This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Sun in fiction article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Sun in fiction is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | |||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on December 21, 2023. | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
A
fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the "
Did you know?" column on
May 7, 2023. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the 1961 film
Barabbas
portrayed a solar eclipse (pictured) by shooting during
a real one? | |||||||||||||
Current status: Featured article |
This article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The article states that " Before it was understood that the Sun is powered by nuclear fusion, the prevailing assumption among writers was that combustion was the source of its heat and light" and that "By the 1920s, the combustion hypothesis was superseded" however both of these statements are wrong. Combustion had been ruled out by scientists as the source of the sun's energy by the mid-19th century, instead it was proposed by physicists such as Lord Kelvin that the Sun got its heat from gravitational contraction and the Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism. See Age of Earth and The source of solar energy, ca. 1840–1910: From meteoric hypothesis to radioactive speculations as evidence for this. As such, the info that combustion was thought to power the sun until the 1920s is wrong. Devonian Wombat ( talk) 05:49, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
I was surprised to see that the article’s scope doesn’t include earthly experiences of the sun—the first instance of the sun in fiction that comes to my mind is The Stranger, which is not in scope for the article as it is. Is there objection to expanding scope to include the sun in all its narrativizations? Zanahary ( talk) 01:08, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm surprised to see this in the first sentence of a today's FA. How long is this long time supposed to be? MOS:DATED suggests relative expressions of time should be confined to "very long periods". The example given is on the scale of an geological epoch. Classical literature to the twentieth century is a long time, but it's no epoch. In the first section following the lede, I see that this assertion has to do with "early science fiction," but beyond an indication that this was before the late 1800s, I have no idea how this assertion is measured or why it should be in the lede. Guidethebored ( talk) 03:33, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I can't say I see the problem here, but then I wouldn't as I'm the one who wrote it in the first place. TompaDompa ( talk) 07:00, 21 December 2023 (UTC)Relative-time expressions are acceptable for very long periods, such as geological epochs: Humans diverged from other primates long ago, but only recently developed state legislatures.
I would like to add the section below. the sourcing for this is from the wikipedia articles that I linked to.
===Time travel===
In the television series Star Trek, time travel is consistently shown as occuring through the method of having the starship "slingshot" around the Sun. This was depicted in various episodes, notably in the episode " Tomorrow is Yesterday". The same method was depicted in the episode " Assignment: Earth".
Sm8900 ( talk) 14:13, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject."On the subject" is key here—an article on the topic Sun in fiction should be based on sources on the overarching topic Sun in fiction and reflect the relative weight given by those sources to different aspects of the overarching topic Sun in fiction. If sources on the overarching topic Sun in fiction do not mention a particular aspect, then it is a WP:MINORASPECT that should not be mentioned in Wikipedia's article on the topic Sun in fiction. TompaDompa ( talk) 15:07, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
based on sources on the overarching topicand relying exclusively thereon. If those articles do not reflect the relative weight given to different aspects by sources on the overarching topic, that's a WP:PROPORTION problem. TompaDompa ( talk) 15:24, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I agree with TompaDompa that we would need sources that specifically discuss the topic of this article to add the suggested material. There must be hundreds of thousands of sources that discuss fiction and mention the sun's appearance in that fiction; we have to limit ourselves to sources that address the topic of fictional uses of the sun, rather than simply mentioning a particular bit of fiction that has the sun. For example, it would be easy to find mention of the "sunflowers" that Larry Niven invented in his Known Space stories; they use reflected sunlight to defend a property. Should those be added to this article? Not unless a source discusses them as an example of the use of the sun in fiction. Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 15:29, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
@ TompaDompa, I understand your revert, however I see a few instances of non-fiction-related articles being linked in the lead section, i.e. in the section for solar eclipses. Is there a difference between those instances and my edit? Catalyzzt ( talk) 16:52, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
This article should be moved to The Sun in fiction, following English-language idiomatic use and WP:COMMONNAME. Every star is a sun, but there is only one Sun, referred to universally as "the Sun" in English. — The Anome ( talk) 17:02, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I suggest including Andy Weir's 2021 novel Project Hail Mary to the section on fiction related to solar dimming. This book, from the author of "The Martian," is about an alien microorganism that is sucking up the Sun's energy, threatening humanity with extinction. Given the popularity of the book (and its potential adaptation into a film starring Ryan Gosling), it seems worth including. The novel is a bestseller and has been reviewed in The New York Times.
