Vega in fiction

This article is about references to the star Vega in fiction. For other uses of the name Vega, see Vega (disambiguation).

Size comparison of Vega (on the left), swollen at the equator due to its rapid rate of rotation, to the Sun

The planetary systems of stars other than the Sun and its Solar System are a staple element in much science fiction. Vega (Alpha Lyrae) is a blue-white star in the constellation Lyra (the lyre, see High Sierra ) that is frequently featured in works of science fiction. Like its bright cousins Sirius, Deneb, and Altair, it is classified as a star of spectral type A. Roughly two and a half times the size of the sun, it is 40 times as luminous and, together with Arcturus and Sirius, one of the most radiant stars in the galactic neighborhood. Its luminosity joins with its relative proximity to the Earth—it is only 25 light-years away—to make it the fifth-brightest star in the night sky (see French and English Tragedy by George Croly). Vega is rendered decidedly oblate by its rapid rate of rotation ^{[note 1]} , and since it is pole-on to the sun, it appears significantly larger to earthbound observers than it actually is. For this and a variety of other reasons Vega has been extensively studied by astronomers, leading it to be termed "arguably the next most important star in the sky after the sun." ^[3]

Based on an observed excess emission of infrared radiation, Vega appears to have a circumstellar disk of dust. This dust is likely to be the result of massive collisions between objects in an orbiting debris belt, and it is analogous to the Kuiper belt in the solar system. ^[4] Irregularities in the disk also suggest the presence of at least one planet, about the size of Jupiter, in an orbit large enough to allow the formation of smaller rocky planets closer to the star. ^[5] Regardless of its ultimate tally of planetary companions, the fact that it has an estimated age of just 455 million years ^[2] suggests that the Vega system is too young to have fostered the development of life or a complex biosphere on any of its worlds.

The name Wega (later Vega) comes from a loose transliteration of the Arabic word wāqi‘ meaning "falling" or "landing," via the phrase an-nasr al-wāqi‘, "the falling eagle." ^[6] The star figures prominently in the mythology of cultures as diverse as the Polynesian, ancient Greek, Roman, Chinese (see Qi Xi ), Persian, and Hindu.

General uses of Vega

Vega 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.

The Celestial Ford asterism crosses the Milky Way, and every year on the 7th night of 7th moon it hosts the magpie bridge between Altair and Vega.

• Qi Xi (206 BCE – 220 CE), "the night of sevens," festival honoring a Han dynasty legend. The young cowherd Niú Láng (Altair) meets by chance and marries Zhī Nŭ the weaver girl (Vega), seventh daughter of the Celestial Goddess; the two live happily together and have a pair of children (his flanking stars β and γ Aquilae). The Goddess, furious that Zhī Nŭ has married a mere mortal, orders her home to resume her day job weaving colorful clouds. Niú Láng follows her, but is not unnoticed by the mother, who angrily uses her hairpin to scratch a wide river in the sky—the Milky Way—to separate the lovers forever. Once a year all the magpies in the world take pity on them and fly up to heaven to form a bridge over the star Deneb in Cygnus, so that they may be together for a single night ^[7] (see graphic). (myth)
• "French and English Tragedy" (1823), magazine article by the Rev. George Croly. Croley, in describing the white nights of St. Petersburg, writes To the ordinary eye the heavens, though clear, are almost starless; only brilliants like Vega and Arcturus have power to make an impression upon the retina. Summer midnight in the Russian capital is thus a simple twilight... ^[8] (sky)
• Emily's Quest (1927), novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery (previously author of Anne of Green Gables et seq). Emily Starr and Teddy Kent have been friends since childhood, and as Teddy is about to leave to further his education as an artist, Emily believes that their friendship is blossoming into something more. On their last night together she sighs, Look at that star, Teddy – the one just over the youngest Princess. It’s Vega of the Lyre. I’ve always loved it. It’s my dearest among the stars. ^[9] They vow to think of each other when they see this symbol of faithfulness in the heavens. (sky, meta)
• "Talk of the Town" (1933), New Yorker feuilleton by E. B. White. White describes the "telescope man" of Bryant Park in New York: He charges ten cents for a look at the tip of the Empire State Building, and only five cents for a look at Vega, star of the first magnitude. The tip of the building, being not far away, is pleasantly comprehensible to his customers. Vega, being three times as remote as Sirius, merely gives them a feeling of cosmic despondency, a dizzy, uneasy moment in West Forty-second Street. They find it more comforting to pay five cents more, and not see so far. ^[10] (sky)

