Asteroids in Fiction - Extrasolar Asteroids

Extrasolar Asteroids

Some works of fiction take place on, or in, asteroid-like bodies or fields outside the Solar System:

• Miners in The Sky (1967), novel by Murray Leinster. The ring system around Thotmess, a gas giant in the system of the star Niletus where planets are called for Ancient Egyptian gods, is a completely lawless place where "claim jumping" is frequent. Miners, riding small "donkey ships", need to contend with both the harsh natural environment and with fierce human competitors. They must be ready at any moment to take up a gun or a bazooka to defend their finds of "grey matrix in which abyssal crystals occur". (The reader is not told what this may be, except that it is evidently valuable enough to kill for.) The extra-solar environment is chosen by Leinster in order to convey the feeling of an ever-expanding frontier – Sol's own Asteroid Belt has become "tame", as did the rings of Saturn, and the rough adventurous types move further on. (The historical model is obviously the recurring Gold Rush of the Nineteenth Century, drawing adventurers in 1840s from the settled East Coast to wild California, and in 1890s from settled California to the wild Klondike).
• Star Trek: The Original Series episode For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky (1968). A generational ship called the Yonada is shaped like an asteroid.
• The Mote in God's Eye (1974), novel by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven. The novel features the examination of evidence indicating the use of asteroids in planetary bombardment as the final strategy of a war that almost wipes out the warring species.
• Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977), film by George Lucas. In demonstrating the ability of the newly constructed Death Star to destroy planets, Grand Moff Tarkin destroys the planet Alderaan, thereby creating an asteroid field that the Millennium Falcon haplessly stumbles into when attempting to visit the planet.
• The Empire Strikes Back (1980), film. Han Solo enters an asteroid field to flee from the fleet of the evil Empire, and C-3PO thinks it is a bad idea. Han then hides his ship, the Millennium Falcon inside a giant asteroid; the ship then finds itself inside a colossal animal that lives within the asteroid.
• Buck Rogers in the 25th Century episode "Golden Man" (1981, season 2). The spaceship Searcher enters the asteroid belt of the Alpha Centauri system and becomes trapped against an asteroid by a powerful magnetic storm while responding to a distress radiobeacon signal, the plot involves the crew visiting an Earth-like planet Iris VII that exists within the belt so that they can escape the asteroid's gravity and destruction of the Searcher.
• Gap Cycle (1991–1996), series of novels by Stephen R. Donaldson's. Numerous human asteroid colonies, albeit not in the Solar System's Asteroid Belt.
• Night's Dawn Trilogy (1996–1999), novel trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton. Worlds colonized by humans use asteroids as their main source of minerals and location of their industries. The asteroids are either in orbit around a colonized world, are moved into orbit to be used as a base for the industry, or are in an asteroid belt.
• Homeworld 1999, game. In Mission 06: Diamond Shoals, the Kushan fleet must pass through a turbulent asteroid field, destroying asteroids before they impact the Mothership.
• Halo: The Fall of Reach, novel by Eric Nylund (2001). Describes an assault by Spartans on a hidden rebel base located within a hollowed-out asteroid. A large hangar/airlock protects the internal atmosphere of the facility from vacuum.
• Star Trek: Voyager episode Homestead (2001). A group of Talaxians are living in an asteroid field which another race is trying to mine.
• The Saga of Seven Suns (2003–present), series of novels by Kevin J. Anderson. A faction of humanity, "The Roamers", lives on asteroids.
• Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005), film. Padmé gives birth to Luke and Leia in an asteroid colony on Polis Massa.
• "Scar" (2006), episode of Battlestar Galactica television series. Raw materials are mined from an asteroid to gather resources vital to the fleet.
• Halo: The Cole Protocol, novel by Tobias Buckell (2008). Describes a massive linked cloud of asteroids trailing the orbit of a gas giant. The links contain mass transit systems.
• The Dead Space video game series (2008–), produced by EA's Visceral Games. Features the strip mining of entire asteroids and even terrestrial planets to fuel 26th century humanity's resource consumption.