Proposed sentence for inclusion: "Andy Weir's 2021 novel Project Hail Mary depicts a scenario where humanity faces extinction due to solar dimming caused by an alien microorganism." Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/books/review/andy-weir-project-hail-mary.html CipherSleuth ( talk) 17:26, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure how exactly the list was narrowed down, but in the realm of works where the Sun plays a fairly major role... Digital Devil Saga 2 has the sun be the "final dungeon" where the last part of the game takes place. Further, the sun = the Internet = heaven = the world soul = Brahman = god, or some such (they're all the same thing). When people die, their data goes to the sun to merge with the world soul (or even when AI programs die in a simulation, they also end up in the sun / giant data warehouse. don't think about it too hard). In the final act, the solar data of Our Heroes fights the confused solar data of various villains who are stuck in the moment before their death, and then our hero's solar data confronts Brahman / God to make them stop turning everyone on Earth to stone with evil solar rays (yeah, everyone lives underground after the Sun / God went crazy and sunlight turned you into a statue). It's very strange, but the Sun is definitely a major role - just unsure what the sourcing standards are for this article.
I feel like "mystical" takes on a Sentient sun are reasonably common, but maybe not really the purpose of this article (lots of "Sun gods" out there which are basically normal people). SnowFire ( talk) 18:00, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject(other ways of explaining the same concept in the context of fiction-related articles can be found at MOS:POPCULT and the essays WP:CARGO and WP:IPCV). TompaDompa ( talk) 10:06, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
TompaDompa, I don't know if Ring, the 1994 novel is listed on the page, if not probably a good addition. Randy Kryn ( talk) 03:00, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Brin's Sundiver includes an extensive and scrupulous summary of modern scientific knowledge, including detailed studies carried out by Skylab crews in 1973–1974, but not the results of the Solar Maximum Mission (1980–1989), whose endeavours were further extrapolated in the description of the solar probe featured in Stephen Baxter's Ring (1994).in the "Sun, The" entry of Brian Stableford's Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia. That doesn't lend itself to much for this article, and it's such a WP:MINORASPECT based on how it's covered (or more to the point, hardly covered at all) by the overall literature that it's a bit difficult to justify including it anyway. Baxter is also already covered in the article, albeit briefly. But thanks for the suggestion. TompaDompa ( talk) 21:18, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Sun in fiction article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Sun in fiction is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | |||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on December 21, 2023. | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
A
fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the "
Did you know?" column on
May 7, 2023. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the 1961 film
Barabbas
portrayed a solar eclipse (pictured) by shooting during
a real one? | |||||||||||||
Current status: Featured article |
This article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The article states that " Before it was understood that the Sun is powered by nuclear fusion, the prevailing assumption among writers was that combustion was the source of its heat and light" and that "By the 1920s, the combustion hypothesis was superseded" however both of these statements are wrong. Combustion had been ruled out by scientists as the source of the sun's energy by the mid-19th century, instead it was proposed by physicists such as Lord Kelvin that the Sun got its heat from gravitational contraction and the Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism. See Age of Earth and The source of solar energy, ca. 1840–1910: From meteoric hypothesis to radioactive speculations as evidence for this. As such, the info that combustion was thought to power the sun until the 1920s is wrong. Devonian Wombat ( talk) 05:49, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
I was surprised to see that the article’s scope doesn’t include earthly experiences of the sun—the first instance of the sun in fiction that comes to my mind is The Stranger, which is not in scope for the article as it is. Is there objection to expanding scope to include the sun in all its narrativizations? Zanahary ( talk) 01:08, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm surprised to see this in the first sentence of a today's FA. How long is this long time supposed to be? MOS:DATED suggests relative expressions of time should be confined to "very long periods". The example given is on the scale of an geological epoch. Classical literature to the twentieth century is a long time, but it's no epoch. In the first section following the lede, I see that this assertion has to do with "early science fiction," but beyond an indication that this was before the late 1800s, I have no idea how this assertion is measured or why it should be in the lede. Guidethebored ( talk) 03:33, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I can't say I see the problem here, but then I wouldn't as I'm the one who wrote it in the first place. TompaDompa ( talk) 07:00, 21 December 2023 (UTC)Relative-time expressions are acceptable for very long periods, such as geological epochs: Humans diverged from other primates long ago, but only recently developed state legislatures.
I would like to add the section below. the sourcing for this is from the wikipedia articles that I linked to.
===Time travel===
In the television series Star Trek, time travel is consistently shown as occuring through the method of having the starship "slingshot" around the Sun. This was depicted in various episodes, notably in the episode " Tomorrow is Yesterday". The same method was depicted in the episode " Assignment: Earth".
