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Book Review of Lucifer's Hammer

Lucifer's Hammer
ProfDon avatar reviewed on + 38 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


This book is a real page-turner, difficult to put down in large part because the authors have created characters that are at once both believable and sympathetic. Using good quotes, from Jouvenal to Heinlein, for chapter headers they not only helped orient me but also saved themselves the need to pontificate further by using their characters to 'preach'. To be sure, this is science fiction and it therefore lacks some of the stark realism of the mystery genre (neither sex nor death are dealt with explicitly) but I'm not so sure that's a 'bad thing'. Perhaps when one has created a scenario in which the entire planet is 'being screwed' by a comet one needn't waste time with salaciousness or gore. Better to focus on 'how we'd cope'...which is really what this book is all about. It will pain me to put this book back on the shelf, recycle it, but maybe that will only mean I'll have to swap for another copy next year. Because I know I'm going to want to at least flip through the book and refresh my memory on such notable quotes as: "No proposition is likelier to scandalise our contemporaries than this one: It is impossible to establish a just social order." Jouvenal