Lucifer's Hammer

The oldest book on the list, Lucifer’s Hammer seems to be an end-of-the-world tale. And it is to a degree: the world is forever altered after a comet enters the earth’s atmosphere and breaks apart, the huge pieces slamming into the West Coast.

It’s the aftermath, though, where things get interesting. How do people survive? How much of their humanity survives with them? This is the story Niven and Pournelle tell, with a level of realism that echoes people’s attitudes and actions witnessed during the COVID pandemic.

With a clash between rival forces leading to a showdown that dictates the… show more.

Believable characters, a sufficient backstory to endear you towards the main protagonists, and a well-developed plot that doesn't rely on too many overused tropes in the post-apocalyptic genre.

A number of the characteristics in this post-apocalyptic tale will strike familiar cords, but that would actually be the work of a long chain of often inferior copycat authors who are mimicking previous themes.

Lucifer's Hammer is probably the most realistic apocalypse novel I have read. The authors, also scientists, were very careful to make the entire novel seem possible, probable, and plausible (except maybe for the scene where the surfer rides the tsunami wave into a skyscraper!). It has an immediacy that is lacking in many such novels. When an amateur astronomer discovers a comet headed for Earth, the novel follows him, along with many other different storylines and characters, including astronauts who see the devastation from space. It seemed terrifyingly realistic for me as a 12-year-old, and many scenes still stick in… show more.