H.G. Wells, "The Star"

[randy_byers]

I've been reading the Modern Library collection of Selected Stories of H.G. Wells, edited by Ursula K Le Guin. (With an amazingly inappropriate cover.) "The Star" was first published in 1897. It is a disaster story. A planetoid is detected just before it collides with Neptune, causing both bodies to head sunward in a flaming mass ... and directly toward Earth! The viewpoint of the story is omniscient, and it only briefly notes particular points of view, staying the longest with a mathematician who calculates that the Earth will be struck by the object. The description of the destruction wrought on the surface of the Earth by the gravitational forces of the approaching mass are grave and terrible. The denouement describing the aftermath is a brief series of ever remoter observations, with a bit of a satiric sting in the final view.

It's a great story, and I'm guessing it was one of the influences on Homer Eon Flint's "The Planeteer," which tosses in a similar scenario (involving Saturn instead of Neptune) as one part of its perhaps overly-complicated dramatic apparatus. The contrast between the two stories might be an effective example of the difference between scientific romance and science fiction. Wells is dispassionate and philosophical, while Flint's story is character-driven and solution-focused. Wells' story is a far more effective literary construction. Flint's story is perhaps aimed at a different social class entirely -- one that doesn't care so much about literary values.