Comets in fiction

Comets in fiction
Comets have appeared in numerous works of fiction.
Destruction
Comets have been regarded as harbingers of doom since antiquity, which has influenced their depiction in fiction. Besides their traditional role as omens in works of fantasy such as E. R. Eddison's 1922 novel The Worm Ouroboros and the 1998 novel A Clash of Kings in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, they also wreak havoc directly in many works of science fiction. An early science fiction example is Edgar Allan Poe's 1839 short story "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion", wherein the Earth's atmosphere is lost to a comet, with catastrophic results.
Throughout the 1800s, the threat of impact events appeared in works ranging from Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.'s 1833 poem "The Comet" to 's 1891 utopian novel The Crystal Button; Or Adventures of Paul Prognosis in the Forty-Ninth Century. In Robert Duncan Milne's 1882 short story duology "Into the Sun" and "Plucked from the Burning", society collapses when Earth undergoes a global heat wave as a result of a comet striking the Sun. In Camille Flammarion's 1894 novel Omega: The Last Days of the World, scientists speculate on the various ways a comet impact could lead to humanity's extinction, though the event itself turns out to be survivable; a loose film adaptation by Abel Gance called End of the World was released in 1931. In George Griffith's 1897 short story "The Great Crellin Comet" (later expanded into the 1907 novel The World Peril of 1910), humanity constructs cannons to fire at a comet heading for Earth in order to avert disaster.
In the 1900s, a successive shift occurred wherein comets were largely replaced by other objects such as asteroids in threatening harm to Earth, though cometary impact events continued to appear in works like Jack Bechdolt's 1920 novel The Torch, where it forms part of the backstory for the post-apocalyptic setting. Dennis Wheatley's 1939 novel Sixty Days to Live depicts the lead-up to an expected catastrophic collision by a comet with Earth. The 1977 novel Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle revolves around a highly destructive impact event and its aftermath. In the 1988 novel Land's End by Jack Williamson and Frederik Pohl, a comet strike destroys the Earth's ozone layer, rendering the surface of the planet uninhabitable for humanity and forcing a migration beneath the oceans. Stephen Baxter's 2002 novel Evolution portrays the extinction of the dinosaurs as the result of a comet impact creating the Chicxulub crater. Outside of literature, the theme of averting disaster by intercepting an approaching comet has appeared in the 1990 video game Damocles, the 1998 film Deep Impact, and the 2021 film Don't Look Up—the last of which uses it as a vehicle for satire, where humanity's inept handling of the situation serves as an allegory for real-world efforts to combat climate change.
Besides striking the Earth directly, comets pose threats to humanity by colliding with the Moon in Jack McDevitt's 1998 novel Moonfall, where the impact shatters the Moon; and Susan Beth Pfeffer's 2010 novel This World We Live In, where it alters the Moon's orbit, resulting in weather patterns on Earth being disrupted. Other mechanisms by which comets cause calamities appear in works like W. E. B. Du Bois's 1920 short story "The Comet", where toxic gases from the comet leave a black man and a white woman in New York City as the only survivors; 's 1934 novel His First Million Women, where all men except one are rendered infertile; and Max Gunther's 1986 novel Doom Wind, where a close encounter with a comet creates immensely powerful winds. Conversely, H. G. Wells's 1906 novel In the Days of the Comet provides a rare example of positive effects arising from Earth encountering a comet: the gases in the comet's tail alter the atmosphere in a way that transforms human character for the better.
Expeditions
Besides comets coming to Earth, they are also visited by humans in some stories. These concepts are combined in Jules Verne's 1877 novel Hector Servadac (English title: Off on a Comet), where a cometary encounter with Earth results in a number of humans traversing the Solar System with the comet. More intentional visits to comets appear in Arthur C. Clarke's 1960 short story "Into the Comet", where humans exploring a comet end up stranded there as a result of a technological malfunction; Hal Clement's 1960 short story "Sunspot", where a comet is repurposed as a space station for studying the Sun at close range; and the 1971 short story "West Wind, Falling" by Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund, where a comet is used as a means of transportation. Ray Bradbury's 1968 radio play Leviathan 99 adapts the story of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick to space, with a comet standing in for the chased whale. In Duncan Lunan's 1972 short story "The Comet, the Cairn, and the Capsule", an expedition to a comet discovers that there are space probes on it that have been left by aliens.
Resources
Several stories depict the extraction of resources, mainly water, from comets; one such story is the 1992 novel Mining the Oort by Frederik Pohl.
Cometary life
A few works such as Arthur C. Clarke's 1975 novel Imperial Earth and Robert S. Richardson's 1946 short story "The Blindness" feature anthropomorphized thinking comets, and Diana Wynne Jones' 2007 novel The Game depicts an outright personified one. The 1986 novel Heart of the Comet by Gregory Benford and David Brin depicts Halley's Comet as inhabited.
See also
Asteroids in fiction
Comets (anthology)
References
Further reading
Fiction about comets
Fiction about the Solar System