Larry Niven at His Best-Lucifer's Hammer

The chances that Lucifer’s Hammer would hit Earth head-on were one in a million.
Then one in a thousand.
Then one in a hundred.
And then….

So begins the introduction to Lucifer’s Hammer, the 1977 novel by Sci-Fi veteran Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle which posits the effects of the impact of a large comet on planet Earth. Although the topic today is certainly not unexplored, this was fairly new ground back in the seventies when Lucifer’s Hammer was written. Today, almost 25 years after being published, the novel is still a page-turning read that will keep you in suspense right on up until the last page.

The paperback copy of the novel I purchased is 640 pages long and can roughly be divided into three segments. The first 200 pages or so deal with character exposition and the discovery of the comet as it is headed toward Earth. The middle segment of the book explores the impact itself and its effects on the world and the characters in the novel. The last third of Lucifer’s Hammer features the efforts of a group of the few survivors of the impact to rebuild a shattered civilization.

As the book opens, amateur astronomer Timothy Hamner has discovered a new comet on an orbital path that will bring it deep within the heart of the Solar System. As the object moves closer and closer to the sun, the possibility of a collision with the Earth seems more likely but is still dismissed by most as an impossibility. Still, the object is expected to make a close Earth approach and hopes are high that the tail of the comet will present a spectacular show. Hamner is invited to make an appearance on the Tonight Show, where Johnny mistakes his name (and the comet’s) as Hammer. The name sticks, and as the object comes closer more and more people are convinced that the Hammer will fall. Some, like California senator Arthur Jellison, make preparations for a possible impact.

To study the comet’s tail through which the Earth is expected to pass, NASA and the Soviet space agency send up a joint team of astronauts and cosmonauts. Up until the moment of impact the comet is still expected to pass harmlessly by the Earth. Hit it does, however, and when Hammerfall occurs it happens across the globe as fragments of the comet, split up by the suns gravity just as Shoemaker-Levy actually would be by Jupiter’s pull in 1994, strike at sea and on land.

The effects are devastating: earthquakes, rains of mud and salt water, tidal waves, and hurricanes across the globe. We see the effects through the eyes of the main characters as they struggle to survive. Some don’t. Others are separated from loved ones; all are thrown into a new world they are unfamiliar with and not sure they can cope with. If the natural disasters are not enough, the threat of nuclear war looms as well as each side fears the other will take advantage of the situation to destroy the other.

The final segment of “Lucifer’s Hammer” presents the reader with a sort of Mad Max doomsday world, California style. Senator Jellison has organized a group of survivors in an effort to rebuild a shattered civilization and salvage as much as possible. The survivors are faced with hard choices. Their meager resources and food stocks might squeak them through the winter, but they can’t accept refuges into their community, even with the knowledge that turning them away is a virtual death sentence.

The biggest threat to the survivors is an army of cannibals headed by an ex-army sergeant and a fanatical religious zealot who sees Hammerfall as god’s judgment against modern society and is bent on destroying the few remaining remnants of 20th century America.

Lucifer’s Hammer will keep you on the edge of your seat and wondering about the unfolding developments, but it has a few flaws that keep it from being a five-star novel. Niven spends too much time on character development, and some of the characters don’t even seem necessary to tell the story. Two hundred pages are just too long to wait for the comet to strike.

For a novel of such sweeping magnitude, the focus is remarkably small, and we really only see the human effects on a small group of survivors in California. Surely there were others across the globe, but how did they fare? We never find out. Then too, the amount of time after the impact in which the last part of the story unfolds is far too brief, not even a full year. What are the long-term effects of Hammerfall on climate? How do the survivors endure? We never find out.

Still, Lucifer’s Hammer is all told well worth your time, and a great winter read. Though a work of fiction, it is sobering to keep in mind that this could happen. That knowledge alone makes this novel more than your average sci-fi yarn.