Why is Lucifer's Hammer considered such a great book? (possible spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

I’ve hacked my way through to page 461 so far. I can be a very stubborn Mango, especially when I’m confronted with a book that is supposed to be so awesomely great.

I slogged my way through two hundred seven pages of character development (one of the characters is actually interesting), talking about a newly discovered comet, talking about making a documentary about the comet, making a documentary about the comet (featuring interviews with astronomers who apparently don’t know much about astronomy or comets), all of which was written in such fashion as to make me put the book down and read The Princess Bride just to reconvince myself that reading can be fun, interesting, and a worthwhile endeavor.

Finally, on page 208, after a lot of boring lead-up, the comet hits the earth. A mildly interesting chapter or two about people’s initial reactions to the comet hitting, then a couple of hundred pages of people driving around in the rain. Occasionally someone gets shot, or shot at, or laid, but it’s mostly driving around in the rain, walking around in the rain, standing around talking in the rain, and driving around in the rain some more.

Finally, somewhere after page four hundred or so, the book is starting to go into the societal breakdowns, how the more settled survivors are coping with, or failing to cope with refugees and nomadic bands of raiders and looters. There is cannabilism going on, and I don’t mean eating the corpses of the dead, but actual shooting and killing people for food. I think that was just thrown in for shock value,(Um, Larry? Yeah, Jerry? We’re writing an awfully boring book here, think maybe we should do something to spice it up? Sure, how 'bout a roving band of ex-military guys turning cannibal? Yeah, I think that would work) since there still seems to be enough meat on the hoof to be caught and killed that people wouldn’t be desparate enough to resort to it, and the people engaging in it have the weapons and ammo necessary to shoot a deer or stray cow or pig or hell, some rabbits.

I had really hoped that by this stage in the book, we’d be examining how the remains of civilization, the majority of whom had no real survival skills (farming, ranching, hell, hunting or fishing) would be coping with the fact that all of the stored food had been eaten, what few crops they’ve managed to plant have either died or are months away from being ready for harvest, and, hey, what’s that big-ass glacier doing where most of the country’s arable land used to be? Instead, they’re still talking about, what are we going to do when the food runs out. And getting rained on.

So, why do so many people seem to think that this is such an awesomely great novel about the Apocalypse?

Or am I just spoiled because I read A Canticle For Liebowitz first?

2

I circulate in SF fan circles, and I’ve never heard anyone say that Lucifer’s Hammer was “a great book.” It’s one of Larry & Jerry’s weakest, IMHO.

3

The only part of that book I really liked was the cubic mile of hot fudge sundae near the beginning.

4

…which falls on a Teusdae this week. Yeah, that was kind of cool, but it got overused pretty fast.

Personally, I think the best part was when Sen. Jellison says “I will be dipped in shit.” Twice. I cracked up laughing, and tried to read the passage to my mother.

Her reaction?

“Haven’t you ever heard that saying before?”

He says it again much later in the book, but by then the newness has worn off.

5

I’ve heard several people opin this (that it was “a great book”). I can’t figure it out; the scope is quasi-epic, but the characterization is weak, and the political bent is…well, Pournelle, i.e. quasi-libertarian/fascist. (I think Pournelle sits at home at night and fanticizes about Ayn Rand.) Not a classic; heck, not even a good collaboration between the two. (Their best was, IMHO, The Mote In God’s Eye, despite Niven’s rather superficial grasp of applied evolutionary theory.)

Yes. :slight_smile:

If you didn’t like this, don’t even consider The Legacy of Heorot or its sequels.

Niven’s strength (on his own) is in short stories and novellas like Protector. He seems to lose his way with a plot that takes place over anything more than a couple of days or a couple hundred pages. I’ve never been a fan of Pournelle, either alone or in conjunction with Niven. YMNV, but obviously Mango’s doesn’t.

Stranger

6

Footfall is a much better book by L & J. I know both authors, and like both of them, but they do have glaring weaknesses. Stranger noted Larry’s collapse at lengthy plotting. Destiny’s Road was a total waste of wood pulp. Of course, being of generally the same political bent as Jerry, I don’t find his books at all off-putting. His books of Falkenberg’s Legion are some of my favorites. :smiley:

7

I agree. And with Niven, it seems like the shorter the better. His “Tales From the Draco Tavern” for example. I mean, I read Ringworld. I didn’t really care for it, but apparently I’m a masochist, because then I read Ringworld Engineers, then the other two books. I haven’t found myself wondering why I wasted so much of my time since I the time I read 2001, 2010, 2061, and 3001. I also think that while Known Space isn’t a bad universe, it’s better when other authors are doing it (look at any of the Man-Kzin Wars books, for example.)

8

The thing is that Niven generally has one idea per work. This can make for some great short stories. But that lone idea usually can’t bear the weight of a 800 page book.

9

So, basically, I should pretty much avoid any Niven that’s longer than a hundred or so pages, most Pournelle, and all of their collaberative efforts except for The Mote in God’s Eye, which should be read with a salt cellar handy, in case I find a passage that I need to take with a grain…

Oh, well. I guess I should go get my machete and see about getting through the rest of Lucifer’s Hammer. I’m too close to the end to abandon the project now.

