Asteroids have appeared in fiction since the 1800s, the first one—

Ceres Ceres most commonly refers to: * Ceres (dwarf planet), the largest asteroid * Ceres (mythology), the Roman goddess of agriculture Ceres may also refer to: Places Brazil * Ceres, Goiás, Brazil * Ceres Microregion, in north-central Goiás ...

—having been discovered in 1801. A theory to explain the existence of the

asteroid belt The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, c ...

that was popular in the 1800s was that it consists of the remnants of a planet predicted by the Titius–Bode law to exist between

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...

and

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth t ...

that had somehow been destroyed, and this was reflected in early science fiction works such as

Robert Cromie Robert Cromie (1855–1907) was a Northern Irish journalist and novelist. Early life and family Robert Cromie was the third son of Dr. Cromie J.P., of Clough, the local registrar of births and deaths and ruling elder of Clough Presbyterian chu ...

's 1895 novel '' The Crack of Doom''; several works of the 1950s reused this idea to warn of the dangers of nuclear weapons. Early works also tended to depict the asteroid belt as a region that must be navigated carefully lest one's spaceship should collide with one of the asteroids, one example being Isaac Asimov's 1939 short story "

Marooned off Vesta "Marooned off Vesta" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was the third story he wrote, and the first to be published. Written in July 1938 when Asimov was 18, it was rejected by '' Astounding Science Fiction'' i ...

"; later works mostly recognize that the individual asteroids are very far apart and accordingly pose little danger to spacecraft, the '' Star Wars'' films being an exception to this general rule. A concept of more enduring popularity is that of

asteroid mining Asteroid mining is the hypothetical exploitation of materials from asteroids and other minor planets, including near-Earth objects. Notable asteroid mining challenges include the high cost of spaceflight, unreliable identification of asteroids ...

, featured in early works such as

Clifford D. Simak Clifford Donald Simak (; August 3, 1904 – April 25, 1988) was an American science fiction writer. He won three Hugo Awards and one Nebula Award. The Science Fiction Writers of America made him its third SFWA Grand Master, and the Horror W ...

's 1932 short story " The Asteroid of Gold"—where asteroids were often the setting of a space version of the Klondike Gold Rush—as well as more modern works like Ben Bova's 2001 novel '' The Precipice''. Another use humans have found for asteroids in fiction is turning them into space stations or habitats, often by hollowing them out, as in

Robert A. Heinlein Robert Anson Heinlein (; July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accu ...

's 1939 short story " Misfit".

Impact events An impact event is a collision between astronomical objects causing measurable effects. Impact events have physical consequences and have been found to regularly occur in planetary systems, though the most frequent involve asteroids, comets or me ...

or threats thereof are depicted in numerous works such as Arthur C. Clarke's 1993 novel '' The Hammer of God'', and in the 1985 novel ''

Footfall ''Footfall'' is a 1985 science fiction novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The book depicts the arrival of members of an alien species called the Fithp that have traveled to the Solar System from Alpha Centauri in a large ...

'' by

Larry Niven Laurence van Cott Niven (; born April 30, 1938) is an American science fiction writer. His best-known works are '' Ringworld'' (1970), which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards, and, with Jerry Pournelle, '' The Mote in God's E ...

and

Jerry Pournelle Jerry Eugene Pournelle (; August 7, 1933 – September 8, 2017) was an American scientist in the area of operations research and human factors research, a science fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and one of the first bloggers. In the 1960s ...

they are outright weaponized.

References

Further reading