Science fiction is filled with tales that pit human race against the natural world : seism , meteor strikes , Sharknados . While some of those tarradiddle are birth from abstract ( or totally made - up ) fears , others are inspired by specific occurrent — comets , catastrophes , and climate events .
Top image : Biela ’s Comet viaWikimedia Commons .
The Year Without a summertime : In April 1815 , Mount Tambora erupted on the island of Sumbawa , Indonesia . It was the big volcanic eruption since the Hatepe eruption in advertising 180 , and it pumped monolithic amounts of volcanic ash into the ambiance . It ’s loosely believe that the climate result of the blast were the causa of 1816 ’s “ twelvemonth Without a Summer . ” Thanks to the global temperature drop , spring and summer in 1816 in the Northern Hemisphere were cold and dreary , causing crops to run out and livestock to go bad , and triggering massive food shortage .
It ’s also the class that a group of artistically minded acquaintance gather on a Swiss vacation , and decided to occupy themselves during the constant rainfall by telling scary story . Famously , this gathering gave us the ejaculate of Mary Shelley ’s Frankenstein and a poem by Lord Byron that inspired John William Polidori to write The Vampyre .
One of those works , however , was directly link to the weather . Lord Byron write his famous poem“Darkness,”recounting a future in which the sun has gone out and mankind is entrust in lasting iniquity . Unlike many of its contemporary apocalyptic whole shebang , “ swarthiness ” does n’t finish with any kind of divine redemption for humanity ; instead , humans lose their faith in God as they perish at last , leaving only the mum shadow of the universe behind .
The Passage of Halley ’s Comet in 1910 : Halley ’s Comet do a bit of an apocalyptic uproar during 1910 thanks to the astronomer Camille Flammarion . Flammarion was himself a bit of a skill fiction writer , having written , among other workplace , La Fin du Monde(The close of the World ) in 1893 . And how does Flammarion imagine humanity might meet its end in his pre - apocalyptic novel ? By being struck by a comet . Flammarion must have still had killer comet on the nous when he publicly tell that he believed that the cyanogenetic gasses from the tail of Halley ’s Comet “ would impregnate [ the Earth ’s ] atmosphere and possibly snuffle out all lifespan on the satellite . ” After the New York Times find fault up that quote , there was a delirium for things like comet pills and comet - shielding gas masquerade .
Many assimilator believe that Flammarion ’s title inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ’s 1913 novellaThe Poison Belt , which has the Earth passing through a band of toxic ether . But the passage of Halley ’s Comet sure inspired the early calamity filmThe Comet .
Of course , Halley ’s Comet and the hoopla it attract have inspired whole caboodle of fiction for centuries . Back in 1681 , after the appearance of Halley ’s Comet in 1680 , Bernard de Fontenelle wrote his play La Comète , ridiculing the superstitious belief that the comet ’s appearing cause negatively charged effects .
The Passage of Biela ’s Comet in 1832 : We do n’t hear much about Biela ’s Comet anymore as it likely decay in 1852 , but in the 19th hundred it cause its own stir . During Biela ’s 1832 approach , uranologist Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers calculated that the comet would cross Earth ’s orbit on October 29th . ( Earth , fellow stargazer François Arago note , would not get to that same point in its orbit until a month after . )
course , the theme of a comet whose path intersected with Earth ’s get the public mental imagery , including that of Russian writer Prince Vladimir Odoevsky . Odoevsky compose two stories inspired by Biela ’s Comet,“Two Days in the Life of the Terrestrial Globe”and his unfinished novel The Year 4338 : Petersburg Letters . In the former , the approach comet is the main topic of conversation at a soirée . In the latter , we tour the futuristic St. Petersburg of 4338 as the world ’s superpower attempt to find a means to spare Earth from its impending impact with Biela ’s Comet .
The Tunguska Event : Now we know that the 1908 explosion that ping down 80 million trees in Siberiawas probably due to an icy cometormeteoriteimpact , but for decades , writers of all stripes have been fascinated by the Tunguska mystery . It pops up in Spider Robinson’sCallahan ’s Key , David Brin’sEarth , and novels from the Stargate , Star Trek , and Doctor Who universes ( not mention numerous comics ) . But it also feature prominently in Stanisław Lem ’s first scientific discipline fiction novel , The Astronauts , and Thomas Pynchon ’s historical novelAgainst the Day .
https://gizmodo.com/the-cloud-that-proved-the-1908-tunguska-explosion-was-a-5302803
Arthur C. Clarke opensRendezvous with Ramawith an account of the Tunguska Event :
Sooner or later , it was bound to happen . On June 30 , 1908 , Moscow escaped destruction by three hours and four thousand kilometre — a margin invisibly belittled by the standards of the universe of discourse .
He goes on to distinguish a similar ( fancied ) impact issue , this one in the year 2077 , that fire up the denizens of Earth up to the motive for a place defensive measure program .
The Charlevoix - Kamouraska Earthquake : On February 28 , 1925 , a 6.2 - order of magnitude earthquake reach Eastern Canada , with its epicenter in the Charlevoix region of Quebec . Although it did slight damage , it was the most brawny earthquake to hit Canada during the 20th century .
It also may have barrack one detail from H.P. Lovecraft ’s “ Call of Cthulhu . ” The blogMiskatonic Museumnotes ( as do several other sources ) that the Charlevoix - Kamouraska earthquake occur on the same engagement as a meaning Lovecraftian temblor : the February 28th earthquake that hits the South Pacific and shakes the vizor of R’lyeh above the urine .
look-alike viaMiskatonic Museum .
The Great Smog of 1952 : The Great Smog that pervaded the aura of London in late 1952was only a partially raw issue — after all , much of the smog ’s pollution was created by Londoners burning coal . But a series of specific weather condition consideration pile up the pollutants to create the deadly smog that burn people ’s heart and lungs , made profile too piteous to force anywhere , and left an estimate 12,000 dead .
https://gizmodo.com/the-london-fog-that-killed-over-ten-thousand-people-5955311
It ’s actually surprising that the smog does n’t show up in scientific discipline fiction more , peculiarly in environmentally themed fiction . But it ’s a prominent part of the Dr. Who novelAmorality Tale , sport the Third Doctor , and perhaps more importantly , is the villain of China Miéville ’s fantasy novelUn Lun Dun .
2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami : The undersea megathrust temblor that was centered near Sumatra , Indonesia , create a devastating tsunami , killing more than 230,000 people in 14 countries . In some parts of India , Indonesia , and Sri Lanka , the death toll among women were four times as likely as the death toll among men . A news report from Oxfamsuggests a number of reason for the disproportional decease rate : In some area , charwoman were likely to be wait on the beach for their fisherman husbands to generate ; in one , a large number of char befall to be bathing in the ocean when the tsunami hit . In others , the women were more potential to be rest home caring for the baby while the men were more likely to be at ocean , where the tsunami proved less venomous . On top of the dying and harm , the tsunami lead some areas with a profound gender asymmetry .
This was one of the aspiration behind Karen Lord ’s novelThe Best of All Possible Worlds . After the Sadiri homeworld is obliterated , the only surviving members of the raceway are the Sadiri who happen to be off - humankind at the time — most of them male person . After read accounts of Village where so many woman buy the farm , Lord imagined what it might be like for an intact alien race to go through a similar , sudden , unbalancing destructive consequence .
hp lovecraft
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