Sm8900 ( talk) 14:13, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject."On the subject" is key here—an article on the topic Sun in fiction should be based on sources on the overarching topic Sun in fiction and reflect the relative weight given by those sources to different aspects of the overarching topic Sun in fiction. If sources on the overarching topic Sun in fiction do not mention a particular aspect, then it is a WP:MINORASPECT that should not be mentioned in Wikipedia's article on the topic Sun in fiction. TompaDompa ( talk) 15:07, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
based on sources on the overarching topicand relying exclusively thereon. If those articles do not reflect the relative weight given to different aspects by sources on the overarching topic, that's a WP:PROPORTION problem. TompaDompa ( talk) 15:24, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I agree with TompaDompa that we would need sources that specifically discuss the topic of this article to add the suggested material. There must be hundreds of thousands of sources that discuss fiction and mention the sun's appearance in that fiction; we have to limit ourselves to sources that address the topic of fictional uses of the sun, rather than simply mentioning a particular bit of fiction that has the sun. For example, it would be easy to find mention of the "sunflowers" that Larry Niven invented in his Known Space stories; they use reflected sunlight to defend a property. Should those be added to this article? Not unless a source discusses them as an example of the use of the sun in fiction. Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 15:29, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
@ TompaDompa, I understand your revert, however I see a few instances of non-fiction-related articles being linked in the lead section, i.e. in the section for solar eclipses. Is there a difference between those instances and my edit? Catalyzzt ( talk) 16:52, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
This article should be moved to The Sun in fiction, following English-language idiomatic use and WP:COMMONNAME. Every star is a sun, but there is only one Sun, referred to universally as "the Sun" in English. — The Anome ( talk) 17:02, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I suggest including Andy Weir's 2021 novel Project Hail Mary to the section on fiction related to solar dimming. This book, from the author of "The Martian," is about an alien microorganism that is sucking up the Sun's energy, threatening humanity with extinction. Given the popularity of the book (and its potential adaptation into a film starring Ryan Gosling), it seems worth including. The novel is a bestseller and has been reviewed in The New York Times.
Proposed sentence for inclusion: "Andy Weir's 2021 novel Project Hail Mary depicts a scenario where humanity faces extinction due to solar dimming caused by an alien microorganism." Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/books/review/andy-weir-project-hail-mary.html CipherSleuth ( talk) 17:26, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure how exactly the list was narrowed down, but in the realm of works where the Sun plays a fairly major role... Digital Devil Saga 2 has the sun be the "final dungeon" where the last part of the game takes place. Further, the sun = the Internet = heaven = the world soul = Brahman = god, or some such (they're all the same thing). When people die, their data goes to the sun to merge with the world soul (or even when AI programs die in a simulation, they also end up in the sun / giant data warehouse. don't think about it too hard). In the final act, the solar data of Our Heroes fights the confused solar data of various villains who are stuck in the moment before their death, and then our hero's solar data confronts Brahman / God to make them stop turning everyone on Earth to stone with evil solar rays (yeah, everyone lives underground after the Sun / God went crazy and sunlight turned you into a statue). It's very strange, but the Sun is definitely a major role - just unsure what the sourcing standards are for this article.
I feel like "mystical" takes on a Sentient sun are reasonably common, but maybe not really the purpose of this article (lots of "Sun gods" out there which are basically normal people). SnowFire ( talk) 18:00, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject(other ways of explaining the same concept in the context of fiction-related articles can be found at MOS:POPCULT and the essays WP:CARGO and WP:IPCV). TompaDompa ( talk) 10:06, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
TompaDompa, I don't know if Ring, the 1994 novel is listed on the page, if not probably a good addition. Randy Kryn ( talk) 03:00, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Brin's Sundiver includes an extensive and scrupulous summary of modern scientific knowledge, including detailed studies carried out by Skylab crews in 1973–1974, but not the results of the Solar Maximum Mission (1980–1989), whose endeavours were further extrapolated in the description of the solar probe featured in Stephen Baxter's Ring (1994).in the "Sun, The" entry of Brian Stableford's Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia. That doesn't lend itself to much for this article, and it's such a WP:MINORASPECT based on how it's covered (or more to the point, hardly covered at all) by the overall literature that it's a bit difficult to justify including it anyway. Baxter is also already covered in the article, albeit briefly. But thanks for the suggestion. TompaDompa ( talk) 21:18, 31 January 2024 (UTC)