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Lucifer's Hammer (1977)

by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle

Other authors: See the other authors section.

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4,299702,697 (3.91)1 / 145
As the great Hamner-Brown comet, dubbed Lucifer's Hammer by the press, approaches Earth, various business executives, politicians, criminals, journalists, and scientists await the impending cataclysm and its general and personal effects with decidedly differing feelings.
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English (67)  Danish (1)  Dutch (1)  All languages (69)
Showing 1-5 of 67 (next | show all)
What would happen if a comet was discovered coming close to the Earth? What if close to earth was wrong and chunks of the comet hit the earth? What could we expect in the aftermath? How screwed up can some people be? How would you prepare for the end of the world?

Welcome to the Stronghold. Welcome to the cannibal army. Welcome to the nuclear power plant. Welcome to Hammerlab above the Earth, and everything and everyone in-between.

I read this as a young adult. I reread it in the last month. I am just as impressed with this book now as when I first read it. It made both Nivens and Pournelle my favorite authors ( )
  gbraden | Feb 19, 2024 |
This book made a big impression on me in high school, some mumbledy-mumble years ago. I wonder if it holds up. ( )
  Treebeard_404 | Jan 23, 2024 |
The science is a bit outdated, and the gender issues in this book are cringeworthy at times, but for classic disaster porn this one's not bad. ( )
  JBarringer | Dec 15, 2023 |
I'd heard this was a classic of the post-apocalyptic genre, so was pleased to finally nab a copy second hand.

The book starts with the discovery of a comet and revolves around the humdrum lives of a bunch of LA locals, tending toward the wealthy socialite class. At first predicted to narrowly miss earth, the comet's odds of hitting escalate steadily the closer it gets to Earth.

The build up to Hammerfall is suitably suspenseful and the impact itself seems to be handled realistically from a scientific point of view. Now our intertwined point-of-view characters must escape the collapse of society, floods and tsunamis to find safety in a world in which the thin veneer of civilisation has been suddenly torn away.

Personally I'm not sure that the immediate reversion of society to violence, rape and cannibalism in the wake of Hammerfall is realistic. When real-life disasters hit people seem to band together for a short time at least. On the other hand, the formation of the cannibal cult coalition seem to parallel the formation of ISIS in a land that has lost all semblance of power structure remarkably well.

My criticisms are similar to other reviewers. The approach to race and gender is ham-fisted. Hammerfall wipes out women's lib (as one character gleefully observes) and women are simply trophies who seek out the strongest male to protect them, and sex appears to be the only tool available to them. Outside the relative civilisation of our protagonists' valley a life of rape or sex-slavery awaits. There's a range of characters who are given point of view in this book but only two are women and neither are the unlucky sort, say for example the girl scouts who have been turned into sex slaves. I guess that while this book is a darker take on the apocalypse, the authors didn't want to go quite that dark.

And that is one point of difference in this book. It's a dark take on the apocalypse that includes that part that most post-apocolyptic works conveniently skip: the End, with all its death and horror and messiness. The characters face some hard moral choices: do they sentence people who do not conform to their new society (teetering on the brink of collapse) to death, do they use horrid chemical weapons against the attacking cannibal army, do they re-introduce slavery?

Unfortunately, all to often they seem to lean on the side of ruthlessness. On one hand, it demonstrates the harshness of the new world, but on the other it feels too much like the authors have an unsavoury agenda to push.

My favourite character was the diabetic scientist who decided in the face of the apocalypse to save books and knowledge for the survivors.

A worthwhile take on the end of the world with its scientific believability and dark themes, but marred by outdated ideas and strange authorial agendas. ( )
  weemanda | Nov 2, 2023 |
The book feels a little dated now but was still worth the read. One of those books that I have been meaning to read for years.

I enjoyed it but there were a few parts that went a little long and a few parts which are riddled with clichés about human behavior. Don't regret reading it but would probably have been a much more enjoyable book if I had read it as a kid. ( )
  cdaley | Nov 2, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 67 (next | show all)
"Good, solid science, a gigantic but well developed and coordinated cast of characters, and about a megaton of suspenseful excitement."
added by sturlington | editLibrary Journal 102 (13): p1528., Judith T Yamamoto (Jul 1, 1977)
 

» Add other authors (8 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Niven, Larryprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Pournelle, Jerrymain authorall editionsconfirmed
Feidel, GottfriedTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Freas, KellyCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
O'Brien, ConnnorNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Vietor, MarcNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
Dedication
To Neil Armstrong and Buz Aldrin, the first men to walk on another world; to Michael Collins, who waited; and to those who died trying, Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, Ed White, Georgi Dobrovolsky, Viktor Patsayev, Nikolai Volkov, and all the others.
First words
Before the sun burned, before the planets formed, there were chaos and the comets. (Prologue)
The blue Mercedes turned into the big circular drive of the Beverly Hills mansion at precisely five after six.
Tim Hamner stood at the top of a low hill. (Epilogue)
Quotations
He squinted against the brilliance. It flared and he closed his eyes. That was a reflex; wave reflections were a common thing out here. The flare died against his closed eyelids, and he looked out to sea. Wave coming?    

