The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

"Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven is the book of the month for July 2020, chosen by a poll.

You are now free to talk about it!

I read this book originally in the early 80's and liked it very much. I had pretty much forgotten the details and decided it would be a good time to re-read it again. I did and enjoyed it just as much as I did then. I think the book is written well with an interesting interweaving of stories of various types of people impacted. I was 30 years old when this book was written and I can easily place myself back in the that time period and it's social and political attitudes as I read it again now.

I mentioned this in another thread but there weren't any responses so i'll repeat it here. I think Niven and Pournelle collaborated on 9 novels. I don't know if the info is available but I would like to find out more about their collaborating style like who wrote what. Some collaborators split chapters or sections of a novel. Or one writer does and outline, the second writes the first draft and then the first does the final draft. Anybody know more about this?

I wonder who wrote the part about the Hot fudge sundae that starts, i think, on page 41.

Harvey said, “Look. Hamner-Brown will hit atmosphere a lot harder than any normal meteorite, and it’s mostly ice. The masses will burn faster, won’t they?”
He saw two shaking heads: a thin face wearing insectile glasses, and a thick bushy beard above thick glasses. And over against the wall Mark was shaking his head too. Sharps said, “They’d bore through quicker. When the mass is above a certain size, it stops being important whether Earth has an atmosphere or not.”
“Except to us,” Forrester said, deadpan.
Sharps paused a second, then laughed. Politely, Harvey thought, but it was done carefully. Sharps took pains to avoid offending Forrester. “What we need is a good analogy. Um…” Sharps’s brow furrowed.
“Hot fudge sundae,” said Forrester.
“Hah?”
Forrester’s grin was wide through his beard. “A cubic mile of hot fudge sundae. Cometary speeds.”
Sharps’s eyes lit up. “I like it! Let’s hit Earth with a cubic mile of hot fudge sundae.”
Lord God, they’ve gone bonkers, Harvey thought. The two men raced each other to the blackboard. Sharps began to draw. “Okay. Hot fudge sundae. Let’s see: We’ll put the vanilla ice cream in the center with a layer of fudge over it…”
He ignored the strangled sound behind him. Tim Hamner hadn’t said a word during the whole interview. Now he was doubled over, holding himself, trying to hold in the laughter. He looked up, choked, got his face straight, said, “I can’t stand it!” and brayed like a jackass. “My comet! A cubic mile of hot… fudge… sun… dae…”
“With the fudge as the outer shell,” Forrester amplified, “so the fudge will heat up when the Hammer rounds the Sun.”
“That’s Hamner-Brown,” Tim said, straight-faced.
“No, my child, that’s a cubic mile of hot fudge sundae. And the ice cream will still be frozen inside the shell,” said Sharps.
Harvey said, “But you forgot the—”
“We put the cherry at one pole and say that pole was in shadow at perihelion.” Sharps sketched to show that when the comet rounded the Sun, the cherry at the oblate spheroid’s axis would be on the side away from Sol. “We don’t want it scorched. And we’ll put crushed nuts all through it, to represent rocks. Say a two-hundred-foot cherry?”
“Carried by the Royal Canadian Air Force,” Mark said.
“Stan Freberg! Right!” Forrester whooped. “Shhhh… plop! Let’s see you do that on television!”
“And now, as the comet rounds the Sun, trailing a luminous froth of fake whipped cream, and aims itself down our throats… Dan, what’s the density of vanilla ice cream?”
Forrester shrugged. “It floats. Say two-thirds.”
“Right. Point six six six it is.” Sharps seized a pocket calculator from the desk and punched frantically. “I love these things. Used to use slide rules. Never could figure out where the decimal point went.
“A cubic mile to play with. Five thousand two hundred and eighty feet, times twelve for inches, times two point five four for centimeters, cube that… We have two point seven seven six times ten to the fifteenth cubic centimeters of vanilla ice cream. It would take a while to eat it all. Times the density, and lo, we have about two times ten to the fifteenth grams. Couple of billion tons. Now for the fudge…” Sharps punched away.
Happy as a clam, Harvey thought. A very voluble clam equipped with Texas Instruments’ latest pocket marvel.
“What do you like for the density of hot fudge?” Sharps asked.
“Call it point nine,” Forrester said.
“Haven’t any of you made fudge?” Charlene demanded. “It doesn’t float. You test it by dripping it into a cup of cold water. Or at least my mother did.”
“Say one point two, then,” Forrester said.
“Another billion and a half tons of hot fudge,” Sharps said. Behind him Hamner made more strangled noises.
“I think we can ignore the rocks,” Sharps said. “Do you see why, now?”
“Lord God, yes,” Harvey said. He looked at the camera with a start. “Uh, yes, Dr. Sharps, it certainly makes sense to ignore the rocks.”
“You’re not going to show this, are you?” Tim Hamner sounded indignant.
“You’re saying no?” Harvey asked.
“No… no…” Hamner doubled over and giggled.
’Now, she’s coming at cometary speeds. Fast. Let’s see, parabolic speed at Earth orbit is what, Dan?”
“Twenty-nine point seven kilometers per second. Times square root of two.”
“Forty-two kilometers a second,” Sharps announced. “And we’ve got Earth’s orbital velocity to add. Depends on the geometry of the strike. Shall we say fifty kilometers a second as a reasonable closing velocity?”
“Sounds good,” Forrester said. “Meteors go from twenty to maybe seventy. It’s reasonable.”
“Right. Call it fifty. Square that, times a half. Times mass in grams. Bit over two times ten to the twenty-eight ergs. That’s for the vanilla ice cream. Now we can figure that most of the hot fudge boiled away, but understand, Harvey, at those speeds we’re just not in the atmosphere very long. If we come in straight it’s two seconds flat! Anyway, whatever mass you burn up, a lot of the energy just gets transferred to the earth’s heat balance. That’s a spectacular explosion all by itself. We’ll figure twenty percent of the hot-fudge energy transfers to Earth, and” — more buttons pressed, and dramatic rise in voice — “our grand total is two point seven times ten to the twenty-eighth ergs. Okay, that’s your strike.”
“Doesn’t mean much to me,” Harvey said. “It sounds like a big number…”
“One followed by twenty-eight zeros,” Mark muttered.
“Six hundred and forty thousand megatons, near enough,” Dan Forrester said gently. “It is a big number.”
“Good God, pasteurized planet,” Mark said.

