Comets in popular culture

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Comets are a recurring theme in works of popular culture, as a metaphor for anything that is fast, hot, famous, or strange. They often appear as subjects for science fiction authors and filmmakers although they are often misrepresented as fiery rather than icy objects.

Contents

[edit] Halley's Comet

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

[edit] Literature

[edit] Comics

  • In the popular comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin ascribes the end of the world to the passing of Halley's Comet. When Hobbes rebukes him on this, however, he defeatedly sets about starting his homework.

[edit] Television

  • In the 1966 episode of the TV series The Time Tunnel, entitled "End of the World", the main characters time travel back to 1910 and witness the hysteria generated by the comet. Interestingly, the episode portrays the people afraid of a collision with the comet rather than the "poison gas" from the comet's tail.
  • In the Futurama episode "A Taste Of Freedom", 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 an 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 Simpsons episode "Bart the Mother", the family is waiting for eggs to hatch, when Homer says: "This is the most exciting thing I've seen since Halley's Comet collided with the moon!"
  • In the Disney Channel TV series American Dragon Jake Long episode "Hero of the Hourglass", Jake goes back in time to tell his dad about the magical world at a beach picnic for Halley's Comet.
  • In the Supernatural episode "Dead Man's Blood" it is revealed that Samuel Colt made a gun with mystical properties "back in 1835, when Halley's comet was overhead."

[edit] Movies

  • In the movie TMNT Halley's Comet is mentioned by Michelangelo. In reply to Donatello's explaining of how the monsters are coming to New York, Michelangelo says: "Oh, so it's like Halley's Comet, only monsters come out?"

[edit] Games

  • In Famicom game JESUS: Dreadful Bio-Monster, 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 computer game Shadow of the Comet, the passing of the Comet, combined with a special vantage point, is the only time (presumably) certain entities can be summoned.

[edit] Music

  • The early rock and roll group, Bill Haley & His Comets, owes its name to the chance resemblance between the names of Bill Haley and Edmond Halley.
  • Richard "Nancy" Wright wrote a song entitled "Halley's Comet." The song was performed by the band Phish over 50 times during their 21 year career. A formal studio release of the song was never issued, although it is available on some of their Live Phish releases.
  • Mary Chapin Carpenter had a song about the comet, "Halley Came To Jackson", on her 1990 Shooting Straight in the Dark album.
  • The Australian band Drops Of Light released the song "Halley's Comet" in 1986. The music video incorporated footage from the Giotto spacecraft which had been donated to the band for the video clip. The song was written by Vincent Ruello and was published by PG Records Melbourne.

[edit] Comet Kohoutek

Kohoutek was a much-publicized comet of 1973.

[edit] Comics

  • In the comic strip Gordo by Gus Arriola, the title character occasionally drove a taxi named El Cometa Halley. During the media hype over Comet Kohoutek a rival taxi appeared named Cometa Kohoutek that tended to beat Gordo to his customers.
  • In December 1973, Snoopy and Woodstock saw Comet Kohoutek in the sky and mistook it for a sign that the world was coming to an end.

[edit] Television

  • On an episode of The Simpsons, principal Skinner comments that he once missed the chance to name a comet after himself, vowing revenge on "Principal Kohoutek... him and that boy of his!"

[edit] Music

  • The jazz composer Sun Ra performed the Concert for the Comet Kohoutek in December 1973, released as an album by ESP-Disk.
  • The first single of German avant-garde music group Kraftwerk, released in December 1973, was called "Kohoutek-Kometenmelodie". On the album Autobahn, which appeared a few months later, the track title was shortened to "Kometenmelodie" (comet melody).
  • The first album of Yahowha 13 from 1973 is called Kohoutek.
  • Argent's 1974 album Nexus (album) begins with three linked tracks inspired by Kohoutek: "The Coming of Kohoutek"; "Once Around the Sun"; and "Infinite Wanderer".
  • The rock band Journey wrote and recorded the instrumental "Kohoutek", which appeared on their self-titled debut album Journey in 1975.
  • The rock band R.E.M. named a song "Kohoutek" on their 1985 album Fables of the Reconstruction.
  • Bill Carroll released an album in 1994 titled Kohoutek.
  • The English techno group 808 State wrote and recorded the instrumental "Kohoutek", which appeared on their 1996 album Don Solaris.
  • The annual Kohoutek Music and Arts festival at Pitzer College is a free event named after and in honor of the comet held every spring.
  • The avant-garde jazz group Weather Report released an album in 1974 called "Mysterious Traveler." The cover artwork featured a painting of a comet in a nighttime sky.

[edit] Fictional comets

[edit] Literature

  • François Rabelais, in his Pantagrueline prognostication (1532), lampoons astrologers and mentions comets:
    « Et attendu le comete de l'an passé et la retrogradation de Saturne, mourra à l'hospital un grand marault tout catharré et croustelevé, à la mort du quel sera sedition horrible entre les chatz et les rats, entre les chiens et les lievres, entre les faulcons et canars, entre les moines et les oeufz. »
    Roughly translated: « Last year's comet and Saturn's retrogradation indicate that an old fart will die in an hospital, and this will cause great conflict between cats and rats, dogs and hares, falcons and ducks, monks and eggs. »
  • 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 heavenly bodies, after having terrorised the world for so long, have suddenly fallen into such discredit that they are thought only capable of causing colds. »
  • 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".
  • Edgar Allan Poe, for his The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall (1835), needed to supply his protagonist with a breathable atmosphere for is balloon trip to the Moon. He mentions the slowing down of Encke's Comet as proof of the existence of that atmosphere.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Verne's Hector Servadac, Voyages et aventures à travers le Monde Solaire (Off on a Comet, 1877) is a Victorian vision of touring the solar system via handy "comet Gallia".
  • Camille Flammarion's La Fin du Monde (The End of the World, 1894) describes a 24th-century collision of a comet with Earth.
  • 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.
  • Tove Jansson's Comet in Moominland (1946) depicts the world of the Moomins threatened by a fiery comet.
  • The Day of the Triffids (1951) is a novel by John Wyndham in which a meteor shower causes permanent and irreversible blindness in the population and renders them easy prey to giant mobile vegetables.
  • Lucifer's Hammer (1977), a novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, is an apocalyptic survival story featuring a comet impact on Earth.
  • 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 his Revelation Space series, particularly in the novel Redemption Ark (2002), Alastair Reynolds depicts a future human civilization's most advanced society, the Conjoiners, living in the interior of a comet in the very distant Oort Cloud of another star.
  • A comet very similar to Halley's Comet plays an important role in the first two novels of Glen Cook's dark fantasy series The Black Company, The Black Company and Shadows Linger.

[edit] Film and television

  • 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 hinted that the phenomenon was caused by a UFO.
  • In the TV series Millennium (1996), a fictional double-tailed comet, P1997 Vansen-West, features occasionally during the second season.
  • The Paramount/DreamWorks motion picture Deep Impact (1998) tells the story of a comet (Wolf-Biederman) on a collision course with Earth, and focuses primarily on the emotional reactions of those who are affected by the impending disaster.
  • In the Friends episode entitled "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.
  • 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.

[edit] Games

  • 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 videogame Final Fantasy VII (1997), a green materia can be equipped, allowing a character to cast a spell called Comet.
  • In the game Shadow The Hedgehog (2001), 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.
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