story identification - Trying to remember title of a book about people on an asteroid/comet

I'm trying to remember the title of a book. The plot was a group of people are stranded on a comet or asteroid. They establish kind of a colony inside it, and rig up rockets on the surface to move it. Some of the people discover some sort of algae type life form inside it, which bonds with and mutates people helping them to survive. They set the asteroid to head for Earth but have to change the course when authorities on Earth threaten to blow the asteroid up because of the mutations.

Answer

Indeed this is Heart of the Comet, a 1987 book by David Brin and Gregory Benford. I've read this book so many times and it never loses its appeal...

A group of spacers and scientists land on Halleys Comet, and set about harvesting it for the materials and metals that comets are made of. They install mass launchers in order to change the orbit of the comet, to bring it into the inner solar system and make the harvesting easier.

Unexpectedly they encounter life within Halley, life that lives deep within the comet, life that is inimical to start with but the spacers and scientists gradually adjust and come to terms with the Halley-life (as they call it). Earth attempts to blow up the comet to stop any of the extra-terrestrial life reaching earth, so the comet crew change trajectory to move out of the solar system.

This is a really good hard sf story, totally recommended...

Comments

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I am from India, this anime or animated series (I can't remember this was made by the Japan or other countries) was aired between 2009 and 2012 probably in Jetix/Disney XD (but I'm not sure). This anime starts with a boy (the main character, I forgot his name) who find a stone (or crystal like thing) in his dad's property, his dad was missing that time. Some day he accidentally hire a creature/monster from that stone. Other day some creature attack him and he was saved by his creature and the story begins. In his journey to solve the mystery he meets a middle aged man 'Dante' (probably that was the name; this is the only character name I can remember). He had also some stone. After that they meet with one girl and a women (one of the girls is same age with the main boy character and probably will become his partner as the story goes on). Another women probably Dante's partner. Four of them started their journey to collect all the stone/crystal. They are collecti...

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