Lucifer's Hammer | 
|  | | | Title: | Lucifer's Hammer | | Author: | Larry Niven
Jerry Pournelle | | Publisher: | Del Rey | | Type: | Book / Mass Market Paperback | | Publication Date: | 12 May, 1985 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0449208133 / 9780449208137 | | List Price: | $7.99 | | Amazon Price: | $7.99 | |
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Product Description
The gigantic comet had slammed into Earth, forging earthquakes a thousand times too powerful to measure on the Richter scale, tidal waves thousands of feet high. Cities were turned into oceans; oceans turned into steam. It was the beginning of a new Ice Age and the end of civilization. But for the terrified men and women chance had saved, it was also the dawn of a new struggle for survival--a struggle more dangerous and challenging than any they had ever known....
"Massively entertaining."
CLEVELAND PLAIN-DEALER
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Customer Reviews:
• Pre-internet Disaster Story 21 September, 2008
Smog, Pong, PoseidenAdventure/ToweringInferno/Earthquake/Jaws, Johnny Carson, Oldsmobile Toronado, CB Radio, Ralph Nader, Star Trek reruns, post-Vietnam, gas lines, pull-tabs on beer cans...
This is a Disaster Story told from a pre-Internet mindset. If you want to know what the mid-70's mindset was, then read the first half of this book... maybe not for the story (which is outdated), but for the perspective on the 70's. It was the last days before the Microprocessor really began changing the cultural landscape at an exponential pace... in a few years there would bloom in rapid succession SpaceInvaders/PacMan, Apple II, "The IBM PC Clone", cheap air travel for the masses, and "The Internet". Tri-Network TELEVISION still ruled the roost, and Carter hadn't yet destroyed the USA's military and pride, as well as Iran's Shah, and run inflation up to 21% (all setting the stage for the USA to be proud of an Olympic HOCKEY team, and for Reagan to get in, free the hostages, and then destroy the USSR). It was the last days of a "certain naivete"... CANNON was off the air - DALLAS was debuting... Chrysler and the rest of Detroit were now producing nothing but garbage... for better or worse, "Muscle Cars" and the "Kawasaki Triple" were finished, and all cars would get FuelInjection/CatalyticConverters - and LA smog would start vastly improving... Saturday Night Fever and this book mark the boundary between two eras.
The intertwining story, which contains loads of deeply-explored characters, is written in mature Heinlein form, and reminds me a lot of STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND from the early 60's (with a little bit less sex and violence thank goodness).
I don't really consider this book "SciFi", as there is not much effort to "predict the future"... save for the fact that the authors play around a bit with what "might have been" if the lingering Apollo/Space Shuttle controversy of the time had been allowed to become a competition. I found the earlier parts of the book to be so out of date, that it was best read like it was an "Alternate History" novel. But, once you get to the second half of the book, the disaster hits, and mankind is thrown back to the stoneage (with pockets of technology and history surviving), the book becomes something totally different, and the 2nd part is really a classic.
One other thing that strikes me is that in today's era of runaway political correctness, this book would never be able to be published in its current form. OJ Simpsonesque characters simply "aren't guilty" in today's world, and inner-city gangland antics can't be written about - only "sung about" by the self-same "gangsters" - in that sense, this book offers a refreshing insight into reality and escape from today's madenning PC disreality. While the 70's were naive in certain technological and political senses, they were more REAL than today's PC run amok.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2OPBCF28QTARX
• One Of The Worst Books Ever Written 29 November, 2008
I thoroughly enjoy good fiction, especially a TEOTWAWKI based one. This could have been a great book, but the authors chose to destroy the story line with as much vulgarity and obscenities as they could possibly pack into the pages. The first 1/3 of the book is unbelievably boring - I skipped much of it hoping it would improve. The middle of the book was better and was much more cohesive, but then the obscenities started again. I'm throwing this book where it belongs - in the trash. I had high hopes after the reviews, but there is much better fiction available out there.
Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse by Mr. Rawles is excellent, and also Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. Don't waste your money on Lucifer's Hammer.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A28E87HVOYLVVV
• Slow Start 22 December, 2008
the first 200 pages are slow and boring, but then it gets really good. good writing so that's not an issue at all
- Reviewed by customer ID: AUA15GOQSMBH0
• Great Read That Endures 08 December, 2008
My second read of the book twenty five years later reminded me again of the quality of both the story and the writing. It leaves one wondering what would really happen after a major natural disaster, large act of terrorism or even an major attack by another nation.