that is definitely one of the most memorable passages. The other one that's stuck with me is at the end (view spoiler)[Give my children the light. (hide spoiler)] The issues with priorities. Great ending & message.

I've only about 15% into the book but am enjoying it so far.
I ended up buying a ebook for $7.99 since I would never have gotten it in time from the library.

I read this in 1978, when I was living in a motel after being transferred by the company I worked for. It's always been on my mental list of best books.

I'm currently reading a book about a different meteorite hitting the earth, The Calculating Stars, a Tor freebie. Not nearly as good.

Jim wrote: "that is definitely one of the most memorable passages. The other one that's stuck with me is at the end [spoilers removed] The issues with priorities. Great ending & message."

I would just like to mention that I included the fudge sundae page without a spoiler alert because it was so early in the novel.

Buck: "I'm currently reading a book about different meteorite hitting the earth, The Calculating Stars, a Tor freebie. Not nearly as good"

Agreed. I was surprised how much I didn't like it. DNF.

Actually, offhand I can't think of any other decent "big asteroid hits the earth" novels. There was that *terrible* movie AWB. I think Hollywood came up with that POS on their own.

I finished the book yesterday, and by and large I found it quite enjoyable, but will wait until more people have finished to discuss the plot in detail.

And thanks for sharing the hot fudge sundae part, Jim, that was great. Here are a couple of other parts I found very funny too:

(view spoiler)[Eileen speeded up again. Tim opened the bundle. There was a baby in it. It didn't move. Tim felt for a heartbeat, and his hand came out covered with blood. It was bright red, copper blood, and the smell filled the car despite the warm salt smell of the rain.

"Dead," Tim said.

"Throw him out," Eileen said.

"But—"

"We aren't going to eat him. We won't be that hungry." (hide spoiler)]

and

(view spoiler)[Dan Forrester sighed again. "Maybe I shouldn't suggest it. I had an idea, but you may not like it."

"For God's sake, man," Al Hardy said. "If you know something that can help us, say it! What?"

"Well, you've probably already thought of it," Forrester said.

"Goddamm—" Christopher began.

Senator Jellison held up his hand. "Dr. Forrester, believe me, you won't offend us. Please, what did you have in mind?"

Forrester shrugged. "Mustard gas. Thermite bombs. Napalm. And I think we can make nerve gas, but I'm not sure."

There was a long silence, then Senator Jellison said, low and under his breath but everybody heard, "I will be dipped in shit." (hide spoiler)]

I have finished the first part and am now about to experience Hammer Day. The chapter which described the preparations for the event-especially the empty shelves in stores are eerily familiar.

There's a new comet in the sky.

Run on toilet paper?

