Lucifer's Hammer

by Larry Niven

1982

Status

Available

Publication

Fawcett (1982), 640 pages

Description

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.

Media reviews

Library Journal 102 (13): p1528.
"Good, solid science, a gigantic but well developed and coordinated cast of characters, and about a megaton of suspenseful excitement."

User reviews

LibraryThing member asciiphil
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
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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.
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LibraryThing member jhevelin
This is one of the stupidest, most racist apologies for fascist ideology I have ever read in my life. It is pure propaganda for nuclear power and survivalist mentality. Having the black population of Los Angeles become cannibals is grosteque. I blame Pournelle -- Niven usually seems to have better
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sense.
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LibraryThing member sturlington
It’s a treat to read a realistic portrayal of what might happen in this situation – one that actually does let the comet hit the earth. Although the book is slow to get started and seems a little dated to those of us who grew up in the Space Shuttle age, it provides an unflinching look at what
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post-apocalyptic society may be like. Stripped of our technological comforts, humankind reverts to a primitive pecking order, powered by monarchies or secret, tribal-like rituals, a society where women are little more than property and your worth as a human being is determined by how much pre-comet survivalist know-how you attained. But in the end, the story offers hope, as humankind strives again for civilization and the moral ethics that you can afford once you know that you’re going to have enough food to last the winter, represented by a struggle against primitive superstitions to once again harness electricity, or “control the lightning.” This is a thoughtful, engaging portrayal of such a society, and as you read it, you learn a lot about the fragility of our home planet and the civilization that we’ve built on it.
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LibraryThing member john257hopper
A mostly enjoyable post-apocalyptic novel, in the great tradition of 1970s disaster novels. It is rather long at 640 pages and the middle section dealing with the travails of various groups of people in the immediate hours and days after the comet strikes is rather repetitive. Handles some of the
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difficult moral issues of survival very well in the last section.
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LibraryThing member HollyinNNV
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
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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.
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LibraryThing member yarriofultramar
I absolutely love that book. Some say that it shows signs of time but I disagree - sure it take place in the seventies but would much change if comet strike occurred now? I do not think so. The book follows lives of many characters involved in discovery of the comet as well as the afermath of it's
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strike. The vision of the results of such strike is truly chilling. I read it back to back with "The Road" by Cormack MacCarthy and I like it so much more. True - it is not as sad and intimate as "The Road". On the other hand the characters are active agents trying to survive and improve the situation. "The road" dealt with love and suffering in impossible situation. "Lucifer's hammer", on the other hand, is a book about man resoluteness and ingenuity. A good hard-science fiction. One possible issue with this book is relative flatness of the characters, still the book is great!
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LibraryThing member scampus
This book just happens to be one of the best works that Larry Niven has ever produced. The evocation of life and the struggle for existence after the comet hits is extremely well done and believable. It may not be how it would REALLY happen in such a situation, but it's convincing enough.

Yes, it IS
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unfortunate that the Good Guys are pretty much all white while the Bad Guys are pretty much all black. Given Jerry Pournelle's right-wing conservatism, it's probably not too surprising it was written that way. But if you can put this demerit aside long enough to get to the end of the book, you'll find there's a grand adventure story in there.

It's a great pity the makers of the two recent End of the world movies, Armageddon and Deep Impact, didn't have a good look through this book for ideas before settling on their final storylines. If they had, perhaps both movies, but in particular the execrable Armageddon (come on, an RV on the comet's surface?) would have been a whole lot more convincing.

My copy of the book is well thumbed and falling apart from being read so many times, by both myself and my wife. What more can I say? Read it and enjoy some grand science fiction writing by a master (maybe two).
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LibraryThing member Hartman762
Superior post holocaust story with believable and extremely chilling enemies. Excellent book.
LibraryThing member crazybatcow
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,
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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...
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LibraryThing member ashleyludwig
Okay - I hate to admit it but I love - absolutely love this type of story. It has everything that "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" was missing. The horror. The struggle for human survival post impact. Characters that remain in memory! and just good, old fashioned summer fun reading. Whether published
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in the 80s or today, this remains a great distraction for sci fi and disaster lovers alike.
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LibraryThing member jimmaclachlan
Like Armegeddon, the earth is the target, this time by a comet & it hits the earth. Excellent look at our civilization; how fragile, yet resilient. A must read. Well written & researched.
LibraryThing member atreic
Wow, it is a long time since I read this. You can't cross the same river twice. But it is still a 600 page apocalyptic epic, covering just before, during, and the first year or so after a comet wipes out nearly all life on earth.

There are bits to love, bits to hate, bits to just boggle at, and lots
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of bits you can't put down.

The book has a huge cast of characters. The main hero (in that the book ends up with him Getting the Princess and Leading the Survivors) was never all that interesting to me. A kind of cheerful every-man who made movies, he made a number of weak willed mistakes,(being financially overextended, cheating on his wife, going completely catatonic when she was murdered), in a way that just made me gently uninvested in his happiness.

Some of Niven/Pournelle's women are completely awesome though. Which is not that the book doesn't have the usual problems of old sci-fi and women (some very gratuitous sexual assault scenes, lots of the point of civilisation is to protect young women, lots of gender role stuff, women broadly sleeping their way into advantage, men can fall over in earthquakes, but women fall over and their skirts ride up suggestively around their hips) but Eileen is awesome, with her driving along the railway line and organising the entire Stronghold, Marie Vance is also excellent, with her hiking boots her cynical but clear thinking scheming to end up with a man of power, and her solitary almost crazy bravery standing against the entire army, and even Maureen, who exists mostly to be the Senitor's Daughter and the Prize for the Winner TM with flowing red hair is pretty interesting, dealing with her own depression and trying to work out her role in the new world.

