The Star

Winner of the 1956 Hugo Award, Arthur C. Clarke’s science fiction short story “The Star” was first published in the science fiction magazine, Infinity Science Fiction, in 1955. The story explores Earth’s importance in the cosmos, questioning whether humans are significant in the grand scheme of the universe. Clarke was an influential science fiction writer. Before writing full-time, he served as a radar operator during WWII. He wrote more fifty books and received a CBE in 1989.

The narrator, an astrophysicist who is also a Jesuit priest, recently led a team of explorers into a remote star system, and now he is sitting in his cabin, analyzing the results. The priest has not been the same since venturing into deep space. He doubts the existence of God and life after death. He has not told anyone what triggered his religious doubts. The story explores this question.

The priest claims that he once believed in God’s grace and mercy. He thought God created the universe, the stars, and our solar system. He also believed that God created humans for a special divine purpose that we only discover after death. Now, surrounded by stars and three thousand light-years from the Vatican, the priest doubts everything. If there is a God, He is not kind or merciful.



He does not share his doubts with the team just yet. They love to joke around and question his faith. They cannot understand how a scientist is also a Jesuit priest. The problem is that they misunderstand religion, according to the priest. Jesuits, he says, love science. Ever since the eighteenth century, Jesuits have shaped scientific discoveries. There is nothing new about linking religion and science, whatever the astrophysicists think.

The priest discusses his report and why he is aboard the shuttle. He led the crew towards the mysterious Phoenix Nebula. Over two thousand years ago, this cosmic body drifted close enough to Earth for people to see its bright lights. There is nothing special about the Phoenix Nebula, at least not on the cosmic scale. It is a small nebula with only a single star at its center, and the star is dying.

The priest pauses to reflect on the holy Jesuit order. He envies the earlier priests because they did not travel into space, having limited resources and rudimentary knowledge. They did not face the existential questions that priests must now confront. He inwardly asks these priests if they could believe in God while seeing the universe from his perspective.



As the ship drifts ever closer to Earth, the priest spends time reflecting on his findings. He talks about the Phoenix Nebula and supernovas more generally. A supernova is a star that burns brighter than all others. Inside the Phoenix Nebula, a supernova appears a few times every thousand years. It happened across China, in A.D. 1054, and again in 1572. Astrophysicists like the Jesuit priests study the remains of these stars.

The shuttle took the astrophysicists into the Phoenix Nebula. The priest studied the damage from all those years ago. The star fragments are still unstable, even after all this time, but the explosion took up so much space in the universe that the human eye could not detect any movement. Only special equipment can detect the earthquake-like reverberations moving through space.

The priest despairs over the dying star. One day, it will burn out completely. However, what troubles the priest, more than anything, is the planet hanging on to the edge of the Nebula’s solar system. Although this planet is clearly uninhabited, intelligent life inhabited it once. The priest knows this because the shuttle landed, and the astrophysicists explored the ground.



The priest should be happy, finding signs of intelligent life so far from Earth. This is a discovery like no other. The problem is what happened on this isolated planet. It is obvious that something, or some force, burned the people to cinders, wiping out their infrastructure. The star, burning brightly inside the Phoenix Nebula, killed these people when it became a supernova.

Finally, the priest considers what this means. A star from deep space burned so wildly that humans on Earth worshipped it. We did not just worship it—we called it the Star of Bethlehem. The Star symbolized Jesus and subsequently Christianity. Yet, all those light years away, this very same star killed a planet and wiped a civilization into oblivion. The priest must ask why God let this happen, and what it means for us.

The other astrophysicists ask the priest this very question, and he cannot answer it. He knows that, if God cares so little about His people, Earth could disappear at any time. There is nothing significant about humanity. Perhaps we only worship Jesus because he arrived at the same time a star exploded across the sky. Since there is a rational explanation for the star, God may not exist.