They didn't mention that at all!

Peter wrote: "Buck: "I'm currently reading a book about different meteorite hitting the earth, The Calculating Stars, a Tor freebie. Not nearly as good"

Agreed. I was surprised how much I didn't like it. DNF."

Agree as well: The Calculating Stars, as terrible as it is, actually won a Hugo. A Hugo!--and Lucifer's Hammer didn't...

This is an amazing novel. We encounter similar situations in The Wanderer and, of course, The Stand, but N&P really take the time to deconstruct humanity to the barest of essentials.

(view spoiler)[At times, I admit I thought, "Oh please, you're overdoing it! Christ--the thing hits on Tuesday and by Wednesday morning everybody's shooting everyone else, protectin' and invadin'." Then I remember the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: We KNEW that hurricane was going to hit, and, after, while still fully cognizant the rest of the world existed beyond the bayous, things went to lawlessness and depravity quickly. Remember the testimony of the people attempting to cross one of the bridges to higher ground--they were shot at by armed guards, some of which were local law enforcement, warning them to stay away.

I live two hours west of New Orleans, was an assistant principal at a small community high school. There's was always some jackass riling up the ignorant with stories of New Orleans gangs fleeing and ransacking small towns for supplies, that if law enforcement wasn't going to police the Interstate 10 exit, then they would. It was ludicrous, totally untrue, but we had a hell of a time convincing these ignorant hotheads our area was not being targeted by rapacious gangs. Many of the New Orleans families which ended up in nearby hotels just needed shelter and assistance, not roadblocks manned by a local militia.

So, I think N&P did some thorough research and presented their unsettling findings in this novel. (hide spoiler)]

I started listening to the audiobook today. It's really sucked me in. There are a lot of characters & cuts from one situation to another, but I haven't had any trouble keeping them straight since they're memorable & extremely diverse: a senator, astronauts, TV preacher, hoodlum, stalker/lunatic, & several liberated women.

I'm really enjoying the science, though. It's very well done through the TV interviews. Some is out of date of course, but it's not awful & the passion for it never gets old. The attitudes were formative for me & I once argued it in the Op-Ed pages of a newspaper decades ago.

The historical aspects are nice. It's 50 years old & yet doesn't seem that old to me. A lot of the issues are perennial such as those with the nuclear power plant. That one especially struck me since I lived near one & watched another built near my cousin's house. Multiple millions spent on it, but it never generated an erg of power due to protests.

Dan wrote: "... We encounter similar situations in The Wanderer and, of course, The Stand, ..."
Thats great, right now I am reading The Stand and Lucifers Hammer is next in line.
M-O-O-N that spells Hammer!

Rosemarie wrote: ".... The chapter which described the preparations for the event-especially the empty shelves in stores are eerily familiar."

You never know what it will be..... I'm now reduced to using an inferior brand of instant coffee! :(

Ed wrote: "Rosemarie wrote: ".... The chapter which described the preparations for the event-especially the empty shelves in stores are eerily familiar."

You never know what it will be..... I'm now reduced to using an inferior brand of instant coffee! "

Gadzooks! Fortunately, TJ hasn't run short of tea, and we bought our coffee by mail order long before CV-19. No interruptions there -- other than delivery being a bit slower.

All brands of instant coffee are inferior. Shudder. I've drunk a lot of different 'coffee' over the years, but have always disliked instant the most.

I'm now up to the Monday before Hot-fudge Sundae which falls on Tuesday. It's been wonderfully engaging. There are some short bits on how the world might end - CFCs in spray paint, freezing, heating, & others which have been bandied about. Most were misrepresentations of new scientific data, but some have been alleviated. They're the most interesting & heartening.

I have now reached Hammer Day.

Jim wrote: "All brands of instant coffee are inferior...."

You are wrong. But I'm not going to argue politics here.

Rosemarie wrote: "I have now reached Hammer Day."

Are you wearing Hammer Pants?

Alas, no. Forever in Blue Jeans!

Jim wrote: "... I don't know if the info is available but I would like to find out more about their collaborating style like who wrote what. ..."

I'm also curious about how co-writing works.

One non-fiction book I read a few years ago said that when you see on the cover one name in a big font and the other in a small font, the small font person is probably the real writer of the majority of the text and the big name may be no more than an editor. Notice how small Maxine Paetro's name is here: . She was the real writer. But James Patterson claims that he does often write the outline. "Patterson delivers exhaustive notes and outlines, sometimes running 80 pages, to co-authors.... “The success rate when I write the outline is almost 100 percent. When other people do, it’s 50 to 60 percent,” he says.

