Comet Madness
Richard J Goodrich Prometheus Books £21.99 HB
While the appearance of a bright comet in today’s skies can invoke great excitement, history informs us that such a spectacle was more likely to provoke quite a different response – one of foreboding.
In a comprehensive overview of the literature that documented these apparitions at the time, Comet Madness offers a thorough sweep through the musings of those foretelling the reasons behind a comet’s appearance and the consequences likely to befall the world from its fiery presence.
Author and historian Richard J Goodrich relates how civilisations reacted to the foretelling and subsequent sighting of a new arrival in the heavens. With the use of intriguing and often whimsical comet-based quotes to head up each chapter, he neatly catalogues in a flowing dialogue how centuries of archive material generally paint a desperate picture heralded by a comet’s presence, of widespread fear among all walks of life.
Goodrich charts the achingly slow process humankind grappled with to understand comets, with huge swathes of the public for much of the time refusing to believe that they were anything but doom-laden toxic invaders that could only spell death and misery for the inhabitants of Earth. However, where there’s a crowd there’s business, and the author also details the unscrupulous characters out to make money off the back of such impending dread, with ‘comet pills’ and ‘comet insurance’ available for purchase.
In a solid and engaging read, Goodrich also captures the many-sided arguments presented as scholars wrestled to conclusively explain the arrival of ‘hairy stars’. Notably, and because of the amount of archive material available from the period, the book focuses on the return of Halley’s Comet in 1910, including the immense influence on both media and public of French astronomer Camille Flammarion, who ignited fears by declaring that the comet’s tail would wipe humanity off the face of the Earth with its toxicity.
Featuring a wealth of historical information, from early Chinese archives to latter-day records, Comet Madness generates a collectively sound reflection of how such events impacted upon the human psyche, delivering an enjoyable amble through humankind’s relationship with comets. ★★★★★
Jonathan Powell is an astronomy author and columnist