I must say, this book has far too many characters whose names begin with H. It's unhelpful. Harvey, Hardy, Hamner, two people called Harry, other letters are also available...

You have to love Dan Forrester, even if he is a complete stereotype of a precocious academic, physically weak but full of learning, as he throws every last ounce of energy he has into saving civilisation, whether by saving a library of knowledge or reinventing weapons of mass destruction.

I think it is fair to say this book is pretty racist, or at least it is writing about a country with some very racist attitudes many of which are presented as we go along. Scenes like 'should we let people in who are fleeing the floods', 'they'll be city n*ggers, whining about equality' feel very very ugly now. The fact that over 90% of the black characters we meet in the book are thieves, murderers and cannibals doesn't help either, nor the fact that the 'we must smash everything up and eat people' army gang is also the 'we want to rebuild an equal world and not just the oppressive status quo from the beforetimes' people.
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LibraryThing member Jacks0n
This book sat on my shelf for a long time. I think I got it at a booksale for 50 cents or something. It's intimidating, the paperback looks like a brick.

That said, it's definitely one of my favorites. I should have known Niven wouldn't let me down. This is basically Gary Paulson's Hatchet, for
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adults, on a massive scale. It covers a lot of ground - technology surviving under bad circumstances, politics, survival, and modern (ok, 70s-era) society in general. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member ragwaine
I read this because it was on a "top 100 books" list I was working on finishing. I'm not really a fan of hard sci-fi and haven't really enjoyed other books by Larry Niven, so when I started it, I expected to put it down after 50 or maybe 100 pages. But it looks like Jerry Pournelle (whose name is
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not listed on this book entry for some reason), is an author I do like reading, because I really liked this book a lot.

I haven't read much post-apocalyptic fiction, but any kind of movie, show or book about it always gets me thinking how I would survive, even though I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. From the start of this I was rivetted. I just couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next. I read pretty slow so 6 weeks for 629 pages means I really "couldn't put it down".
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LibraryThing member Bookwoman63
excellent disaster book, one of the best. Solid science, taking in the end of the world due to a comet passing close enough that the Earth is struck. Interesting characters. Vivid descriptions of the chaos and changes the earth goes through, and how civilization falls and recovers through the eyes
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of a disparate group of characters. Gripping.
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LibraryThing member Suzanne81
A fun but somewhat dated end-of-the-world novel. I have read a number of books in this genre; Lucifer's Hammer is one of the better ones but would have been even better read at the time it was written (1977). Disaster movies such as Armaggedon and The Day After Tomorrow have explored similar
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subject matter. The portrayal of blacks can at times be jarring, showing how attitudes have changed since that time. A diverting read but not highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member KarenHerndon
This was an ok read but a bit too predictable for me. I had read Nivens Ringworld series and really loved it and I was thinking this would be more of a sci fi read and it was disappointing in that regard.
LibraryThing member ft_ball_fn
Is it long? Yup! Is is a little.. tiny bit slow to start as you get the background on the characters, etc? Yup! Is it a rollicking good time once the action gets going? Yup! Then the rocks start falling from the sky.. the pages fly by. Nice descriptions of the impact (no pun intended) of the
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meteors on the Earth--the havoc/destruction they cause.

If you've read Footfall then I don't need to convince you--this was not as good.. it was better. A stellar book and a must read if you're a PA fan IMO.
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LibraryThing member lloannna
Another fun one from Niven and Pournelle, with similar themes - especially in terms of defending the idea of technological progress and the merits of (classical) Western social values. Lots of manly men and strong-but-feminine women and the requisite jabs at 1970s feminism, etc.

The only real
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weakness I found was in the pacing - it was sometimes hard to tell how much time was passing - and what I came to think of as the commercial breaks (essentially, the comet gets its own storyline, written in a totally different style.) I dig the "technology is awesome" argument, but I can see how it'd be offputting to other people.

Oh, and I'm sorry there's no sequel. It'd be fun to read.
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LibraryThing member Mongolor
I would recommend this book to any author who is looking to frame a global disaster. Larry Niven keeps his focus on a select group of people, forms a more tangible conflict for his characters, and the cometary impact itself is reduced to a couple of chapters. However everything before and after
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those chapters pivots upon them.
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LibraryThing member Mongolor
I would recommend this book to any author who is looking to frame a global disaster. Larry Niven keeps his focus on a select group of people, forms a more tangible conflict for his characters, and the cometary impact itself is reduced to a couple of chapters. However everything before and after
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those chapters pivots upon them.
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LibraryThing member RobertDay
Hot Fudge Sundae (which falls on a Tuesday this week).
LibraryThing member Oogod
Great story great end of the world kind of stuff...just have to remember when the book was written and the technology that they had at the time.
LibraryThing member ShariDragon
One of my favorite books of all time. Niven and Pournelle do a great job of re-starting civilization after a major disaster. The characters are believable and very likable. In fact I think it's time to read it again.
LibraryThing member GrimCat
I wasn't expecting much when I started this book, probably due to the cheesy cover and the images of the movie "Deep Impact" dancing in my head, but I was pleasantly surprised. The characters, although not incredibly deep or challenging, are still drawn out well enough that I cared about most of
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them. This is not an easy feat, considering the amount of characters that the authors introduce. The description of the actual "event" and the storytelling afterward are first rate, however, it does take awhile to get there, as there are extensive character introductions at the start. Also, be warned this book is from the 70's so there are some cold war themes prevalent throughout the story, which are not relevant today. Overall though, a very enjoyable book about apocalypse and its aftermath that kept me in suspense from the moment the action started until the conclusion.
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Awards

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

1977-01

Physical description

640 p.

ISBN

0449235998 / 9780449235997

Barcode

1600695
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