For Larry Niven the process may be different. I'm curious. I'm especially curious about Steven Barnes. He is one of the very few successful Black writers of SF before the year 2000. Niven gave him his start, and they wrote often together. Sometimes including Pournelle. Was Barnes the main author? Was Niven using his name to promote someone he liked who was doing most of the writing? Or was it a more equal collaboration?

Here is the only thing I could find so far, in an interview with Barnes:

GB: You've collaborated on several books, writing some with Larry Niven (the Dream Park books, and several others, most recently Saturn's Race), and some with Niven and Pournelle (The Legacy of Heorot and its sequel Beowulf's Children). What was the collaborative process like?

SB: It was like going to school. It was stressful, very stressful at times. I had some pretty profound differences with both Larry and Jerry politically, and there were some conversations about The Bell Curve I could have done without. In a way, it was sort of like going incognito into the enemy camp, and at the same time, it was a tremendous learning opportunity. I like Jerry and I love Larry, and I had these two tremendous writers who I respected tremendously for their minds, and for their accomplishments, even if we disagreed politically. If I could sit there and let them tear up my manuscript, if I could keep my ego intact, there was no limit to what I could learn from them.

http://strangehorizons.com/non-fictio...

Peter wrote: "Buck: "I'm currently reading a book about different meteorite hitting the earth, The Calculating Stars, a Tor freebie. Not nearly as good"

Agreed. I was surprised how much I didn't like it. DNF."

Thanks for the suggestion. What a slog. I DNF'd it tonight, 40% of the way through.

I'm almost half way through the book. There are some very intense sections describing the events on that fateful Tuesday.

I am one third of the way through the book and not hating it. The first time through I think I became very frustrated with how long it took the authors to reach the starting premise catalyst. Now on my second read through I know it happens sometime between a third and halfway in, so I am accepting it better. I've always enjoyed the post-Armageddon portions of an SF book more than the pre. I mean, if you think about it, the pre- portion by definition is precisely the same as reading mainstream fiction, which I'm capable of doing on my own when I want to.

One quirk I am catching this time around is that at least one of the authors has a linguistic fascination over the spellings of sunday and sundae and the fact the pronunciations are identical. The author(s) then cleverly apply this to Tuesday and spell(s) it Tuesdae. Oh, it is to laugh. Okay, lame joke told the first time gets a polite chuckle pass, but then they repeat it, then rinse and repeat it, and then do it again I don't know how many times. There seems to be no end to how much they want to milk this joke. My udder hurts! It sure is an odd quirk. I mean, OCD much P and/or N? I am reading the book in print, but if anyone has it in Kindle I would love to know how many times the word "sundae" and how many times the word "tuesdae" arises.

Anyhoo, 34% in now. Looking forward to the Hammer finally hitting one dae soon.

I'm going to read in dutch. I wonder what the translator has made of this then. My guess is that this joke disappeared in translation.

I'm fascinated by the attitude of people who want the Hammer to strike to change their world because they're so frustrated with their current one. This has been mirrored in the decades since this book was published by the rise in popularity of dystopian fiction. Our inability to appreciate what we have & the wish for excitement blinds far too many to how good we have it now.

I'm seeing a lot of that in real life with people demonstrating against vaccines. When I was a kid, there were a lot of people around who were scarred by polio, measles, & other diseases we rarely see anymore. They don't remember the horror.

Kyk wrote: "I am one third of the way through the book and not hating it. The first time through I think I became very frustrated with how long it took the authors to reach the starting premise catalyst. Now o..."

According to Kindle, “Sundae” occurs 18 times, “Tuesdae” 14 times. Seemed like more to me, actually—you’re right about that joke wearing thin.

When I was reading part one, I kept thinking about a song by Queen- I'm just waiting for "The Hammer to Fall".

Re Vacines- one of my mother's siblings died of diptheria- The D in the DPT vaccine.

Ed wrote: "Jim wrote: "... I don't know if the info is available but I would like to find out more about their collaborating style like who wrote what. ..."

I'm also curious about how co-writing works.

Thanks for the interview link. Interesting.
This wouldn't take, first try, nor would another. Random glitch with a long page of pink-BG garbage....

Jim wrote: "I'm fascinated by the attitude of people who want the Hammer to strike to change their world because they're so frustrated with their current one."

My motivation in wanting the Hammer to hit already is so that I can start reading science fiction rather than mainstream fiction. Years like this do cause me to wish I lived in a more rational society however, like this one: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/08/politi...

