The Star, the Star Maker,

and the Scripted Universe

By Sally Morem

“It is three thousand light-years to the Vatican. Once, I believed that

space could have no power over faith, just as I believed that the heavens
declared the glory of God’s handiwork. Now I have seen that handiwork,
and my faith is sorely troubled. I stare at the crucifix that hangs on the
cabin wall above the Mark VI Computer, and for the first time in my life I
wonder if it is no more than an empty symbol.”

So begins a classic science fiction tale, Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star.”

1,000 years from now, a Jesuit priest and astrophysicist, is a member of
a starship crew that has made a heart wrenching discovery. They were
investigating the Phoenix Nebula, the remains of an exploded star. One
distant planet—that star system’s Pluto—survived the inferno. And on
that planet, the crew found the carefully preserved remnants of a once
glorious alien civilization.

But wait, it gets worse. The priest has determined, through careful
dating methods and study of star charts, that the light of that brilliant
supernova reached Earth in the eastern sky 3,000 years earlier—over
Bethlehem.

Religious science fiction fans have strongly denounced this story as an

anti-Christian diatribe, insisting that Clarke used traditional elements
of science fiction storytelling merely for ideological purposes. But, what
is really going on here? Clearly, Clarke did indeed set up an artificial
situation. Aside from the obvious fact that there are no starships and
that no human had ever visited another star system, Clarke has made it
plain elsewhere that he doesn’t believe in the story of Christmas. So,
what is he getting at? He conjoined space travel and Bethlehem in an
effort to do what scientists do when they conduct “thought
experiments.” He is reasoning his way through a difficult theoretical
problem by constructing an elaborate metaphor.

Christians may be pleased to know that the events described in “The

Star” are impossible, according to our present-day understanding of
stellar evolution.

An ordinary stellar explosion—a nova—occurs only in a close binary

star system. As the smaller star “strips” some of the larger star’s mass,
occasionally it gets too much at once and “burps,” actually undergoing a
powerful thermonuclear explosion. We see this from Earth as a
brightening of the star—hence “new star” or the Latin “stella nova,” or
just plain “nova.”

It’s extremely unlikely that any planet could settle into a stable orbit
around two stars. The planet would be much more likely to lurch and
loop about it in strange patterns with a good chance of being flung by
centrifugal force into interstellar space. In order for life to have a
chance to evolve, the planet in question must settle into a nice, regular
orbit in the “water zone” around a star—that distance from the star in
which liquid water can form on a planet and remain in the liquid state
during most of the year. No star that can become a nova is capable of
fostering such a stable planet.

So, Clarke’s star clearly could not have been a nova. But, in his story,
he did hint at the possibility that the Phoenix Nebula was caused by a
supernova. But the class of stars that are capable of going supernova
are saddled with their own set of troublesome instabilities. A very
massive star will build up a large amount of heavy elements during its
lifetime of fusion reactions. Our own Sun is far too small to do this. At
a certain point, the heavy elements bear down on the core, creating
immense pressures, relieved finally by a massive explosion. In a few
seconds, the supernova puts out more energy than a galaxy of stars.
Sometimes the star is completely destroyed. It’s a good thing that none
have occurred near our own Solar System or we wouldn’t be here to
talk about it. The heavy radiation from such an explosion, even from a
distance of many light years, would have destroyed all life on Earth.
Why can’t such a star harbor life-bearing planets? Because it wouldn’t
be around long enough. Even though larger stars contain much more
fuel than Sun-like stars, they undergo fusion at such prodigious rates
that they burn themselves out in a few hundreds of millions of year,
hardly enough time for microscopic life to form, let alone intelligent life.
Clarke’s brave aliens could never have come into being in such a star
system.

Stellar evolution was not so nearly well understood in the Fifties when
Clarke wrote “The Star.” But this error in stellar physics only
reinforces our earlier view that “The Star” is not so much a
commentary on real life than it is a metaphor for dealing with a very
difficult concept.

So, just for the sake of argument, let’s go along with Clarke’s thought
experiment. Let’s find out what he was up to. Let’s assume that the
Christmas Story as described in the Bible and in “The Star” is an
accurate account of real events. And, let’s also assume Einstein got it
right.

If we take Einstein at his word, space and time are really one thing—
spacetime. In other words, we can’t just think of a certain location in
space or a certain length of time; we must think in terms of events.
Location + Duration = Event. He also insisted that the Theory of
Relativity doesn’t mean that everything is relative, but that every event
is subject to that Absolute of Absolutes: The Speed of Light.

I may be belaboring the obvious when I point out that “The Star”
describes a carefully orchestrated celestial event. Light travels at a
finite speed. (186,000 miles per second: It’s not just a good idea; it’s the
law.) In Clarke’s story, it takes 3,000 years for light to travel from point
A (the exploding star) to point B (the Middle East in 4 BC). In order for
the light of the exploding star to get to Earth at the correct time, in the
correct spot in the sky—in other words, in order for the correct event to
occur—the star must explode 3,000 years in advance of the events in
Bethlehem. But, according to Einstein, causes and effects cannot race
ahead of the lightwave front within our universe. The events at the star
and at Bethlehem can have no conceivable connection with each other
until the lightwave front hits Earth.
The only way cause and effect can be linked across a 3,000-light-year
gap before the events occur is for an outside force to intervene. A force
not restricted by the speed of light. Like a complex military operation
in which separate tactical maneuvers must be synchronized exactly in
order to achieve the overall strategic goal, the events in the Christmas
Story must be planned and executed to the letter. And—this is a key
point—this must include the planned destruction of the alien
civilization.

No wonder the Jesuit priest is utterly demoralized. He realizes that the

destruction of those people is not just an unfortunate side effect of the
event, but an integral part of it. And here we get to the heart of the
matter. “The Star” is not just so much thoughtless Christian-bashing;
it’s a serious critique of a fundamental Christian belief—the necessary
existence of the All-Powerful, All-Knowing God—and, perhaps even
more pointedly—the Completely Scripted Universe, naturally flowing
out of the deity’s own omnipotence and omniscience. That kind of deity
must thoroughly dominate its creation from Alpha to Omega. Think of
“The Star” as a thinly disguised metaphysical essay and criticism of the
theological concept of predestination.

Clarke is not protesting against the existence of suffering in the

universe. We can all pretty well accept the fact that suffering would
exist in any kind of universe imaginable inhabited by sensitive,
intelligent beings. The problem for Christians is that of the necessity of
planned suffering, of scripted suffering.

Clarke is saying that the Biblical universe is basically theologically

unsound. If everything that happens to humans (and presumably to
alien beings) is arranged by God outside of spacetime, the serious
theologian must ask what all the fuss is about in being Christian or not,
being good or not, being save or not. Cause and effect, thought,
decisions, and action cannot be seen in such a universe as the acts of
free, moral centers of insight—human beings—but merely some small,
suitably embroidered scenes written into the Scripted Universe.
Picture the Scripted Universe as a vast block of spacetime—an eternal,
crystalline immensity of well-ordered events—well ordered by God
outside of spacetime. Everything is already in place, is predestined.
The blocks of spacetime that we experience are all in place. The story,
the action, free will itself, are illusions created by our movement
through our own portion of spacetime. We humans are but speckles of
paint on an immense work of art.

We are told about the Christmas Story by Christians. We read about it

in the Bible. We are told that this Story came to be through the freely
willed actions of God and human beings. But, when Clarke devises his
own story, allowing us to grasp something of what an all-Knowing, All-
Powerful God must be, we begin to realize what kind of power such a
God would automatically have to have over His creation. That great
block of spacetime, of well-ordered events, is His. And, if everything has
already been decided, we realize that this Christmas Story cannot be a
story at all, at least not about freely chosen human actions. It can’t
have the tense anticipation of an undetermined future with the
characters wondering if they’ll succeed or fail. It must be a fait
accompli.

We sense that that true meaning of our lives lies in knowing that our
freely made choices and acts are causes that create demonstrable effects
in the universe. These effects may be small, but they’re there. And, we
believe that if we never existed, the universe would be a slightly
different place. But this sense of meaning must—by definition—be
missing from a Scripted Universe.

This is precisely what Olaf Stapledon was driving at when he crafted his
own story, envisioning what such a universe and such a god might be
like. In “Star Maker,” we see a creator at work through the eyes of the
narrator, a human swept up by forces he cannot comprehend so that he,
and other finite beings like him from other planets, may observe the rise
and fall of great galactic civilizations, the shaping of the universe itself,
and its ultimate destruction. And in a blazing vision, he realizes that the
Star Maker makes many such universes, both before and after
fashioning ours, and does so precisely in the manner of an artist—a bit
more symmetry here, a bit more complexity there.
“I was indeed confronted by the Star Maker, but the Star Maker was now
revealed as more than the creative and therefore finite spirit. He now
appeared as the eternal and perfect spirit which comprises all things and
all times, and contemplates timelessly the infinitely diverse host which it
comprises. The illumination which flooded in on me and struck me down
to blind worship was a glimmer, so it seemed to me, of the eternal spirit’s
all-penetrating experience.

“It was with anguish and horror, and yet with acquiescence, even with
praise, that I felt or seemed to feel something of the eternal spirit’s temper
as it apprehended in one intuitive and timeless vision all our lives. Here
was no pity, no proffer of salvation, no kindly aid. Or here were all pity
and all love, but mastered by a frosty ecstasy. Our broken lives, our loves,
our follies, our betrayals, our forlorn and gallant defences, were one and
all calmly anatomized, assessed, and placed. True, they were one and all
lived through with complete understanding, with insight and full
sympathy, even with passion. But sympathy was not ultimate in the temper
of the eternal spirit; contemplation was. Love was not absolute,
contemplation was. And though there was love, there was also hate
comprised within the spirit’s temper, for there was cruel delight in the
contemplation of every horror, and glee in the downfall of the virtuous.
All passion, it seemed, were comprised within the spirit’s temper, but
mastered, icily gripped within the cold, clear, crystal ecstasy of
contemplation.”

In contrast to the believer’s mental image of the Christian God who

loves and cares for His creation and the beings within it, the Star Maker
considers the universe to be merely the artful arrangement of spacetime,
a celestial block of wood or painted canvas fashioned into discrete
chunks of spacetime made up of events that are worthy of
contemplation. There is no relationship, no story, no learning, no
triumph, no transcendence. There can’t be in a Scripted Universe; it
must merely exist. The excruciating theological problem that Christians
must face is that this quality of Scriptedness must be exactly the same in
a universe fashioned by the Christian God. Such a universe must
forever remain closed off from the possibility of anything genuinely new.
No unique thought or action, no novel idea, no emergent property,
nothing can be allowed in that had not been conceived of beforehand by
the deity.
It is clear from Clarke’s and Stapledon’s thought experiments that we
humans have serious trouble constructing appropriate models of the
universe, models that convincingly describe and explain the existence of
the universe and our own existence, especially our ability to think and
feel and dream, and our sense of freedom in an open-ended future,
without creating unmanageable theoretical and emotional
contradictions. We crawl out onto metaphysical tree limbs and saw
them off out from under ourselves as we attempt to make explicable the
inexplicable universe in which we live.

Sources

Arthur C. Clarke’s short story, “The Star,” was originally published in

1955, and was republished in his collection, “The Other Side of the Sky,
(pp. 114-119) in 1959 by Signet in New York.

Olaf Stapledon’s novel, “Star Maker,” was originally published in 1937,

and was republished as a 50th anniversary edition in 1987 by Jeremy P.
Tarcher, Inc. in Los Angeles.