   He saw a fiery clould lift beyond the horizon. He studied it, squinting, making himself believe…  

   “Big wave coming.” He called, and rose to his knees.    
    Corey called, “Where?”      
   “You’ll see it,” Gil called confidently. He turned his board and paddled out to sea, bending almost until his cheek touched the board, using long, deep sweeps of his long arms. He was scared shitless, but nobody would ever know it.     “Wait for me!” Jeanine called.    Gil continued paddling. Others followed, but only the strongest could keep up. Corey pulled abreast of him.      “I saw the fireball!” he shouted. He panted with effort. “It’s Lucifer’s Hammer! Tidal wave!”     Gil said nothing. Talk was discouraged out here, but the others jabbered among themselves, and Gill paddled even faster, leaving them. A man ought to be alone during a thing like this. He was beginning to grasp the fact of death.      Rain came, and he paddled on. He glanced back to see the houses and bluff receding, going uphill, leaving an enormous stretch of new beach, gleaming wet. Lightening flared along the hills above Malibu.     The hills had changed. The orderly buildings of Santa Monica had tumbled into heaps.     The horizon went up.      Death. Inevitable. If death was inevitable, what was left? Style, only style. Gil went on paddling, riding the receding waters until motion was gone. He was a long way out now. He turned his board and waited.     Others caught up and turned, spread across hundreds of yards in the rainy waters. If they spoke, Gil couldn’t hear them. There was a terrifying rumble behind him. Gil waited a moment longer, then paddled like mad, sure deep strokes, doing it well and truly.    He was sliding downhill, down the big green wall, and the water was lifting hard beneath him, so that he rested on knees and elbows with the blood pouring into his face, bugging his eyes, starting a nosebleed. The pressure was enormous, unbearable, then it eased. With the speed he’d gained he turned the board, scooting down and sideways along the nearly vertical wall, balancing on knees…     He stood up. He needed more angle, more. If he could reach the peak of the wave he’d be out of it, he could actually live through this! Ride it out, ride it out, and do it well…     Other boards had turned too. He saw them ahead of him, above and below on the green wall. Corey had turned the wrong way. He shot beneath Gil’s feet, moving faster than hell and looking terrified.     They swept toward the bluff. They were higher than the bluff. The beach house and the Santa Monica pier with its carousel and all the yachts anchored nearby slid beneath the waters. Then they were looking down on streets and cars. Gil had a momentary glimpse of a bearded man kneeling with others; then the waters swept on past. The base of the wall was churning chaos, white foam and swirling debris and thrashing bodies and tumbling cars.     Below him now was Santa Monica Boulevard. The wave swept over the Mall, adding the wreckage of shops and shoppers and potted trees and bicycles to the crashing foam below. As the wave engulfed each low building he braced himself for the shock, squatting low. The board slammed against his feet, and he nearly lost it; he saw Tommy Schumacher engulfed, gone, his board bounding high and whirling crazily. Only two boards left now.      The wave’s frothing peak was far, far above him; the churning base was much too close. His legs shrieked in the agony of exhaustion. One board left ahead of him, ahead and below. Who? It didn’t matter; he saw it dip into chaos, gone. Gil risked a quick look back; nobody there. He was alone on the ultimate wave.     Oh, God, if he lived to tell this tale, what a movie it would make! Bigger than The Endless Summer, bigger that The Towering Inferno: a surfing movie with ten million in special effects! If only his legs would hold! He already had a world record, he must be at least a mile inland, no one had ever ridden a wave for a mile! But the frothing, purling peak was miles overhead and the Barrington Apartments, thirty stories tall, was coming at him like a flyswatter.
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Wikipedia in English (1)

As the great Hamner-Brown comet, dubbed Lucifer's Hammer by the press, approaches Earth, various business executives, politicians, criminals, journalists, and scientists await the impending cataclysm and its general and personal effects with decidedly differing feelings.

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Book description
The story details a cometary impact on Earth, an end to civilization, and the battle for the future. It encompasses the discovery of the comet, the LA social scene, and a cast of diverse characters whom fate seems to smile upon and allow to survive the massive cataclysm and the resulting tsunamis, plagues, famines and battles amongst scavengers and cannibals.
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