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"I was perfectly satisfied to write science fiction knowing that it would pay very little, that it would be seen by only a very few people."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Artificial Sun | ||
| Use of a single large artifact to provide sunlight to a city or a world. |
This is the earliest use of the phrase "artificial sun" that I know about, but it is recreated in different forms in different stories.
In this tale, there is not only an artifical sun, but an entire sky!
| Buell was impressed, but it was not until he had been taken out under the artificial sun and sky and had learned its history that he began to have some realization of the power and resources of the man against whom he had pitted his relatively puny strength.
“At night,” said Odd, “the moon, stars and planets will come out and move across the sky, just as they do in the upper world... "But why this elaborate duplication of the terrestrial heavens?” inquired Buell. "Our priests are both astronomers and astrologers. They could not properly conduct their holy offices without making their daily and nightly observations. |
| Technovelgy from The Bride of Osirus,
by Otis Adelbert Kline. Published by Weird Tales in 1927 Additional resources -
|
Also used in the Rotating Hollow Planetoid Habitat from Electronic Siege by John W. Campbell, published by Wonder Stories in 1932.
Compare to the reflected artificial sun from Revolt on Inferno (1931) by Victor Rousseau, the orbital mirror from Completely Automatic (1941) by Theodore Sturgeon, the Fusion Sunlight Tube from At the Bottom of a Hole (1966) by Larry Niven and the Lado-Acheson system from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson.
"...When the colony was established, the whole interior was carved out with atomic burners — burned the stuff out into gas, and let it escape. The shell’s about half a mile thick. Inside, the centrifugal force gives an acceleration just equal to one earth gravity, we’re up to speed, and you can see we have about an earth-weight away from it now. And an artificial sun gives plenty of light.”
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'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
