Something new under the sun

Novelist Jon Wallace considers the science fiction implications of engineering stories that have caught his eye. This month, the dark future of solar power

Our star suffers from a rather reduced role in science fiction. Strange, when it was the centre of entire cultures’ foundation tales – the original fantasy fiction – whether as the eye of Ra, as a luminous disc pulled by Helios’ chariot, or as Tonatiuh, bloodthirsty deity of the Aztecs. Sol enjoyed a prized status – as the master of time, the source of life. The bible god’s first words are ‘let there be light’, defining his power by his mastery of the sun.

Even renaissance science granted the sun privileged status, Copernican heliocentric theory placing it at the centre of the universe, the fire around which creation turned. It’s only during the last few centuries that our growing understanding lessened