From the sublime to the ridiculous. Heart of the Comet is sci-fi pap by David Brin and Gregory Benford who really should have known better. Shorn of the trivia - unconvincing politics and uninteresting affairs between stock characters - the story is that an expedition to Halley's comet arrives, sits on it for the 70-odd years of its passage, with various "exciting" adventures along the way, mostly with coping with the primitive life that they gradually realise is there. About the only thing of value in the nearly 500 pages is a brief quotation from Dover Beach.
What can one compare it to? The Uplift stuff from Brin was far better - I read that ages ago, but the overall scope was so much broader. Or In the Ocean of the Night, by Benford: again, a glorious sweep of imagination.
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