Aldebaran in Fiction - General Uses of Aldebaran

General Uses of Aldebaran

Aldebaran may be referred to in fictional works for its metaphorical (meta) or mythological (myth) associations, or else as a bright point of light in the sky of the Earth, but not as a location in space or the center of a planetary system:

• Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), novel by Thomas Hardy. Aldebaran makes several appearances in this book, first as a companion of other prominent stars (The kingly brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgeuse shone with a fiery red.), then as the follower of the Pleiades (The Dog Star and Aldebaran, pointing to the restless Pleiades...). (sky)
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), novel by Thomas Hardy. Tess sits with her new husband Angel before the embers of a fire, and her jewelry sparkles in its crimson glare: Tess's face and neck reflected the ... warmth, with each gem turned into an Aldebaran or a Sirius—a constellation of red, white, and green flashes, that interchanged their hues with her every pulsation. (compare Sirius and Aldebaran in Far from the Madding Crowd above) (meta)
• Ulysses (1922), novel by James Joyce. In the novel, protagonist Leopold Bloom is engaging in a convoluted exchange of seeming non sequiturs with his friends, in the course of which he declaims a poem that appears to be assembled from abbreviations and Latinisms from a medical prescription. Chris Callinan responds to that with, "What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran?" and Bloom replies "Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II." (meta, sky)
• Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), semi-autobiographical novel by George Orwell. In the novel's second half, Orwell describes the life of a vagrant in and around London. One of his acquaintances is the pavement artist Bozo who, despite his reduced condition, has a literary education and an interest in astronomy scholarship. The novel's narrator describes a walk they take together: fell silent for a minute or two, and to my surprise I saw that he was looking at the stars. He touched my arm and pointed to the sky with his stick. "Say, will you look at Aldebaran. Look at the color. Like a great blood orange!" From the way he spoke he might have been an art critic in a picture gallery. I was astonished. I confessed that I did not know which Aldebaran was—indeed, I had never even noticed that the stars were of different colors ... (sky)
• The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), fantasy epic written by J. R. R. Tolkien. Frodo, Sam, and Pippin are beginning their great journey, still in the Shire and already shadowed by Black Riders, when they take refuge for a night with the elf Gildor and his companions. On that night, ... high in the East swung Remmirath, the Netted Stars, and slowly above the mists red Borgil rose, glowing like a jewel of fire. Then by some shift of airs all the mist was drawn away like a veil, and there leaned up, as he climbed over the rim of the world, the Swordsman of the Sky, Menelvagor with his shining belt. Borgil, which follows Remirrath (the Pleiades) and precedes Menelvagor (Orion) has been convincingly identified as Aldebaran. The Tolkienian goddess of light Varda made the stars and the constellations, including those described here, in preparation for the awakening of the elves. (myth, sky)

There follow references to Aldebaran as a location in space or the center of a planetary system, categorized by genre: