Comets in fiction

Comets have, through the centuries, appeared in numerous works of fiction. In earliest times they were seen as portents, either of disaster or of some great historical change. As knowledge of comets increased, comets came to be imagined not just as symbols, but as powerful forces in their own right, capable of causing disaster. More recently, comets have been described as destinations for space travelers.

Hale Bopp as seen in the skies of Croatia in late-March 1997.

Fictional comets

Their properties

As destructive forces
  • Voltaire, in his Lettre sur la prétendue comète (1773), comments ironically on the rumours of impending doom surrounding Lalande's presentation to the Académie des sciences of his "Réflexions sur les comètes qui peuvent approcher de la Terre".
  • Poe's The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion (1839) is an end-of-the-world story involving a comet that steals the nitrogen from Earth's atmosphere, the remaining oxygen causing our fiery end.
  • Camille Flammarion's La Fin du Monde (The End of the World, 1894) describes a 24th-century collision of a comet with Earth.
  • Tove Jansson's Comet in Moominland (1946) depicts the world of the Moomins threatened by a fiery comet.
  • Lucifer's Hammer (1977), a novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, is an apocalyptic survival story featuring a comet impact on Earth.
  • The Paramount/DreamWorks motion picture Deep Impact (1998) tells the story of a comet (fictional Wolf-Biederman) on a collision course with Earth, and focuses primarily on the emotional reactions of those who are affected by the impending disaster.

Of the past
  • Jules Verne's Voyages et Aventures du Capitaine Hatteras (Journeys and Adventures of Captain Hatteras, 1866) briefly alludes to then-current hypothesis of an antediluvian cometary collision with Earth, responsible for shifting our planet's rotation axis.

As supernatural signs
  • Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis' Lettre sur la comète (1742) mentions:
    « Ces astres, après avoir été si longtemps la terreur du monde, sont tombés tout à coup dans un tel discrédit, qu'on ne les croit plus capables de causer que des rhumes. »
    Roughly translated: « These stars, after having been the terror of the world for such a long time, have suddenly fallen in such discredit that they are not thought to be able to cause anything but colds. »
  • In George R. R. Martin's A Clash of Kings, a comet with a red tail is seen in the sky and interpreted as both an ill omen or a fortuitous one by the various characters and factions in the book.
  • In E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, a comet appears before the final battle before the walls of Carcë: "The same night there appeared in the sky impending over Carcë a blazing star with two bushes." Both sides in the conflict see it, "[a]nd King Gorice, sitting in his chamber with his baleful books, beheld that star and its fiery streamers, which the King rather noted than liked. For albeit he might not know of a certain what way that sign intended, yet was it apparent to one so deeply learned in nigromancy and secrets astronomical that this thing was fatal, being of those prodigies and ominous prognosticks which fore-run the tragical ends of noble persons and the ruins of states."

As vehicles

Other properties
  • Edgar Allan Poe, for his The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall (1835), needed to supply his protagonist with a breathable atmosphere for his balloon trip to the Moon. He mentions the slowing down of Encke's Comet as proof of the existence of that atmosphere.
  • H. G. Wells' In the Days of the Comet (1905) is an account of how the vapours of a comet's tail cause an instantaneous worldwide utopian society.
  • In Dan Simmons' Hyperion universe (1989), Ouster orbital forest rings make use of captured comets as irrigation devices; the orbital forest receives water and other important supplies from passing 'shepherd' comets.
  • In "Masks", an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the archive of an alien race is found within an eighty-seven million year old rogue comet.

