What we see when we look up, like what we see when we look around, is not a well-ordered clockwork ticking its way toward eternity. It is a mix of short-lived illusions, long-lived evolutions, meaningless overlays—the constellations we love, after all, are just superimposed serendipities, stars at vastly different distances seen as one—lucky accidents and unforeseen developments. Some comfort can be found in the indifference of the cosmos to our stories; some other comfort lies in the thought that the cosmos tells stories much like our own.