"Listen," Reich began in a low voice. "Sorry to bother you but you must have noticed. You're in the star business. You have noticed, haven't you? The stars. They're gone. All of them. What's happened? Why hasn't there been any alarm? Why's everybody pretending? My God! The stars! We always take them for granted. And now they're gone. What's happened? Where are the stars?"
The figure straightened slowly and turned toward Reich. "There are no stars," it said.
It was the Man With No Face.
--Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man (1951)