Book Review: The Sun We Share: Our Star in Popular Media and Science
November 2025 :
The Sun We Share: Our Star in Popular Media and Science
by Kristine Larsen, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2024, ISBN 978-1-4766-9117-6, softbound, $49.95 US
Reviewed by Francine Jackson
As people who love the sky and attempt to instill that feeling on others, we often, instead of receiving enthusiastic questions on celestial subjects, find ourselves being asked about when the Earth will end. And, many times, it will have to do with our Sun being the culprit, the end game for us all.
In addition, as a hindrance to this type of subject, science fiction has a great tendency to help this along, and Kristine Larsen has certainly given us just about every way authors have made this happen.
Also, she reminds us that we as educators should become more aware of the writings of those fiction writers, as they have planned our destruction in too many myriad ways. To counteract this Larsen has written the definitive book on the Sun, and given us incredible science fiction – books, television shows, movies – entities that take each apparent natural “change” and how it will work against us.
Starting with Chapter 1, we find ourselves with probably the most beautiful phenomenon, a solar eclipse, being used for nefarious purposes. Sun spots (Chapter 3) introduces us to Robert Heinlein’s “The Year of the Jackpot,” where incidents of unusual behavior all seem to correlate to the Sun’s cycle.
Space weather chapters I and II are rife with reasons for the Sun to undo us, including using auroral displays to be the beacons of disaster. They even are used to disrupt a pigeon race, courtesy of both James Michener’s novel Space and an episode of Paradox.
We do know that eventually our Sun will die, but many science fiction authors seem to want to hurry up the process, or find ways for humanity to leave before the final days.
At first, the reader might just believe this book is nothing but a “list” of science fiction books related to our Sun and its potential disaster, but it’s far, far more. Included is virtually everything known about our star, and every scientist who contributed to the knowledge of it, to almost every author who took a piece of the Sun and turned it into science fiction. Some of the listed readings have been written by astronomers who like to venture into the realm of the future, the impossible, the fantastic, while others just seem to get an idea in mind with no actual science concept. The author dissects each one, and directs the reader to the plausible or the impossible.
The Sun We Share is a great addition to a science bookshelf. It not only is a complete guide to our very necessary solar system member, but it is a compendium of how science fiction writers relate to it.
