Lucifer's Hammer

Product Information

Later, they descend into I'm a Humanitarian territory, and use forced cannibalism ("You can eat it, or you can be eaten. Of course, the difference is that in Seveneves, we're getting hit by moon bits and in Lucifer's Hammer, by comet bits, but the setup is very similar: We see the discovery of the phenomenon, the media reaction, and start glimpsing the effects on the daily lives of a wide range of people, including politicians, experts, and average joes. The third part part I just endured unable to suspend disbelief at all as the cannibles attack and they fight them off with mustard gas.

There’s the rich, eccentric discoverer of the comet, a documentary film maker, a senator, his daughter, a preacher, a secretary, a power plant executive, a stalker, the leader of a burglary ring, a mail carrier, various astronauts-in-training (of all of these, there are two black men, two white women and one Russian woman represented, and just guess who the secretary and the burglar represent)… I discovered there was a good reason for a list of characters at the beginning of the book. Book has light bumping at the head and tail of the spine and at the tips of the two upper outside corners. The water vaporized by the oceanic impacts condenses back into rains, causing massive flooding and destroying pretty much any dam still standing after the earthquakes, thus drowning many people too far from the coasts to be killed by the tidal waves.The story kept moving and the various threads set up at the start of the story were woven into a believable whole towards the end. Niven and Pournelle start with a great idea, a since tried-and-true staple of the disaster genre–Earth facing an impending meteor pass. In addition, they go to great lengths to describe the effect on the impact on individual characters, some of whom don't survive the experience.

Looting, pillaging, rape, murder, gangs, some trying to get the world back up and running and some trying to burn the last few bits of civilisation left standing. But the last few I have read really unearthed things I didn't notice when I was younger, and this one, which was one of their early collaboration, really shows its age. The New Brotherhood Army eventually becomes a multi-racial, ostensibly egalitarian organization ("egalitarian" in the sense that anyone regardless of race who steps out of line gets killed and eaten), but the leaders are the Black Nationalists and a black former Army sergeant.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. About the only "prepared" survivors, good and bad, who don't have part of their initial schemes blow up in their faces are Senator Jellison and Dr. Just like all the dings and scratches give an antique its character--the 70's give this a great patina you couldn't get from a modern day apocalyptic tale. Much mass has been lost, poured into the tail; but much of the coma could freeze again, and the rocky chunks could merge; and crystals of strange ices could plate themselves across a growing comet, out there in the dark and the cold, over the mil

The narration is good, though sometimes the narrator lacks the ability to make voices easily distinguishable, but that's a minor gripe. And it might've been even worse if the US military hadn't gotten the clarification that the Soviet Union was nuking China instead of the US. Some people may have difficulty with the first several hours up until right before the comet makes landfall. Finally I got around to this one, and though I may have missed out on a real blockbuster back in '77, I have to say it was a gas reading this in 2013! Col Rick Delanty, a black astronaut, docking in Spacelab with two Soviet kosmonauts, Pieter Jakov and Leonilla Malik, M.Never mind that billions of people are dead and the good guys have effectively organized themselves into a feudal holding. No Party Like a Donner Party: The remnants of a National Guard unit start off only killing and eating people because they have a hard time finding anything to eat. Not to be confused with The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer, which deals with a different planetary impact. 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.