There have been numerous books and movies that try to set a story around an apocalyptic Earth. Most of these are either disease, nuclear wars or meteors. Are there any stories about a nearby star going Super Nova?
Looking for non Trek SciFi story.
- Thread starter ConRefit79
- Start date
Aftermath and its sequel Starfire by Charles Sheffield.
Isaac Asimov's meta-universe featured an Earth scarred by radiation (and eventually abandoned). Earth shows up in the early Empire novels (Pebble in the Sky) and again in Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth.
Supernova by Roger Macbride Allen & Eric Kotani
Supernova by Steven E. McDonald
Supernova by Steven E. McDonald
But wasn't that due to nuclear wars rather than a supernova?
Right, but it's vaguely apocalyptic -- and there's never a bad time to recommend Asimov. ;-)
The original poster isn't asking for "vaguely apocalyptic," but specifically for "stories about a nearby star going supernova." The only thing in Asimov's canon remotely close to that is The Currents of Space, about a supernova risk facing a distant alien planet. And maybe Nemesis, about an undiscovered dwarf-star companion to Sol that poses a risk of throwing Earth out of its orbit at some future time.
I really liked Nemesis. Even more than the "classic" Foundation.
Hmm, I read it not long ago and found it rather tedious. The characters kept having the same arguments over and over and over again. Not one of Asimov's best works. It might've been better had he been constrained to a shorter word count as in his earlier days.
He did his research on TrekBBS.
Christopher, I enjoyed "Aftermath" some time ago and though I have since obtained "Starfire", I haven't taken the time to read it yet. Were these two books the first two of a planned trilogy?
Did he get the third one written before he passed away?
I couldn't tell you. They're books I keep meaning to get around to reading but haven't yet. But just from the premise, I don't know if there's a third story to be told. The first book was about the initial EM radiation front from the supernova arriving at the speed of light, the second about the slower particle-radiation front arriving sometime later. Those are the two main sources of danger from a supernova. I'm not aware of a third type of radiation front on which a third book could've been based.
It depends upon which book you read.
Though, you could say that, given the vast expanses of time that the Robots-Empire-Foundation cycle covers, the truth of Earth's radioactivity was misremembered and lost over time.
Asimov's Empire books (written in the early 1950s) suggest either nuclear war or crust cycling that brought radioactive material to the surface. (If I'm remembering correctly, it's The Stars, Like Dust... for the former, Pebble in the Sky for the latter.)
Robots and Empire, written in the mid-80s, has a conspiracy of Spacers irradiate Earth's crust using nuclear intensifiers. By the time Asimov wrote that book, the effects of nuclear war were better known and understood (which made a survivable nuclear war that would irradiate the planet far less likely) and the geologic model of crust cycling wouldn't work over Asimov's time scales.
I seem to remember a cover blurb from the second book insinuating that the supernova was no accident, that it may have been caused by unknown entities seeking to damage the human race. Hopefully someone familiar with the books will pop up.