10

I recall vaguely that I read it once. “An Instant Classic” would only occur to me if I was paid to advertise it–but it was probably better than all of the various natural disaster films that Hollywood put out (except maybe Armaggedon, which is just enjoyable.)

But personally I consider getting through The Glass Bead Game to have been my greatest testament to stubborness in reading. Not to say it’s a bad book nor not “An Instant Classic”–just that it truly is a whole lot of pages of nothing happening (though that’s the point.)

11

It’s not that bad. Footfall is good. Mote and sequel are also good. Oath of Fealty is excellent. For a different feel, try the RPG-flavored novels Larry wrote with Steven Barnes (DreamPark).

:smiley:

12

The Cannibal army was really the books downfall for me. They go from a small group of beaten troops worried about being shot to an efficient army taking over most of California and on the verge of unstopable. The transition would be fine if there was any clue in the book about how it happened. Hooker is walking down the road having a mental breakdown and worried about being shot. Next time he is mentioned, he’s riding in a limo planning how to take over more territory.

Add to that how every line a black person mentions in the line slaughters the English language and the books problems keep building.

13

The what now?

Anyway, I liked it, in the way I liked Dean Koonz when I was in jr. high. It seemed like a bunch of grownups doing grownup stuff, like being sexy and making documentaries, then living through the end of the world, all improbable and exciting to boring ol’ me. But I love end of the world stories. I watched The Postman. All the way through.

ZJ

14

Thank you SO much for reminding me of this book. Ugh. I had successfully blocked it from my memory. I slogged through it then gave it away, something I rarely do.

Now let us never speak of this book again.

15

I think Inferno is worth trying as well.

The others…meh. Not awful, but not great, with LH probably being the weakest. IMHO.

  • Tamerlane
16

I liked the book, and I agree - the best parts are things dealing with the diabetic doctor. (I can’t recall his name, but I’m sure you know who I am talking about.) The cubic mile of Hot Fudge Sundae, and the storing of the books in the latrine.

It does have a number of weaknesses and on rereading it recently, the number of things in it I find archaic are mind boggling.

I think it made such a big impression because it was the first book to come out that size, and did a lot to ‘legitmize’ SF in the book-buying public’s eyes. After all, a lot of people who put it on the best seller lists would have never heard of Mote or Ringworld. IIRC it was, at the time, the longest book to have published in a single volume - something that worried the publisher to no end - Niven wrote in one of his short story collections that the publisher had nightmares about his decision to raise the cover price to $2.95 (God, I miss books that cheap, don’t you?) and still feared he’d have a best-seller on his hands, and lose a nickel on each copy. :smiley:

I didn’t find the book as torturous as you seem to have, but unless it’s a frigging class that you’re going to be tested upon, my general rule is that I read for pleasure, and if the book doesn’t give me pleasure, I’m not going to finish it in hopes it gets better. (And it took me damn near 20 years to get where I’d be willing to say that - I wish I’d had that attitude in fourth grade when I picked up Moby Dick.)

Just my $0.02, worth what you paid for it.

17

Just saw Tamerlane’s post. Yes, I really liked their Inferno, too. But LH isn’t the weakest, I don’t think. Oath of Fealty (Which had only one small giggle in it - the diving board on the arcology for suicides.), or Saturn’s Race both seemed even less enjoyable.

18

Destiny’s what? Never heard of it.

sigh

Okay, I read it. What in the heck was the point of it, anyway? Except for the tangential relationship to the Heorot books (same universe) and the revelation that a lack of potassium in the diet will cause you to become a complete idiot, I couldn’t make heads or tails of the whole thing. It made less sense than The Ringworld Throne!

The Draco Tavern tales are actually quite fantastic; they’re some of his best work, IMHO. I like the worldbuilding exercise of Ringworld but the plot made virtually no sense. The Ringworld Engineers was much better plotted, but the characterizations were as bad as ever. I agree with Little Nemo that Niven basically has one idea per story/novel, which is enough for a 20 page short but completely insufficient for a 300+ page novel. My other gripe with Niven is how his main characters all talk the same (“Yah! Tanj damnit.”) and how they all feel the need to exposit on every plot device.

His series (if you can call it that) that I enjoyed the most were the Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring. While his characters were still kind of flat, they were better developed than usual and the “world” (a freefall environment set in a gas torus about a neutron star) was great. One of my favorite “unknown” books of his, apparently set in the same “The State” universe is A World Out Of Time, based on an earlier short story of his (which basically comprises the first two chapters).

Niven is better than 90% of the spec fic writers out there…but a lot of his output, especially the recent stuff, is just crap. Ditto times two for Pournelle. Walter Miller Jr., where art thou?

Stranger

19

Thank heavens, I thought it was just me. Say what you like about Niven, his plots are always easy to follow, so when I couldn’t make head or tail of Destiny’s Road I thought I’d woken up stupid that particular morning.

Oh, and if you didn’t like Lucifer’s Hammer, stay the hell away from Fallen Angels. All of LH’s flaws, with only a few of its virtues.

20

Read the section where the surfer catches the ultimate wave and gets slammed into a tall building.

Put the book down and walk away. You’ve just read the best part.