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

Literature

• City at World's End (1951), novel by Edmond Hamilton. Government Center on Vega IV is the nexus of galactic administration in this novel about the unremarkable, middle-class Earth city of Middletown hurled by a nuclear explosion to a dead world in the unimaginably far-distant future. ^[11]

The Stars My Destination protagonist Gulliver Foyle jauntes to the Vega system, encircled by swarms of blazing comets.

• Cities in Flight, (1955–1962), series of novels by James Blish. The Vega system is home to a civilization Blish names the Vegan Tyranny, which is blocking mankind's expansion into the galaxy. To fulfill their manifest destiny, men must defeat the Tyranny. The series' reflection of recent (from the vantage of 1955) earthly events, and the fascistic nature of the Vegan Tyranny, exhibit Blish's pessimistic view of the cyclic nature of history, as influenced by his reading of Spengler's The Decline of the West . ^[12] Blish later recycled these ideas in his novelization of "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (1967), an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series .
• The Stars My Destination (1956), classic science fiction novel (titled Tiger! Tiger! in the UK) written by Alfred Bester. After his apotheosis in the burning cathedral, the legendary Gully Foyle teleports stark naked to the vicinity of several stars, including Vega: "Vega in Lyra ... burning bluer than Rigel, planetless, but encircled by swarms of blazing comets whose gaseous trails scintillated across the blue-black firmament ..." ^[13] (see graphic) The interstellar "jaunting" sequence is typical of Bester's signature pyrotechnics, his quick successions of hard, bright images, and mingled images of decay and new life. ^[14]

The Lesser Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, is the seat of an intergalactic tribunal comprising an association of advanced starfaring species.

• Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958), juvenile novel by Robert A. Heinlein. "Vega V" (its real name is unpronounceable by humans ^{[note 2] [15]} ) is the home planet of an interstellar "nanny" civilization assigned to covertly mentor humanity when the Three Galaxies Federation becomes aware of our existence. Protagonist Kip Russell has rehabilitated an old space suit that comes in quite handy when he gets involved in an interplanetary kidnapping scheme. He and fellow victim Peewee Reisfeld are abducted first to the Moon, and then to Pluto, where he is seriously injured in their escape. Peewee's companion, the Vegan "Mother Thing," takes Kip to Vega V to be healed, and later to a tribunal in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud (see graphic) where he represents the human race.
• Andromeda: A Space Age Tale (1959), English translation by George Hanna of the Russian language novel by Ivan Efremov. The Earth of the far future is a communist utopia, nonetheless able to send no more than a few infrequent space ships to the nearest star systems, since interstellar travel is limited by the speed of light. One of these near neighbors is Vega. The Earth expedition which reaches the Vega system finds it devoid of life. The Hour of the Bull (1968), the sequel to Andromeda, confronts its 'communist utopia' with a 'capitalist dystopia' in a structure similar to that subsequently used by Ursula K. Le Guin in The Dispossessed (1974). ^[16]
• Agent of Vega (1960), fixup written by James H. Schmitz from stories originally appearing in Astounding Science Fiction . In the far future, humans are building the Confederacy of Vega ^[17] to replace the fallen Empire of Earth. The new empire includes mutated humans as well as non-humans. The enemies of the Confederacy are also a mix of men (not to mention competent women) and aliens in a space opera setting that features Vega's Zone Agents. Conflict between the league and its adversaries involves both physical and telepathic weapons. ^[18]
• Space Battle in the Vega Sector [Raumschlacht im Wega-Sektor ], Mutants in Action [Mutanten im Einsatz ], The Secret of the Time Vault [Das Geheimnis der Zeitgruft ], and The Fortress of the Six Moons [Die Festung der sechs Monde ] (1962), installments 10-13 ^[19] of the Perry Rhodan series of space-opera pulp novelettes, written by Walter Ernsting as by Clark Darlton, by Karl-Herbert Scheer as by K. H. Scheer, and by Kurt Mahr. In these installments of the long-running English version of the [originally German] series, Rhodan comes to the aid of the inhabitants of Ferrol, one of Vega's 42 planets, who are enmeshed in a space war between the reptilian Topides and the decadent Arkonides. On Rofus (Vega IX), mutants help Perry gain control of a Topide battleship. His next exploit is to enter the Time Vault and discover the secrets of the methuselan inhabitants of Vega X. The battle against the Topides continues among the six moons of Vega XL, until finally Rhodan tricks his enemies into an "attack" on the Capella system in which they transit directly to the interior of the star itself.
• Demon Princes (1964–1981), series of five novels written by Jack Vance. In Vance's Oikumene universe, Vega is one of the three principal centers of human civilization (together with the Earth and Rigel). It has three uninhabitable inner planets and three habitable abecedarian planets:
  • Padraic, Mona, and Noaille are cinders of scorched stone, baking in the austere glare of the Great White Star. Tidally locked Noaille is notable for its rains of liquid mercury which fall on the dark side and flow to the hot side where they vaporize, to return once again to the dark side.
  • Aloysius. Its early history was dominated by rivalries between religious sects; the effects of the hatred and warfare persist to this day, especially in the countryside. The cities of Pontefract and New Wexford are galactic centers of finance and publishing—where Kirth Gersen runs his magazines Cosmopolis and Extant.
  • Boniface. "[Its] oceans are bedeviled by awful storms, the land masses are notable for an extravagant topography: vast plains supine to the force of winds and rain; mountains, caves, crags, chasms; broad rivers flowing from sea to sea." ^[20]
  • Cuthbert. Called a "Bug-Hunter's Paradise", this humid and unpleasantly marshy world is but sparsely populated.

The Allen Telescope Array, a receiver array that participates in the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI). An array like this one captures the signal from Vega in the novel Contact.

• This Immortal (1966). novel by Roger Zelazny. In this post-apocalyptic novel, Arts Commissioner Conrad Nomikos—who may or may not be immortal, and who may or may not be a god—assumes the irksome task of escorting a Vegan grandee around the ruins of Earth, which is a popular tourist destination for those among the blue-skinned aliens with a hankering for primal thrills. The masterfully manipulative "immortal" isn't the only one with secrets, however; the Vegan harbors dark secrets of his own, and Earth-liberation rebels are trying to kill him. "Conrad Nomikos ... resembles Herakles—whose labors the plot of the novel covertly replicates—but is certainly both the Hero of a Thousand Faces and the Trickster who mocks the high road of myth..." ^[21]
• Contact (1985), novel written by Carl Sagan with unacknowledged assistance from Ann Druyan ^[22] (see also the film Contact below). SETI researchers detect a message from an extraterrestrial intelligence—a transmitter array (compare graphic) in orbit around the star Vega. As signal hunter Ellie Arroway breathlessly proclaims to a colleague over the telephone: "Yes, Vega is smack in the middle of the field of view. And we’re getting what looks like prime number pulses…" ^[23] After an arduous decoding process, Ellie and her colleagues discover and implement the plans for a wormhole transport device that carries five explorers to the center of the galaxy. There they speak at length with supernal sentiences, but can bring back no proof of the contact—so that when they return home nobody believes their experiences.
• Hyperion (1989) and The Fall of Hyperion (1990), the first two novels in the Hyperion Cantos written by Dan Simmons. Martin Silenus, the Poet of the Hyperion tales, survives tortured formative years growing up in the ambit of the marginally effective Rifkin Atmospheric Protectorate on Heaven’s Gate , "a minor world circling the star Vega ... [a] poisonous world [with, however] a farcaster connection to Sol System ..." ^[24] Too late for poor Martin, Heaven's gate is terraformed by the Hegemony of Man into an Edenic garden planet, and kept that way in the face of considerable difficulty thanks to its rich mineral resources—until the collapse of the farcaster network and the fall of the Hegemony. In the apocalypse, "...the worst has happened ... The Ousters are invading the Web. Heaven’s Gate is being destroyed ...". ^[25] The once beautiful world is reverted by TechnoCore cybrids posing as Ousters into a smoldering slag heap.

