Lucifer's Hammer

Here's the review for the book Lucifer's Hammer that I posted on Goodreads:

*****

The best 'disaster' book I've ever read, and I'm only sorry that I didn't read it sooner. This is a book that I knew about my entire life. It's one of my Dad's favourites, and it was always sitting around our house when I was a child, and it took me 30 years to get around to reading it, too. Though it was written in the 70s, it still actually feels pretty contemporary. We've completely lost interest in space travel, and we're still completely unprepared for a space disaster. I also liked how, despite the time period of the story, the female characters were actually some of the more interesting, though they didn't get as much attention as the male counterparts. Leonilla was a personal favourite, as was the surprisingly brass-balled Marie Vance. The book takes a little while to get going, introducing all the characters before the Hammer actually hits, but it's worth it once all the action happens, because you find you're familiar with the characters and care about them once all the shit hits the fan.

One thing that's also eerily reminsicent even in our time is how quickly we as a race dissolve into anarchy and savagery after a disaster. The whole world, for all our techonolgical advances through the ages, are always only a few meals away from total chaos.

This book should have been made into a movie years ago. I particularly feel that now that 2012 has hit theatres, and was such a wretched piece of empty special-effects. Lucifer's Hammer not only brings intense visuals about the end of the world, but a rich cast of characters who you can actually believe would survive a post-comet apocalypse. Highly recommend!