Planetary Systems in Fiction - General Uses of Star Names

General Uses of Star Names

Stars may be referred to in fictional works for their metaphorical (meta) or mythological (myth) associations, or else as points of light in the sky of Earth (sky), but not as locations in space or centers of planetary systems:

• The Iliad (c. eighth cent BCE), epic poem attributed to Homer. The Greek poet describes the final approach of the Greeks' shining warrior, Achilles, toward Troy by comparing him to the dazzling star Sirius. (sky, myth)
• Oedipus Rex (c. 429 BCE), play by Sophocles. In Scene IV the Corinthian shepherd describes keeping his flocks alongside those of the Theban shepherd all during three distant summers, from spring / Till rose Arcturus. He is trying to stimulate the Theban's memory about their long acquaintance prior to a fateful event: the Theban's entrusting the infant Oedipus to him, to be raised in Corinth, rather than killing the child as instructed by King Laius of Thebes. (sky)
• Metamorphoses (8 CE), Latin narrative poem by Ovid. The Roman poet describes the apotheosis of the murdered Julius Caesar as Caesar's Comet (C/-43 K1), possibly the brightest daylight comet in recorded history: Kindly Venus, although seen by none, stood in the middle of the Senate-house, and caught from the dying limbs and trunk of her own Caesar his departing soul. She did not give it time so that it could dissolve in air, but bore it quickly up, toward all the stars of heaven; and on the way, she saw it gleam and blaze and set it free. Above the moon it mounted into heaven, leaving behind a long and fiery trail, and as a star it glittered in the sky. (myth)
• Julius Caesar (1599), play written by William Shakespeare. In Act III, Scene I, Cassius petitions Caesar to reverse a banishment, but Caesar proclaims his steadfastness, comparing himself to the star Polaris: But I am constant as the northern star, / Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality / There is no fellow in the firmament. (sky, meta)
• "Polaris" (1920), short story by H. P. Lovecraft. The narrator of the story experiences a series of increasingly substantial dreams about Olathoë, a city of marble lying on a plateau between two peaks, with the "malign presence" of Polaris ever watching in the night sky. At the end of the story, he is convinced that his waking life is not real but a dream from which he cannot awaken. (sky)
• Mary Poppins (1934), novel by P. L. Travers. One of Mary Poppins' unusual acquaintances, a personified Maia, arrives in London to do some Christmas shopping for the "other stars in the Pleiades." (meta)
• Justine (1957), Alexandria Quartet novel by Lawrence Durrell. The fourth paragraph of this first novel in the quartet describes the effect of Arcturus, the brightest star in the northern sky, on the narrator's somber ruminations. (sky)
• The Truelove (1993), Aubrey-Maturin novel (titled Clarissa Oakes in the UK) written by Patrick O'Brian. Jack Aubrey establishes his ship's longitude in the Pacific Ocean without the aid of a marine chronometer by taking "two beautiful lunar s (angle readings), the one on Mars, the other on Fomalhaut." (sky)
• "Dream—The Heart of a Star" (2003), Chapter 3 of the graphic novel The Sandman: Endless Nights written by Neil Gaiman. Mizar appears as a female of blue flame. She is the hostess of an assembly of various cosmic entities, and the creator of the palace where they meet. (meta)