Anyone remember a sci-fi novel where people didn't look up?
There was a brief visit to a planet so completely surrounded by space debris that the stars and sun were not visible. The sky was a constant dusky haze. When the heroes of the book landed, no one saw them until they actually touched down. No one ever thought to look up. It would be like looking down at the ground and expecting to see something under the surface.
The dust cloud was actually the supercomputer Hactar who had been dispersed millions of years before. It was central to the novel Life The Universe And Everything.
Yes, I'm a bit of a HHGTTG geek; why do you ask? :-)
in which Canada got tired of various star wars schemes that the US and USSR persisted in and used nuke cannons to launch enough garbage into orbit to prevent any kind of space flight or satellites for a few centuries. Minor plot point in the story. Not a particularly memorable story otherwise.