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''The Hammer of God'' is a
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...
novel by
Arthur C. Clarke Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 191719 March 2008) was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film '' 2001: A Space ...
originally published in 1993. Set in the year 2109, it deals with the discovery of an
asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...
to be on course to collide with Earth and depicts the mission for deflecting the asteroid by using fusion thermal rockets.


Setting

The main events of the novel start in the year 2109. Descriptions of various aspects of the future society and of the life of Robert Singh take up a significant part of the book. A world government administers the Earth. The Moon and Mars also have established societies. New technologies include automated self-sufficient houses, genetically-engineered pets, 'Brainman' ( VR with
Brain–computer interface A brain–computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a brain–machine interface (BMI) or smartbrain, is a direct communication pathway between the brain's electrical activity and an external device, most commonly a computer or robotic limb. B ...
),
artificial general intelligence Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the ability of an intelligent agent to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can. It is a primary goal of some artificial intelligence research and a common topic in science fictio ...
, medicine to double the human lifespan and extend fertility. The economics policy is guided by "the skilful application of Chaos Theory by World Bank mathematicians", having caused "the collapse of communism and capitalism – now so long ago that both events seemed simultaneous." The SPACEGUARD project exists with the goal of detecting and dealing with celestial bodies with the potential to strike the Earth, with ''Goliath'' and ''Hercules'' spaceships stationed near Jupiter L4 and L5 as interceptors. Influenced by Islam during military campaigns in the Middle East, an American soldier had evolved into a religious figure and founded the new religion of Chrislam, with a more "liberated" philosophy compared to Islam and Christianity. The religion capitalized on Brainman technology to spread its teachings as "the first Religion of the Byte" and became a dominant religion. In 2067, a nuclear bomb was exploded in space (on the other side of the Sun to avoid affecting the Earth) to generate powerful radio waves, whose echoes were used to identify more of possible impactors for the SPACEGUARD. In 2085, a transmission was received from Sirius, which, while indecipherable, resulted in growth of an extremist faction within Chrislam, 'The Reborn'. The captain of ''Goliath'' is Robert Singh, a 70-year-old veteran of spaceflight. While studying for his engineering degree, he took part in the first marathon on the Moon and ended up being the only participant to finish. His ex-wife and their son reside on Earth, and he, his current wife, and their children reside on Mars. Aboard the ''Goliath'', Singh and his team are extensively assisted by David, an AI. In the initial sections of the book, three major meteor events are mentioned - the 1972 Great Daylight Fireball, the
Tunguska event The Tunguska event (occasionally also called the Tunguska incident) was an approximately 12- megaton explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia, on the morning of June 3 ...
and the
Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event (also known as the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction) was a sudden mass extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth, approximately 66 million years ago. With the ...
.


Plot

A new contact binary asteroid is discovered by an amateur astronomer, Dr. Angus Millar, having been missed by the SPACEGUARD due to a combination of factors. It is named Kali and is determined to be on course to hit Earth in about a year's time. ''Goliath'', having been at Jupiter L4, leaves for Deimos to receive the ATLAS propulsion module, which is designed for attaching with the asteroid and slowly deflecting it to a safe course by using nuclear fusion-powered thrusters. Then, having loaded hydrogen fuel at Europa, ''Goliath'' reaches Kali and starts the ATLAS. Extremists from The Reborn, believing that the collision with Kali is meant to be, had planted bombs in the ATLAS that explode just moments after the activation of ATLAS. However, most of the fuel tanks of ATLAS remain functional, and the plan is changed to use ''Goliath'' itself to propel the asteroid. Meanwhile, a contingency plan is discussed by Earth's government to use nuclear weapons to break up the peanut shaped asteroid with enough energy that the fragments miss Earth. Kali gets closer to Sun, starts ejecting material from vents, and is also adjudged to be a probable extinct comet. The resulting venting cancels off a bit of the deflection, taking it too close to the margin of error. Meanwhile, Earth's government affirms the usage of nuclear weapons, as the success of ''Goliath''s mission is deemed too uncertain. At Kali, ''Goliath'' suffers damage from the spacecraft sinking a few meters into the asteroid after weeks of pushing against it. As a result, ''Goliath'' loses its fuel and is stuck on the asteroid. With the nuclear weapon plan in effect, the members of the ''Goliath'' crew make peace with their upcoming deaths and indulge in pleasure-seeking. The manufacture of nuclear weapons had been abandoned for many years, and the weapon intended for Kali is hurriedly put together. When it is fired towards the asteroid, the weapon proves defective and fails to explode, but it impacts with a high enough anomalous velocity that the asteroid breaks into two, with ''Goliath'' and its crew intact. The part carrying ''Goliath'', Kali 1, stays on course to go safely past Earth, with the crew to be retrieved later by the help of another spaceship. The other part, Kali 2, enters into the Earth's atmosphere and causes the deaths of a hundred thousand people and a trillion dollars' worth of damage. It reaches as close as sixty kilometers above surface before it skips off the Earth's atmosphere.


