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.

Fictional comets

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. »

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.
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.

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 is 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.

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 vehicles

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".

Lucifer's Hammer (1977), a novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, is an apocalyptic survival story featuring a comet impact on Earth.

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.

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.

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.
In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sozin's comet is a comet that passes about every 100 years and increased the power of Firebending immensely.
In the film Night of the Comet, 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.
In The Simpsons episode "Bart's Comet", a comet that Bart discovers is going to collide with Springfield. However, it breaks up on contact with Springfield's densely polluted atmosphere.

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 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.

Halley's Comet

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

Literature

In Heart of the Comet, a 1986 novel by Gregory Benford and David Brin, 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.

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.

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."

In "Comet Watch", a 1986 episode of Tales from the Darkside, Englebert Ames, an astronomer, is watching Halley's Comet and is in for a shock when Sir Edmond Halley himself arrives - he's been riding "his" comet all these years trying to elude Sarah, the woman pursuing him out of obsessed love.

Movies

In the 2005 South Korean film "Heaven's Soldiers" (Korean: "Cheon gun"), 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 Korean history.
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?"

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.

Comet Kohoutek

Kohoutek was a much-publicized comet of 1973.

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.

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!"