In Popular Culture
See also: Comets in fiction and Category:Impact events in fictionThe depiction of comets in popular culture is firmly rooted in the long Western tradition of seeing comets as harbingers of doom and as omens of world-altering change. Halley's Comet alone has caused a slew of sensationalist publications of all sorts at each of its reappearances. It was especially noted that the birth and death of some notable persons coincided with separate appearances of the comet, such as with writers Mark Twain (who correctly speculated that he'd "go out with the comet" in 1910) and Eudora Welty, to whose life Mary Chapin Carpenter dedicated the song Halley Came to Jackson.
In science fiction, the impact of comets has been depicted as a threat overcome by technology and heroism (Deep Impact, 1998), or as a trigger of global apocalypse (Lucifer's Hammer, 1979) or of waves of zombies (Night of the Comet, 1984). Near impacts have been depicted in Jules Verne's Off on a Comet and Tove Jansson's Comet in Moominland, while a large manned space expedition visits Halley's Comet in Sir Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2061: Odyssey Three.
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