Development and writing

In the 'Sources and Acknowledgements' section of the book, Clarke details the inspiration for the novel. Clarke received a request for a short story for ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'' in May 1992. Having been abreast of NASA's Space-guard survey being conducted in the same year (which in turn borrowed its name from Spaceguard in ''
Rendezvous with Rama ''Rendezvous with Rama'' is a science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1973. Set in the 2130s, the story involves a cylindrical alien starship that enters the Solar System. The story is told from the po ...
''), Clarke decided on
asteroid impact avoidance Asteroid impact avoidance comprises the methods by which near-Earth objects (NEO) on a potential collision course with Earth could be diverted away, preventing destructive impact events. An impact by a sufficiently large asteroid or other NEOs ...
as the theme for the short story, with the thought tha"it was my duty to show what could be done about the asteroid menace. By creating a self-fulfilling prophecy I might even save the world - though I'd never know". The short story bearing the same title got published in ''Time'' magazine's "Beyond the Year 2000" issue in October 1992, being the second piece of fiction ever published by the magazine. The
Alvarez hypothesis The Alvarez hypothesis posits that the mass extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs and many other living things during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was caused by the impact of a large asteroid on the Earth. Prior to 2013, it was ...
for the K-Pg extinction event, which was then only 12 years old, is discussed by Clarke in the section. Clarke also mentions that the "final confirmation" of the hypothesis only came just before he published the novel. Clarke's decision to "decompress" the short story into a novel was influenced by one of Dr. Duncan Steels' visual presentation about 'what might happen in the event of a major impact event'. The choice of time period for the novel (2109) was inspired by the contemporary view that
Comet Swift-Tuttle A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are ...
had a high probability of impact with Earth in 2126.


Literary significance and reception

The ''
Library Journal ''Library Journal'' is an American trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey. It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional pract ...
'' review noted, "In the capable hands of science fiction veteran Clarke, a standard cosmic disaster plot becomes a lucid commentary on humanity's place in the cosmos".


Film adaptation

The filmmaker
Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg (; born December 18, 1946) is an American director, writer, and producer. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, he is the most commercially successful director of all time. Sp ...
optioned the rights to ''The Hammer of God'' for film production, but the resultant movie, '' Deep Impact'' (1998), was so dissimilar to the book that Clarke received no on-screen credit for the movie.


References to other works

* Clarke reintroduces the idea of project
Spaceguard The term Spaceguard loosely refers to a number of efforts to discover, catalogue, and study near-Earth objects (NEO), especially those that may impact Earth ( potentially hazardous objects). Asteroids are discovered by telescopes which repeate ...
, which he first mentioned in ''
Rendezvous with Rama ''Rendezvous with Rama'' is a science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1973. Set in the 2130s, the story involves a cylindrical alien starship that enters the Solar System. The story is told from the po ...
'' (1973) as a project to detect
near-Earth object A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body whose orbit brings it into proximity with Earth. By convention, a Solar System body is a NEO if its closest approach to the Sun (Apsis, perihelion) is less than 1.3 astronomical unit ...
s. The Spaceguard featured in ''The Hammer of God'' (1993) would seem to be the
Spaceguard The term Spaceguard loosely refers to a number of efforts to discover, catalogue, and study near-Earth objects (NEO), especially those that may impact Earth ( potentially hazardous objects). Asteroids are discovered by telescopes which repeate ...
that exists in the real world, which was inspired by and named after the one in ''Rendezvous with Rama'', as it is remarked to have taken its name from an obscure science fiction novel, and the 9/11/2077 impact that prompted the Spaceguard of ''Rendezvous with Rama'' is only mentioned in the book's "Acknowledgements and Sources". * ''Goliaths on-board
supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructio ...
is named David and is very similar to
HAL 9000 HAL 9000 is a fictional artificial intelligence character and the main antagonist in Arthur C. Clarke's ''Space Odyssey'' series. First appearing in the 1968 film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'', HAL ( Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer ...
from '' 2001: A Space Odyssey''. * The planet-killing comet in ''
Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland ...
'' was named in tribute to the author,
Arthur C. Clarke Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 191719 March 2008) was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film '' 2001: A Space ...
.


See also

* ''
Armageddon According to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, Armageddon (, from grc, Ἁρμαγεδών ''Harmagedōn'', Late Latin: , from Hebrew: ''Har Məgīddō'') is the prophesied location of a gathering of armies ...
'', a 1998 disaster film similar to ''Deep Impact'' that was released a few months later * ''
Lucifer's Hammer ''Lucifer's Hammer'' is a science fiction post-apocalypse-survival novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle that was first published in 1977. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978. Two issues of a planned si ...
'' – a novel by
Larry Niven Laurence van Cott Niven (; born April 30, 1938) is an American science fiction writer. His best-known works are '' Ringworld'' (1970), which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards, and, with Jerry Pournelle, '' The Mote in God's E ...
and
Jerry Pournelle Jerry Eugene Pournelle (; August 7, 1933 – September 8, 2017) was an American scientist in the area of operations research and human factors research, a science fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and one of the first bloggers. In the 1960s ...
about a comet strike.


References


Works cited

*


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hammer of God, The Fiction about near-Earth asteroids Novels by Arthur C. Clarke 1993 British novels 1993 science fiction novels Novels about impact events Novels set in fictional countries Novels set on Mars British science fiction novels Victor Gollancz Ltd books