Into the Comet
short story by Arthur C. Clarke
"Into the Comet" is a science fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. It was originally published in Fantasy & Science Fiction in October 1960. It is one of several stories by many science fiction authors in which problems are solved by reverting to 'primitive' technology. The story was also published as "Inside the Comet".
Plot summary
The plot concerns a journey by a spaceship to enter through the layers of gas surrounding a comet and observe the nucleus at close range. This part of the mission is successful, but the ship's computer develops a malfunction and they are unable to compute the required orbit to escape the comet. The ionised gas in the comet's tail prevents any radio communication with Earth.
George Takeo Pickett, a part-Japanese journalist on board the ship, recalls the use of the abacus used by his granduncle, a bank teller, and persuades the ship's astronomer to give it a try. Once convinced, the astronomer creates a production line of the crew, using abaci to carry out the calculations that the computer would normally do.
The procedure is successful and an orbit is calculated to bring the ship within radio range of Earth.
“Into the Comet” enters the record as short story by Arthur C. Clarke. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Comet, short and story can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Into the Comet” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Comet, short and story provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6057957. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Into the Comet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.