Imagine being on some planet far away, just living your life, and a literal star comes through and ends all life in the system.
> Books from fifty years ago are difficult to read now, mostly due to a blatant sexism.
Fifty years ago was 1970. I don't think anyone has a problem reading Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret, Johnathan Livingston Seagull, or Ringworld due to blatant sexism.
"Finis" is a short story and was first published over 100 years ago.
> An example from the first page of this text: “Probably she had brains...”
"Probably she had brains..." is not evidence of sexism. It's not even evidence of a bias that people generally don't have brains, much less women. It's literally a character's (Eastwood's) conclusion based on observation of another character's (Mrs. Davis') behaviors and habits. Eastwood doesn't show surprise that a woman could be smart. He doesn't deny that she is smart in spite of the evidence. And even if he had done so, a character being sexist wouldn't ipso facto make the work as a whole sexist.
It would be slowly getting closer and closer over centuries.
The warning doesn't really change how the story ends though...
You definitely don’t want to be on a planet that gets flung out of both systems. Even if you somehow had millions of years of fuel, your civilization would probably never be close to any other body in space again.