous gardens, it looked out royally across the great metropolis and the silver ocean beyond.

In the radiant sunset out there over the glittering peaks and heaving ocean there flitted swarms of fliers like shining fireflies... [The Star Kings]

He read the titles of a few of them... 'The Practical Law of Canopus XII'.

[New Folks' Home]

61 cygni:

"The planets are either cloud-covered or screened, for we've never seen the surface of a single one of them. And when you get within a few billion miles of the system you start sliding." He looked at Clark. "That's the right word, isn't it?"

"There's no word for it," Clark told him, "but sliding comes as close as any. You aren't stopped or you aren't slowed, but you are deflected... In the early days, it drove men mad trying to reach the system and never getting a mile nearer than a certain imaginary line..."

[Time And Again]

deneb:

...Quickly, the moment the catwalk for passengers was open, I dashed through the hatch and out into the bright, warm air of Deneb City. The giant sun was high above; it was a pleasant spring day.

And then all the pleasantness vanished. I saw the mob...

[The Android Kill]

fomalhaut

...in the light of the flying moons, the old kings of Fomalhaut stood and dreamed in stone. All the way from the far-flung lights of the city up to this massive palace the great avenue of statues ran, eleven dynasties and more than one hundred kings, all towering up much larger than life so that the envoys who came this way would feel a sense of awe...
[Return to the Stars]

Mira:

...Mira was so-named by Earthmen because it was indeed a "wonder" star... Irregularly, and for no apparent reason it would change its state of radiation. So far as those inhabitants of Sthor and her sister world Asthor knew, there was no reason. It just did it... When Mira decided to take a rest, Sthor and Asthor froze up, from the poles most of the way to the equators. Then Mira would stretch herself a little, move about restlessly and Sthor and Asthor would become uninhabitably hot, anywhere within twenty degrees of the equator...

[The Ultimate Weapon]

the pleiades:

[A view from a nearby star:]
...the stars swarmed and glittered, the seven giant Sisters so brilliant in their nebular hazes that they cast shadows, the lesser members of the cluster and the more distant suns of the galaxy filling the sky with their wintry hordes...
[The Three-Cornered Wheel]

polaris

Burning with preternatural whiteness in the black ether, Polaris broadened hour by hour to a huge incandescent disk. Soon the flames of its corona were visible, soaring in the face of the measureless night; and, falling through the crystalline ports of the ether-ship, its rays mingled weirdly with the violet-tinged illumination of the electric bulbs, and cast their supermundane gleams on the pale faces of Volmar and his crew.

Volmar, peering ahead with aquiline keenness, was the first to see the planets...

[The Red World of Polaris]

proxima centauri

The Centaurian race had developed from carnivorous plants, as men from carnivorous forebears. But at some early date in man's progression, the worship of gold began. No such diversion of interest occurred upon the planets of Proxima Centauri. As men have devastated cities for gold, and have cut down forests and gutted mines and ruthlessly destroyed all things for gold or for other things which could be exchanged for gold, so the Centaurians had quested animals...

...Three planets of Proxima Centauri were endowed with climates and atmospheres favorable to vegetation and animal life, but only on one planet now, and that the smallest and most distant, did any trace of animal life survive...

[Proxima Centauri]

rasalgethi

The case of Valmatan vs Mer El in interstellar law has a panel for review which includes the Earthman, Frederick Gray, and

...Vanz Kamis, Rasalgethi VI

[New Folks' Home]

rigel:

"...they were the first to land on Beta Orionis Six. Their ship had hardly grounded when it started coming apart under them. In twenty minutes the whole thing was just about dismantled. Turned out the natives thought it was another puzzle from their fifth-planet friends. They were apologetic about it, and put the ship back together in thirty minutes or so. When Liang and Sarapati left, a few days later, the natives asked them whether they knew of any really difficult puzzles." [Criterion]

...civil war rent the whole fabric of interstellar civilization and shattered the Old Empire. Many, many far systems and worlds, when the star-ships came no longer, sank into barbarism and a long night.

A few star-worlds retained their civilization, their technics. They kept a few star-ships flying. And those few worlds, centering around the system of Rigel, expanded their efforts to bring more and more worlds back into a cooperative civilization. Thus had begun the New Empire, which professed to reject the pride and pomp of conquest of the Old Empire...
[Starman Come Home]

s doradus:

   The fine spray of dark rain that had dogged his exploration walk was retreating over the yellow rim of valley to the "west".
   As he watched, a small yellow sun burst out from behind a curtain of dark, ocherous cloud and glared at him brilliantly. Below it an expanse of jungle glinted strangely brown and yellow.
   Everywhere was that dark brown and intense, almost liquid yellow...
                                                                                                                  [The Storm]

sirius:

It was... Mandark who had led that little band of scientists and picked youth away from the doomed Earth in the great Ark of Space. After two hundred and twenty years the Ark had found a planet in the system of the giant sun Sirius. But to land meant death - death from titanic bolts of lightning that constantly struck the planet... [The Lightning Men]

