My first sci-fi book I ever read was in the early 1950's in Europe (probably 1952) and it had 10 stories about a different form of life on every planet, including the sun. All I can really remember is that the life on the sun was organized plasma streams on the sun's outer layers, and the life on Pluto was permanent electrical currents within lakes of liquid helium on the planet's surface. Very imaginative at the time.
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2Three old stories about plasma life on the Sun are Clarke's "Castaway" and "Out of the Sun", and Clement's "Proof". I don't know any stories that old about electrical life on Pluto.– Organic MarbleMay 18, 2019 at 15:37
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2It’s too late to be the answer, but Larry Niven had superconductor-based life on Pluto in his early short story ”Wait It Out”– Mike ScottMay 18, 2019 at 15:51
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1The Niven one is way later than 1952.– Organic MarbleMay 18, 2019 at 16:42
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1@MikeScott: I think you should post that as an answer; it seems that the OP has conflated two things, one of which is very likely to be the Larry Niven short story you mention.– ruakhMay 18, 2019 at 18:13
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The idea of life as electric currents in seas of liquid helium is used by Arthur C. Clarke in his story "Crusade" (1968). You can listen to it on YouTube.– SQBNov 20, 2019 at 11:30
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1 Answer
That is Flight into Space edited by Don Wollheim and published in 1950 by Frederick Fell.
It's subtitled "Great Science-Fiction Stories of Interplanetary Travel" and just as you describe, has a story for the Sun, all nine planets, the Moon and the asteroids. The Sun creatures (in Sunward by Stanton A. Coblentz) are as you said, but the Plutonians (The Rape of the Solar System by Leslie F. Stone) were not -- in that story Pluto was located closer to the Sun until a war with Mars hurtled it outwards.
answered May 18, 2019 at 15:48
