Benford's literary precedents for the discussion of artificial intelligence and the possibility of a conflict between humanity and its creations are described in the entry for Great Sky River.

A number of other science-fiction writers have attempted to portray what it would be like to interact with a black hole or other similar stellar object, among the best known being Larry Niven's "Neutron Star" (1966), Poul Anderson's "Kyrie" (1968), Frederik Pohl's Gateway (1977) and Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1980), and Roger MacBride Allen's The Ring of Charon (1991). A comparably spectacular description of interstellar events, in this case the eventual collapse of the entire universe, can be found in Poul Anderson's Tau Zero (1970). An extremely crude and frankly allegorical presentation of travel into a black hole can be seen in the Walt Disney motion picture The Black Hole (1979).

A number of writers have also attempted to describe what life would...