A few last Lucifer's Hammer words.

I thought that both of these lines (courtesy of Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle) were pretty significant:

"You had to look squarely at this new and terrible world, know what it could and would do to you--and shout definace, then you could get to work."

"Civilizations have the morality and ethics they can afford."

The first is obviously apropos for a post disaster world, but if you're like me then there is more than enough terrible in the day to day world that we inhabit, and the same advice applies. Seems to me that the root of moral behavior begins with a "no" shouted into the face of a power greater than yourself.

And the second is an idea that I don't much like . . . but I think it is indubitably true. You can't expect a starving man not to steal a loaf of bread. His need to preserve his life is more compelling than a moral obligation not to steal from the other. And maybe that's why it's important for a nation to prosper. Prosperity doesn't guarantee proper moral and ethical behavior, but it sure as hell makes it possible and more probable.

All in all, Lucifer's Hammer was a good read. Not really science fiction, as there was no technology beyond that which existed in 1977 when it was published, but a good and compelling disaster novel with some good, thought-provoking ideas along the way and maybe even in larger concept: in a way, the comet was Lucifer's hammer because the disaster provoked a moral crisis in the people who survived the event. Many of them were tempted away from moral behavior and became selfish and evil. Others maintained a moral outlook but found that they had to compromise their values in order to survive. And isn't that the Lucifer's hammer that threatens us every day in our own lives?