more on the end of the world
lucifer’s hammer by larry niven and jerry pournelle was a book that someone recommended after i read earth abides (or recommended in relation to someone else mentioning it). it was what i polished off while sitting in the jury assembly room. on top of being another end-of-the-world book (this time caused by the impact of a comet), it was even more fun because most of the characters experience the impact in and around the los angeles area.
like a lot of science fiction, it suffers from mediocre characters (particularly the bad guys in the last part of the story) and almost too many liberties taken with events and circumstances to make the plot work. i think the book works best as an apocalyptic tale, and the post-apocalyptic story is disappointingly conventional in comparison.
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Hmm -- do you suppose that attorneys on either side might notice if you were reading postapocalyptic fiction and rule you out during voir dire?
My information is nearly thirty years old and for all I know he's had six complete turnarounds in his career since then, but back when I read SF I was kind of disappointed with where Larry Niven took his writing. The early Neutron Star-era stuff was so good, so imaginative and yet science-based. Later it seemed like it just turned to airport fiction.
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I liked it. Yes, I liked how places like Burbank get worked. :)
I read Footfall after that, and it was incredibly bad. Especially disgusting was their ego-massaging treatment of science fiction authors.