The rapid decline of law and order and civil behavior is not stuff of racial bias but rather documented (thankfully on a much smaller scale) in the riots in LA, near breakdown of civil order after earthquakes in both Northern and Southern California and the events of Katrina.
Twenty five years of history only made the story more believable. If written today it might well be inner city Hispanics banding together. Regardless of race we have become a society where an overwhelming percentage of people are not intellectually or physically prepared to deal with a world even temporarily without Starbucks and 7-11.
As others have noted the story starts slow, like building the foundation of a building it only seems that nothing is happening. The foundation serves the rest of the story well and early patience is well rewarded.
The struggles, the characters and the reemergence of civil structure adds depth to the story.
Highly recommended.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AI5OR1HSYXCCL
• The "hammer" Drops! 03 January, 2009
The Hamner-Brown comet, separately but concurrently discovered by a pair of very excited amateur astronomers, was still a very, very long way from the earth in a typical high eccentricity orbit having barely begun its descent toward the sun. As the world's telescopes are trained on the incoming comet and its orbit is calculated to higher and higher degrees of accuracy, the possibility of an impact with the earth escalates to an uncomfortably high probability. The minute changes in mass and momentum, outgassing and the resulting small changes in the comet's orbit caused by the sun's radiation make it impossible, even up to the moment of actual impact, to accurately predict whether the comet would graze the earth's atmosphere, pass it by entirely or devastate earth with a direct impact.
Panic begins to tighten its grip on the world as a zealous fundamentalist preacher whips the US into a religious frenzy suggesting that the comet is a punishment from God visited upon a wicked humanity. Hoarding begins and roads clog as the population begins a mass exodus from coastal cities in anticipation of the possible tsunami that would result if the comet landed in the ocean. Even a joint Apollo-Soyuz mission sent into space to study the comet, now dubbed "The Hammer" by popular media, is unable to confirm or refute its potential collision with earth.
The final result is perhaps the worst of all possible outcomes. The Hammer does fall, having broken up into several smaller comets that land around the world with devastating results, striking parts of Europe, Africa, the Gulf of Mexico, and both the Pacific and Atlantic. Volcanoes and earthquakes are endemic around the entire Pacific basin as fault lines shift in California and everywhere else along the fabled Ring of Fire. Tsunamis ravage every conceivable inch of exposed ocean coastline and upstream for miles along major rivers such as the Mississippi. Weeks of non-stop rain liberally loaded with salt from the ocean impact drowns a devastated world for weeks after the initial impact and flooding destroys practically every dam and levee, leaving a search for food a top survival priority. Civilization simply falls apart as people are forced to defend themselves and whatever they were able to salvage from one another.
"Lucifer's Hammer" is Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's graphic but frighteningly realistic vision of humanity's descent into anarchy and chaos and its struggle to re-establish a semblance of normality after an apocalyptic event devastates the world with inconceivable damage and death but does not actually push humanity over the brink of extinction - hoarding; heroism; brutality; the potential change in attitudes towards sex, sexuality, racism, marriage, religion and love; the evolution (or devolution) of government from democracy into potential more effective alternatives under the circumstances; the re-establishment of innovation and technological expertise; the potentially changing roles of women in a more basic almost feudally structured society; and, of course much more.
Most readers would class "Lucifer's Hammer" as science fiction. However, I believe it is fundamentally an exciting thriller and a very impressive extended essay on the psychology and anthropology of humanity's behaviour in the face of global tragedy. The science of the comet, its formation in the distant Oort cloud, its orbit, its structure, its evolution as it accelerates towards the sun and the aftermath as the remnants race away from earth back into deep space, is touched upon but only in a cursory fashion. Sci-fi fans will probably think the book relatively weak in this area and would have hoped for much more depth in the science. Thriller fans, on the other hand, will see "Lucifer's Hammer" as an exciting post-apocalyptic novel that just begs to be turned into a movie with an enormous budget for special effects.
From my perspective as a long-time fan of classic sci-fi, "Lucifer's Hammer" gets only three stars. Others, less concerned about the science will doubtless rate it higher. I recommend that you read it and judge for yourself. You'll enjoy the book no matter which genre your tastes favour.
Paul Weiss
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3E8QNDC7CV44
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