My mom had read this back in 79, and it was always one of her favorites. She told me to be on the lookout for it cuz she wanted to read it again. We found it online finally, great book for it’s time!

A prototype for the modern disaster movie. Though the authors are sci-fi guys (I think?), this really isn’t science fiction, but more a straight “what would happen if a comet hit earth” disaster story with a little bit of Lord of the Flies added in. Takes a long time to set everything up but the payoff is pretty entertaining. The writing is as bad as can be expected, but it is not always distractingly bad. I would say that it is more entertaining than Armageddon, but less entertainining than Deep Impact. It would have been better if the authors had gone more sci-fi and used cool machines to save earth, or had aliens ride to earth on the comet.

For those that don’t know, it’s one of Niven’s finer works – not as thrilling as his Ringworld stuff, but still good. It’s an apocalypse story – doing better than hollywood has ever dreamed of.

I highly recommend it.