THE FUSE

In 1937, the British philosopher and science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon published Star Maker, one of the most influential science fiction novels of all time. In it, advanced civilisations dismantle their planets and wrap their suns in shells of orbiting, energy-harvesting machinery, drinking starlight directly at the source. Two decades later, the physicist Freeman Dyson, who credited Stapledon, formalised the idea in a paper for Science — any sufficiently advanced civilisation, he reasoned, would eventually need more energy than its planet could supply, and would begin surrounding its star with a swarm of orbiting solar energy “collectors”.