Science fiction stories can differ a lot from what ends up in movies. Many are introspective with interesting twists, addressing the same aspects of being human as earth-bound fiction, but with greater diversity of setting. Particularly with short stories, an author has the freedom to ask "What if ...?".


Discussion of "The Star" - by Arthur C. Clarke
https://alumni.kcl.ac.uk/the-star

In a future in which interstellar travel is possible, a ship is sent to investigate the Phoenix nebula, but it finds much more than was expected. Told from the perspective of a Jesuit-astrophysicist, struggling to reconcile his expectations and beliefs with the findings of the expedition.

Religious and Scientific Convergence in “The Star” - Brandi Oates
https://medium.com/@bigjelly/religious-and-scientific-convergence-in-the-star-ee6a8691e878

1) What's the role of technology in this story?

2) How far away is "the Star"
   What does that distance imply?
   Why would Clarke choose that star?

3) Too what extent is the narrator affected by confirmation bias?

4) What does the story imply about the civilization affected?


5) The was a Star Trek Next Generation episode, "Inner Light", about a civilization terminated by it's star. Comparisons?

6) How does Neil deGrasse Tyson's statement "We are stardust" tie in with this story?


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A few other sci-fi short stories
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Under the Sun - Gavin Schmidt
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3kj4y8/gavin-schmidt-fiction-under-the-sun

A recent fictional work based on a recent scientific paper. If human civilization wasn't the first technological civilization on Earth, what might be the indicators lasting from millions of years ago.


The love letter - by Jack Finney
http://richters-time.blogspot.com/2007/09/love-letter-by-jack-finney.html

Jack Finney wrote stories about time with a nostalgia for the late 19th century. In the darkness of night, something consistent with the past might slip back to an earlier time.


The Foghorn - by Ray Bradbury
http://www.grammarpunk.com/lit/gp/THE_FOG_HORN.pdf

A new lighthouse and its foghorn, a sound that evokes all the loneliness in the world. But something hears that sound, something that has longed to hear it for a long, long time.


The Light by Poul Anderson (audio)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGBnarDgkoE

A story of a first moon landing written before the actual one. But there are already footprints there, and there is something eerily familiar about the scene.


The Game Of Rat And Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
text  - https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29614/29614-h/29614-h.htm
audio - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJmHZ9aT3W0

Something dangerous and malevalent lives in the darkness of interstellar space. Something that goes after those on the that traverse such space in finite jumps. Bright light can kill it, but machines don't detect it and human reaction times are too slow, hence human "pin-setters" work in cooperation with feline partners.


Wordsmith Jarvinen