story identification - Looking for title/author of SF novel about malevolent creatures/gods residing inside stars

One of whom destroys the Earth, perhaps accidentally, while fighting another... the plot also involves a human colony ship or planet that loses contact with the Earth; I think a small boy is also involved with the plot, although it's been 20-30 years since I read this story. Any help would be appreciated! It's driving my brother and me a bit batty.

Here's the batty brother's take: the main being has created others who are now at war, exploding stars. To escape, the main being accelerates the star of the human colony as a decoy. However, most of the story centers on some guy who winds up living forever, as they keep sticking him in cryogenic sleep and reawakening him. If memory serves me right, they abandon the colony planet for a while and move to asteroids as the star is weakening because it is using it's energy to accelerate. When it decelerates, it is the only star left in the universe. The one "being" was almost reduced to living off the energy of a black hole when it appears, and he sees it and sets off to go there, with a cryptic ending that the humans very well might fight him off.

Answer

You are most definitely refering to The World at the End of Time by Frederik Pohl. It alternates chapters following 'wan-to' one of the star based creatures and a young colonist.

I always enjoyed this book, as well as the superficially similar book by Larry Niven A World out of Time as they both deal with deep time.

On a re-read it is interesting to read just the odd or just the even chapters and get a complete story, just with more mystery about why things are happening.

World at the End of Time follows the story of a young Earth-born human, Viktor Sorricaine, on a colony expedition to a distant star system. The colonists are frozen for the long trip between stars. Unknown to both the humans of Earth and the colonists, the stars around them are home to immensely long-lived (effectively immortal) plasma creatures—with no knowledge of, or interest in, the activities of insignificant matter creatures.

Comments

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...

Blog

Search This Blog