Games

In Portal , humanity has abandoned the Earth, leaving behind crumbling buildings, debris-strewn streets, and a lone computer terminal.

• Portal (1986), interactive novel written by Rob Swigart and produced by Brad Fregger. The player, in the role of the astronaut protagonist, returns from a failed 100-year voyage to 61 Cygni to find the Earth depopulated. Cars are rusted and covered with moss, buildings are crumbling and overgrown, the streets are strewn with debris, and the human race has utterly vanished (see graphic). The player happens upon a barely functioning computer terminal and begins playing the game, piecing together fragments of information, until he discovers the secret: a mass human migration in great ships powered by the "axion" drive, through a hyperspace portal to the Realm of Vega 26 light-years away. ^[26] Mankind is waiting to return...

See also

Vega is referred to as a location in space or the center of a planetary system unusually often in fiction. For a list containing many stars and planetary systems that have a less extensive list of references, see Stars and planetary systems in fiction.

Notes and references

Notes

1. Vega rotates with a period of about 12.5 hours, ^[1] which is 87.6% of the speed that would cause the star to start breaking up from centrifugal effects. ^[2]
2. Peewee explains the name: "They call it—" She threw back her head and vocalized; it recalled to me the cockcrow theme in Le Coq d’Or . "but I couldn’t say that. So I told you Vega, which is close enough."

References

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2. Yoon, Jinmi; et al. (January 2010), "A New View of Vega's Composition, Mass, and Age", The Astrophysical Journal , 708 (1): 71–79, Bibcode:2010ApJ...708...71Y, doi: 10.1088/0004-637X/708/1/71
3. Gulliver, Austin F; Hill, Graham; Adelman, Saul J (1994), "Vega: A rapidly rotating pole-on star", The Astrophysical Journal , 429 (2): L81–L84, Bibcode:1994ApJ...429L..81G, doi:10.1086/187418
4. Su, K Y L; et al. (2005), "The Vega Debris Disk: A Surprise from Spitzer", The Astrophysical Journal , 628 (1): 487–500, arXiv: astro-ph/0504086 , Bibcode:2005ApJ...628..487S, doi:10.1086/430819
5. Wyatt, M (2002), "Resonant Trapping of Planetesimals by Planet Migration: Debris Disk Clumps and Vega's Similarity to the Solar System", The Astrophysical Journal , 598 (2): 1321–1340, arXiv: astro-ph/0308253 , Bibcode:2003ApJ...598.1321W, doi:10.1086/379064
6. Glassé, Cyril (2008), The New Encyclopedia of Islam, Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series (3rd ed.), Rowman & Littlefield, p. 75, ISBN   0-7425-6296-4 , retrieved 2012-06-26
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9. Montgomery, Lucy Maud (2011). Emily's Quest . Indo-European Publishing. p. 6. ISBN   978-1-60444-393-6.
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11. "City at World's End". ManyBooks . (free download). Retrieved 2012-06-28.
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17. Schmitz, James H (2001). Agent of Vega and Other Stories . Riverdale, NY: Baen Books. p. 9. ISBN   0-671-31847-0.
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23. Sagan, Carl (1997). Contact . New York: Pocket Books. p. 70. ISBN   0-671-00410-7.
24. Simmons, Dan (1995). Hyperion . Bantam Books. pp. 186–187. ISBN   0-553-28368-5.
25. Simmons, Dan (1995). The Fall of Hyperion . Bantam Books. p. 358. ISBN   0-553-28820-2.
26. "Portal: A Computer Novel". Hall Of Light...the database of amiga games. See screenshots 91, 93. Retrieved 2012-07-14.