In media works

Film and television
  • In the Cartoon Network series Camp Lazlo, Scoutmaster Lumpus wants to watch a comet named after him that passes Earth once every 50,000 years, but the lights at the Jelly Bean cabin are interfering with his viewing. At first the Jelly Beans think he wants to blow up the moon. Lumpus later doesn't see the comet until it disappears for another 50,000 years.
  • The 2003 anime film Pokémon: Jirachi Wish Maker, The story revolves around the Millennium Comet, which appears in the night sky for seven days once every thousand years. This is also when the Mythical Pokémon Jirachi awakens from its long slumber to absorb the comet's energy. Also May buys a seven-paneled novelty that is said to grant a person one wish if a panel is closed for each night the comet appears and is visible in the sky, eventually she forgets to close the last panel of her novelty, but simply brushes it off. Though she never reveals what she wished for, she is confident it will still come true.
  • In the TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sozin's Comet passes every 100 years, grazing the upper atmosphere, and amplifies the power of Firebending immensely. Aang must defeat the Fire Lord before the Comet's arrival, otherwise the world would be left beyond repair.
  • The TV movie A Fire in the Sky (1978), starring Richard Crenna, depicts a comet that impacts Phoenix, Arizona.
  • In the Friends episode titled "The One Where They're Up All Night" (2001), Ross Geller takes the group on the roof of their apartment to view the Bapstein-King comet.
  • The plot of the film Maximum Overdrive (1986) involves radiation from the tail of a passing comet, causing every machine on Earth to come to life and become homicidal, although at the end of the film it is stated that the phenomenon was caused by a UFO.
  • In Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995), the Power Rangers use Ryan's comet to defeat Ivan Ooze.
  • In the TV series Millennium (1996), a fictional double-tailed comet, P1997 Vansen-West, features occasionally during the second season.
  • In the film Night of the Comet (1984), the Earth passes through the tail of a comet, dooming all human and animal life except for those who happened to be completely enclosed inside metal containers at the time of the rendezvous.
  • Comet Yano-Moore is a fictional comet invented for the BBC science fiction series Space Odyssey: Voyage To The Planets (2004) and named after and as a tribute to the British astronomer Patrick Moore and the Japanese astronomer Hajime Yano.
  • Comets feature heavily in two episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise. In "Breaking the Ice", the Enterprise crew discovers and explores the surface of the largest comet found to that date. In "Terra Prime", a shuttlecraft evades defense forces on Mars by hiding behind an impacting comet.
  • In The Simpsons episode "Bart's Comet" (February 5, 1995), a comet Bart discovers is going to collide with Springfield. However, it breaks up on contact with Springfield's densely polluted atmosphere.
  • In the series finale (List of H2O: Just Add Water episodes) of H2O: Just Add Water, the mermaids Cleo, Rikki, and Bella save Mako Island, the Gold Coast, Australia, and more importantly the Earth from a comet called Comet Eva, which was appearing for the 1st time since 1790, when an Irish mermaid named Eva (who the comet is named after) saved Ireland and the Earth from the comet by sending it back into space with a "tower of light" (which later is revealed to be just water). The girls would use the tower of light/water to send the comet back into space, and would graduate Year 12 the next day, thus ending the series on a high note.
  • In the anime Charlotte, a short-period comet called Charlotte passes near Earth every 75 years and spreads dust onto Earth. Any pre-adolescent that inhales the dust will develop a special superhuman ability upon reaching puberty.
  • In the Japanese animated movie, Your Name., a fragment from the fictional comet Tiamat impacts the fictional town of Itomori in Gifu Prefecture, Japan, and kills 500 people. However, the people that died during the event are eventually saved by their mayor after he was convinced to evacuate the townspeople by his daughter who saw their deaths in a previous timeline.
  • The 2013 film Coherence is a psychological thriller due to reality-warping effects of a passing comet. In the dialogue, one character likens this to fictional reported effects from an earlier comet over Finland.

Games
  • In Final Fantasy VII (1997), The Final Boss Safer Sephiroth uses the summon Super Nova. The Animation for the summon has a comet that slowly works its way through the galaxy destroying all the planets in orbit, missing the Earth and striking the Sun. The explosion from the impact causes the Sun to explode, dealing damage to the player's party members.
  • In Illusion of Gaia (1994), comets have their own mythology, once used by ancient civilizations to accelerate the evolution of mankind and other planets, before eventually becoming abused into weapons of war through using them to mutate monsters. One such comet is bound for an Earth still in an age similar to that of the Age of Discovery, being the main conflicting force and a play onto the comet's own calamitous symbolism.
  • In the fictional world of Myth (1997), featured in the Bungie made computer game of the same name, every thousand years the world moves from an age of light, to an age of darkness and vice versa, brought about by war. Every time this has happened, a great comet has been observed in the sky.
  • In the game Shadow the Hedgehog (2005), a special comet holding the game's main enemies (the black arms) is the black comet. It is used to spread a gas across the planet that paralyses any non-black arm so the spawn can eat them.
  • In Super Mario Galaxy (2007), the character Rosalina uses a comet-like building to travel the universe.
  • In the world of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1986, 2005, 2009), Sigmar's Comet is a twin-tailed comet which has been sighted on multiple occasions throughout history, always heralding great or tumultuous events. In Sigmarite theology, it represents destiny, fate, and the hand of Sigmar acting upon the world; as a very popular symbol for religious Sigmarites, it is found on buildings, in religious mosaics and relics, on weapons and medals, and so forth.

Halley's Comet

As the first-discovered periodic comet, and the best known by name, Halley's Comet has a prominent place in fiction.

