The book was written in the late 70's and, as such, has a big dose of the "Cold War" fears in it which seems a bit excessive (i.e. if the world is already being toasted by a series of comet hits, I seriously doubt that any nation would then go and nuke a neighbor... very "dated" concept). And, besides, the authors went nowhere with the nuking - just threw it in there but it ended up meaning nothing in the story.

Unlike many apocalyptic novels, the authors didn't have everyone being naive (i.e. nearly everyone realized that they'd lose electricity, etc), and the problems were believable - for example: the necessary items were unavailable, not that the people were too stupid to know what they needed.

My biggest complaint is that there were too many characters and their names were too similar so even after finishing the book, I'm not really sure who was who, and etc. I.e. there is a Harry, Harvey, Hamner, and Harv who are involved with women named Marie, Maureen, Eileen, etc... (and the women, in the entire novel, are only there as "mates" for the men; not one woman does anything other than be nurses/doctors or cooks or sex partners.)

Overall, the story is quite believable (minus the Cold War and useless women) and rather frightening. Makes you want to go learn a "useful" skill... ( )

Lucifer's Hammer is a book that asks a large question. What would happen to our society if it were interrupted by a catastrophic natural event? Even though humanity seems far beyond its primitive roots, are we really only a hair's breadth from chaos? How quickly can society disintegrate and how far can we fall?

For the most part, I believe that Niven succeeded in portraying a convincing scenario, at least from the point of view of most of the main characters. The characters had realistic motivations and behaved in ways that I found authentic. I also thought the characters were interesting and I felt curious to see how their individual "lives" would resolve.

There are a few weaknesses to Lucifer's Hammer. For one thing, I believe that the books is set in the 70's or 80's. Therefore, there are many technological advances that he does not anticipate. The complete lack of communication and large-scale transportation (helicopters!) is hard to imagine.

The other weakness for me, was the idea that so many people would just go crazy and totally freak out. Obviously, Niven keeps his main characters pretty sane. However, he describes a relatively large group of folks that just wig out. And these crazier people band together and terrorize others. I think that it is too bad that these crazy freaks happen to also be minorities and military. I suppose that the minority aspect is due to the age of the book? Maybe the military, too. Considering the fact that in natural disasters the military comes to the rescue........I just didn't appreciate the generalization. (maybe Niven is a friend of John Kerry-ha)

If you can get past the negatives, there is no doubt that the story is compelling and exciting. There is plenty of conflict and suspense. We may not all agree with Niven's hypotheses, but we can all enjoy a good story. ( )

An asteroid impacts the earth, and the protagonists deal with the predictions of the catastrophe, the event itself, and survival in the aftermath. A classic to be compared with Alas Babylon.

Cast: TV reporters, senators, gang members, cannibal cultists
Timeframe: pre-catastrophe through homesteading
( )

Put very simply, Lucifer's Hammer is a book about a comet hitting Earth. The book takes 640 pages to do this; there's a lot of detail to the story. The first couple hundred pages are all pre-comet and set the stage, introducing all of the characters. (There's a dramatis personae at the beginning of the book; I found myself referring to it frequently to see which characters were which.) The strike itself occupies about another hundred pages, with the balance of the book dealing with the aftermath.

As might be inferred from the spacing of events, the book proceeds at a somewhat slow pace, ramping up so gradually that I didn't notice the tensions in some scenes until I had to put the book down and realized that I was nearly breathless wondering what would happen. The aftermath is where the meat of the conflicts occur, but the preceding half of the book is pretty necessary to lay the groundwork for later developments.

The science in the book is also good. Niven and Pournelle spent a lot of time working out the details of a comet strike such as the one presented in the book, and it shows; the science is very thorough and believable. This was somewhat surprising given how long ago the book was written: 1977. Much other SF from that far back tends to be very dated, a fate Lucifer's Hammer seems to have escaped, for the most part.

There were some instances where I was reminded that the book was taking place three decades ago. Racial tensions in the book are a lot higher; while the civil rights movement had succeeded, many people still weren't accustomed to it, and a couple of the black characters have to deal with some uncomfortable situations. The technology isn't as good as that which we have today; while I can't remember any specific examples, there were some things that I noted would have been different if the story had taken place in our present. And someone makes reference to NASA's perfect record of not having any deaths during their missions, a record that, sadly, has been broken a few times since then.

All in all, it's a very good book, especially for fans of either SF or disaster stories.

Superior post holocaust story with believable and extremely chilling enemies. Excellent book. ( )