For those interested in "The Calculating Stars", it is the book-of-the-month right now in the "Hugo and Nebula" group.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Feel free to go over there and try to convince people to switch to our book! ;)

I probably wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't been reading this talk about "Sundae" here. But in an newspaper article about "Miyako Ice Cream" in San Francisco, I notice they have a big sign about their "Sundea". That's a new spelling for me!

Also, I now want one of their 100 flavors!

Ed wrote: "For those interested in "The Calculating Stars", it is the book-of-the-month right now in the "Hugo and Nebula" group.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Feel free to go over there an..."

Let the book itself convince them. Sometimes touching a hot stove is the best learning experience...

I am thirty pages or so past Hammerfall and remembering now what I didn't like. I can get people acting completely lawlessly and nastily some weeks (maybe even just days for Trump supporters) after the breakdown of civilization, but immediately? I mean, even Golding in Lord of the Flies had it take weeks, maybe months, for the school children to lose it and revert to savagery after the plane crash, and that's British school children, not California adults. Eileen within hours of Hammerstrike contemplates cannibalism but dismisses it? I'm really not buying this.

I'm in the midst of Hammerfall & I think the actions seem quite realistic. Some people get better, others get worse. Watch what happens during a blackout or natural disaster. A lot depends on how well they understand or believe the implications of it, too. Those who think the world will end tend act in extremes.

I liked the list of books that are mentioned in Dan Forrester's house.
Alice in Wonderland and The Water Babies and Gulliver's Travels. These books would rot in an abandoned house: Dune; Nova; Double Star; The Corridors of Time; Cat's Cradle; Half Past Human; Murder in Retrospect; Gideon's Day; The Red Right Hand, The Trojan Hearse; A Deadly Shade of Gold; Conjure Wife, Rosemary's Baby; Silverlock; King Conan. He'd packed books not to entertain, nor even to illustrate philosophies of life, but to rebuild civilization. Even Dole's Habitable Planets for Man...
...He added more: Future Shock; Cults of Unreason; Dante's Inferno; Tau Zero...

I've read about half of those & really liked most, so the rest are probably worth checking out.

In the aftermath of Katrina, things took about three days to go belly-up in New Orleans. When there's no calling help, most people--though I would like to optimistically think otherwise--become paranoid and selfish. Day after the storm people were grilling and sharing meat so it wouldn't spoil because of the loss of electricity. The next day the flood waters began to rise. On the morn of the third day, things were getting a mite grim in some areas. Soon enough, all hell was breaking loose and Anderson Cooper was telling his CNN audience he was planning to leave New Orleans and return to the United States soon.

N&P, in this novel, are not terribly off the mark regarding the rapid erosion of civility in the face of catastrophe.

I've almost finished the book-it's a suspenseful read!

I'm now reading about Harry the post man during Hammerfall. I really like Harry. Great character!

I just started the book and the first few chapters don't "sound" very SF, more like ordinary novel. Yes, there is the comet, but they can be mentioned in non-SF as well. This just surprised me - I've read and liked maybe about a score of Niven's books and no other starts this way

Jim wrote: "I'm now reading about Harry the post man during Hammerfall. I really like Harry. Great character!"

Have you ever read The Postman by David Brin? Brin clearly "borrowed" from Niven and Pournelle.

Kyk, I have read "The Postman" & seen the movie. I thought so at the time & really liked it. Great character & idea that deserved its own book & movie, IMO.

Having read David Brin's borrowing of the postman concept (I never mention the film because then people might think the book was equally awful--it wasn't), it now makes me wonder if N&P "borrowed" the concept from someone too. If it were original to them, I would expect them to have made a fuss at its appropriation. Unless they in turn had borrowed it. Perhaps post-apocalyptic postman as maintainer or preserver of the old order is a genre trope, or new sub-genre?

Could be the postman, for N&P, epitomized that old axiom of the Pony Express of getting the mail through whether or not the world was wet, cold, sleeted, or baked. My guess would be N&P thought about how the Pony Express functioned in an less-civilized format and applied it here. Could have been a prior author also borrowing it, but I can't think of any specific cases.

I cant' think of any prior uses of The Postman idea, either. Dan might have it right, but they also had an excellent reputation for doing their job.. I don't know why that has fallen so much except society now seems to expect absolute perfection. Neither Snow nor Rain: A History of the United States Postal Service is an interesting read. I gave it a 5 star review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I finished this today & loved it. I gave it a 5 star review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I think that the book is well thought out and I read it much faster than I thought I would due to its length. It was a great read!