Lucifer’s Hammer: A Comet, a Panic and the Long Road Back

While there are a plethora of books and movies forecasting the end of the world in a variety of different fashions (anyone seen Independence Day perchance?) the science in “science fiction” is often lacking, and while it would be great to insert a virus into an alien computer core, thereby averting the destruction of humanity, somehow I just don’t think that it’s going to happen! Lucifer’s Hammer is the opposite of that kind of film. There’s no last-minute hero with a laptop and no clever trick that makes the problem go away, it’s a big rock, and when it comes down it comes down and people have to live with it. That’s the bit that got me, and it’s why this one has stuck with me more than most disaster stories.

Lucifer’s Hammer is the story of the Hamner-Brown comet, discovered by a pair of amateur astronomers, a rich hobbyist called Tim Hamner and a teenage kid with a telescope (by the way, in case you don’t believe that amateur astronomers sometimes discover things like this, check out this link and this one, and for something that happened a few years back this one too!). It came out in 1977 and it’s very much a book of that era, all senators and TV producers and cold war politics, but it’s held up better than plenty of old-school SF I’ve read. It’s the same sort of grand, confident classic as The Stars My Destination, only Bester’s book is about one angry man and this one is about pretty much everybody on the planet at once. The cast is huge and it takes a while to get going, so be ready for that.

The End is Nigh!

While the comet is still quite a distance out from Earth it’s on a trajectory to pass quite close, and although the scientific community at large are adamant that it will not hit, there’s enough doubt that a charismatic and zealous fundamentalist preacher is able to whip up a large amount of hysteria in the US. The book spends a long time in this build-up, jumping between people who think it’s nothing, people who are quietly stocking up on supplies, and people who are making a killing selling “comet” everything to anyone who’ll buy it. Harvey Randall, a TV documentary producer, is chasing the story, Senator Jellison is trying to work out what Washington should actually do about it, and a lot of ordinary folks are just trying to get on with their lives while the sky fills up with this thing. It’s slow in places, but when the hit comes you know these people.

Gradually as the comet continues to come closer and closer, the probability of it impacting the Earth decreases, and even up until the moment of actual impact there’s uncertainty remaining about whether or not it will hit. Even a joint Apollo-Soyuz mission sent into space to study the comet, now dubbed “The Hammer” by the popular media, is unable to confirm or refute its potential collision with Earth. I really liked the astronauts’ side of it, Rick Delanty and the crew are up there with the best view anyone will ever have, and there’s nothing they can do but watch. A book like Old Man’s War takes it for granted that humanity has already got off the planet and spread out, and reading this one you realise what it looks like when we haven’t, and everyone’s stuck on the one rock with nowhere to go. The comet does fall, and lands in pieces in various parts of the world with a devastating effect.

After the hammer falls

Cities disappear overnight and flooding is rampant, with tsunamis hitting all the coastal cities and weeks of nonstop rain destroying all the crops and foodstuffs. Food is at a premium and people are forced to scavenge for survival, with civilization itself falling apart at the seams! However this is actually where the story picks up! The impact chapters are brutal, pieces of the comet hitting the oceans, waves wiping out whole coastlines, earthquakes and volcanoes kicking off, and Niven and Pournelle don’t pull any punches with who survives and who doesn’t. Some characters you’ve spent a hundred pages with just don’t make it, which I didn’t expect, and it made the whole thing feel a lot less safe than the usual disaster story where the main cast all walk out the other side with a few scratches.

In a similar vein to The Postman (by David Brin) humanity sets back upon the long road to recovery, but there are factors in play that are determined to reverse this. A group of survivors gathers around Senator Jellison’s ranch in the hills of California, a place they call the Stronghold, and they try to hold on to farming, law and some kind of order while the world outside goes feral. Against them is a growing army of desperate people, ex-soldiers and the preacher’s followers who blame science and technology for everything that’s happened and want it all torn down. The battle between the forces of civilization and anarchy has begun and only time will tell who will win. I won’t say how it plays out, but the arguments the survivors have about what’s worth saving (and what they’re willing to do to save it) are the best part of the whole book for me.

Personal thoughts

As mentioned previously there actually is some science in this book and nothing in it is too farfetched at all. It’s a really believable read, and while I’d like to hope that humanity as a whole would act better to itself in times of strife and tragedy, unfortunately natural disasters like the Haiti Earthquake show that there are always a selfish few who think about themselves first. You see both sides of that in the book, people sharing what little they’ve got with strangers and people looting their neighbours the same afternoon, and it never felt like the authors were making either one up. Comets and asteroids hitting the Earth isn’t fantasy either, it’s happened before and it’ll happen again, which is what makes the whole thing a bit uncomfortable to read, especially every time the news runs another story about an asteroid that’s going to miss us by a whisker this time round.

One point though, if there was ever an argument to get off the Earth and start exploring and colonizing space, this is it. All of our “eggs” are in one very fragile basket and it’s imperative for all of us to get out there! I’m not the only one who came away from it thinking that, the case the book makes for a spacefaring civilization has been picked up by space advocates for years now, and the more we rely on power grids and computers and supply chains the more relevant it gets. When the lights go out in Lucifer’s Hammer, most people have no idea how to grow food or keep warm, and I’m not sure I’d do much better.

How I scored it

Character Growth & Development – 3/5

Perhaps a bit too black and white with regards to the heroes and villains of this piece but overall, the characters themselves are believable and the way that they acted and reacted to the changing situations was well explored and thought out. The good guys at the Stronghold are mostly sensible, practical and right, and the bad guys are mostly mad, cruel or both, and I’d have liked a bit more grey in there. But with a cast this size it’s impressive how many of them feel like real people rather than names on a list, and a few of them change a lot by the end.

Story Growth & Development – 4/5

Unfortunately the scenario presented is a bit too real and believable. It would be great to have Bruce Willis fly up and destroy the asteroid in space, but considering how successful NASA has been on many less ambitious projects this is unlikely to happen either. The honest truth is that if a comet or asteroid similar to the one proposed ever did materialize in our future (which to some extent is inevitable), barring a miracle, this book could turn out to be historical fiction vs. science fiction.

Overall Rating – 7/10

If you like your scifi with a bit of real “science” and if you like reading about the end of the world, you’ll love this book! Give it a shot. Niven & Pournelle are excellent authors and know how to craft a yarn amazingly well.

If the Hammer was really on its way, would you head for the hills and start stockpiling, or stay put and trust the scientists who said it would miss? Tell me in the comments.