Games
  • In Famicom game Jesus: Dreadful Bio-Monster (1987), Halley's Comet has been approaching Earth for quite some time, and the nations of Earth send a mission to investigate the comet, as some form of life has been detected inside the gas of the comet.
  • In the Infogrames computer game Shadow of the Comet (1993), the passing of the comet, combined with a special vantage point, is the only time (presumably) certain entities can be summoned.

Literature
  • In Gregory Benford and David Brin's novel Heart of the Comet (1986), a multinational team colonizes Halley's Comet, building a habitat within the ice.
  • Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2061: Odyssey Three (1987) includes a detailed description of a manned mission to Halley's Comet.
  • Spider Robinson's short story "The Gifts of the Magistrate" deals with the trial of a woman who altered the orbit of Halley's Comet to try to save the life of her friend Clement Samuels, who believed that he, like Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain), having been born during one appearance of the comet, was doomed to die during the next.
  • Marie Brennan's novel A Star Shall Fall treats the Great Fire of London as creating a dragon, which, banished to Halley's comet, returns in 1759, threatening London, England with destruction.
  • William Kennish's book of poetry, Mona's Isle (1844), includes the ode "On the Appearance of Haley's [sic] Comet, 1835".
  • Fred Hoyle a novel in two parts "Comet Halley" (1985), a Cambridge professor Dr Isaac Newton investigate strange signals from the approaching Halley's Comet.

Movies
  • In the South Korean film Heaven's Soldiers (Korean: 천군; Hanja: 天軍; RR: Cheongun, 2005), the appearance of Halley's Comet causes the protagonists - North and South Korean soldiers engaged in a life-and-death struggle - to go back to 1572, the time of the comet's earlier passage, and become involved in heroic phases of 16th century Joseon history.
  • The 1944 film The Adventures of Mark Twain shows Halley's Comet.
  • The 1985 film The Adventures of Mark Twain involves Mark Twain piloting an airship to meet Halley's Comet during its 1910 passage.
  • The 1985 film Lifeforce depicts a space shuttle expedition to Halley's Comet succumbing to space vampires found inside an immense spaceship in the comet's coma.

Television
  • In The Time Tunnel episode titled "End of the World" (1966), the main characters time travel back to 1910 and witness the hysteria generated by the comet. The episode portrays the people afraid of a collision with the comet rather than the "poison gas" from the comet's tail. Worst of all, the unnecessary panic prevents the rescue of men trapped in a nearby mine.
  • In the Futurama episode "A Taste of Freedom" (December 22, 2002), it is mentioned that Earth once fought a war "to take back Halley's Comet". Comet Halley has also been mined for water ice in another episode.
  • The Doctor Who serial "Attack of the Cybermen" features the titular villains planning to devastate Earth by steering the comet into the planet.
  • In the "Salley's Comet" (November 25, 1996) episode of the Nickelodeon TV series Hey Arnold!, Arnold and Gerald urge the city to turn off the lights so they can see the comet.
  • In the Tales from the Darkside episode "Comet Watch" (1986), astronomer Englebert Ames is watching Halley's Comet and is in for a shock when Sir Edmond Halley himself arrives; Halley has been riding "his" comet all these years trying to elude Sarah, the woman pursuing him out of obsessed love.
  • In The Simpsons episode "Bart the Mother" (September 27, 1998), Homer claims to remember the collision of Halley's Comet with the Moon.
  • In Halt and Catch Fire, Gordon's teenage daughter Haley creates a website called Comet which evolves into one of the first search engines on the internet.[2][3]
  • In the Martha Speaks episode Martha Plays a Part, Helen Lorraine is nervous about having to play Halley's Comet (mistakenly referred to "Hailey's Comet") in a school play, all while being encouraged by her friend T.D. (who plays Pluto) and cousin Carolina (who plays the Sun).

Musical Lyrics
  • Mary Chapin Carpenter's album Shooting Straight in the Dark includes the song "When Halley Came to Jackson," telling of an infant born in 1910 who survives to the 1986 appearance, watching the comet from her parents' porch.
  • Chas & Dave recorded the humorous "Halley's Comet" song in 1986 to celebrate its return that year.
  • Julee Cruise's 1989 album Floating Into The Night contains the song The World Spins by David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti which contains the line "Halley's comets come and gone..."

References
  1. Barger, Andrew (2013). Mesaerion: The Best Science Fiction Short Stories 1800-1849. U.S.A: Bottletree Books LLC. p. 59. ISBN 978-1-933747-49-1.
  2. Strange, Adario (7 September 2017). "'Halt and Catch Fire' shows a history of Silicon of Valley that gives women their rightful seat at the table". mashable.com.
  3. Schwartz, Ryan (26 August 2017). "Halt and Catch Fire Recap: Will Haley's Comet Take the Web by Storm?". tvline.com.
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