   Jinx is the close moon of a gas giant planet more massive than Jupiter, and smaller than Jupiter because its core has been compressed to degenerate matter. A billion years ago Jinx and Primary were even closer, before tidal drag moved them apart. This same tidal force had earlier locked Jinx's rotation to Primary and forced the moon into an egg shape, a prolate spheroid. When the moon moved outward its shape became more nearly spherical; but the cold rock surface resisted change.
   That is why the ocean of Jinx rings its waist, beneath an atmosphere too compressed and too hot to breathe; whereas the points nearest to and furthest from Primary, the East and West Ends, actually rise out of the atmosphere.
   From space Jinx looks like God's Own Easter Egg: the Ends bone white tinged with yellow; then the brighter glare from rings of glittering ice fields at the limits of the atmosphere; then the varying blues of an Earthlike world, increasingly overlaid with the white frosting of cloud as the eyes move inward, until the waist of the planet/moon is girdled with pure white. The ocean never shows at all...                               [The Borderland of Sol]

thuban

The case of Valmatan vs Mer El in interstellar law has a panel for review which includes the Earthman, Frederick Gray, and

...Eta Nonskic, Thuban XXVIII

[New Folks' Home]

vega:

Vega was now some twenty-five light years away in space; but in the foreshortening magic of the ship's vision tank, its dazzling, blue-white brilliance floated like a three-inch fire-jewel before them. A few hours later, great Jeltad itself swam suddenly below with its wind-swept blues and greens and snowy poles - to the eyes of the two watchers on the ship much more like the historical Earth-home of both their races than the functional, tunneled hornet-hive of Terra was nowadays. [The Truth About Cushgar]

zubeneschamali

He read the titles of a few of them... 'Jurisprudence on Zubeneschamali III, VI and VII...'

[New Folks' Home]

stellar cluffs

The S.N. site could have a page for more "glancing" references e.g:

Aldebaran:

...the putty-plastic from Aldebaran VII

Clifford Simak, Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), p.123-4

It had taken him some time to lose his identity. He had done that on the swarming waystation worlds of Aldebaran, where he had altered the tint of his skin and hair and submerged himself in the masses of humanity and near-humanity that mingled around the starports. Using a forged Aldebaranian permit, he had found a job in the crew of a small freighter bound for the Hyades...

Edmond Hamilton, Doomstar (1966)

Procyon:

...Procyon pin-heads...

Robert A Heinlein, Starman Jones (1953)

Poul Anderson, "The Three-Cornered Wheel" (Analog, October 1963); Hunters of the Sky Cave (1965); "A Sun Invisible" (Analog, April 1966); Isaac Asimov, The Stars Like Dust (1951); Leigh Brackett, "The Woman From Altair" (Startling Stories, July 1951); Alpha Centauri or Die! (1963); John Coleman Burroughs and Hulbert Burroughs, "The Lightning Men" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1940); John W Campbell, The Ultimate Weapon (1936); John and Dorothy de Cowey, "Goma's Follicles" (Planet Stories, Summer 1948); Edmund Cooper, Seed of Light (1959); Edmond Hamilton, "Within the Nebula" (Weird Tales, May 1929); "Kaldar, World of Antares" (Magic Carpet Magazine, April 1933); The Star Kings (1949); "Starman Come Home" (Universe, September 1954 - published in 1959 as "The Sun Smasher" in an Ace Double together with Ivar Jorgenson's "Starhaven"); Return to the Stars (1964-5); Doomstar (1966); Robert A Heinlein, Starman Jones (1953); John Jakes (as Alexander Blade), "The Android Kill" (Imaginative Tales, November 1957); Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed (1974); Murray Leinster, "Proxima Centauri" (Astounding Stories, March 1935); Larry Niven, World of Ptavvs (1966); "The Warriors" (Worlds of If, February 1966); Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye (1974); "The Borderland of Sol" (Analog, January 1975); Robertson Osborne, "Criterion" (Startling Stories, January 1951); John Rackham, "Computer's Mate" in New Writings in SF - 8 (1966), ed. John Carnell; James H Schmitz, "The Truth About Cushgar" in Agent of Vega (1960); Clifford Simak, Time And Again (1951); Time is the Simplest Thing (1961); Way Station (1963); "New Folks' Home" (Analog, July 1963); Clark Ashton Smith, "The Red World of Polaris" and "The Ocean World of Alioth (fragment), in Red World of Polaris: The Adventures of Captain Volmar (ed. Ronald S Hilger and Scott Connors, 2003); E E 'Doc' Smith, Galactic Patrol (originally serialized in Astounding, 1937); A E van Vogt, "The Storm" (Astounding, October 1943); "Far Centaurus" (Astounding, January 1944); Jack Vance, The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph (1966 collection of six stories featuring the character of that name); Emphyrio (1969); Donald Wandrei, "The Red Brain" (Weird Tales, October 1927).