As I got older, my science fiction became more contemporary. I strongly remember one book, Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. My father bought it home as an almost-new hardcover. Maybe I was eleven at the time. I sat and read it over three days, and one of those days I read until the sun rose on a Saturday morning and I was so tired that I couldn’t focus anymore. As an aside, I met both authors at a writer’s conference in Los Angeles, maybe eight years ago, fawned all over them, and told them how much I had appreciated Lucifer’s Hammer as a teen. I’ll never forget overhearing their comments as I walked away. Larry looked at Jerry and said, “I think he thought we were dead.” They both laughed.

The plot of Lucifers Hammer deals with how humans recover after a meteorite hits the earth and civilization falls apart. As we all have become aware, the natural disaster, the monster, or the zombies are only part of the terrain in these stories. The real challenges come from what remains of humanity. As much of a shame it is that opportunistic villains will always arise in times of human crisis, we should expect nothing less from evolution — it has a way of keeping us on our toes — only the strongest and smartest can survive. 

Maybe now is the perfect time to start talking about God, Human Consciousness, Space-Time, and Reality. See you all over at my other blog, titled the same.