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* ExecutiveMeddling: A positive example, and actually how this book came to exist. Creator/LarryNiven and Creator/JerryPournelle had presented their publisher with an alien invasion novel in which the invaders strike Earth with an asteroid in order to soften up humanity. The publisher insisted that the asteroid impact would make a great story all on its own and that while alien invasions were a dime-a-dozen, he'd pay big bucks for the asteroid story. So they went back home, removed the alien invasion, and came back later with ''Lucifer's Hammer''. They eventually published the alien invasion story as ''Literature/{{Footfall}}''.
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* ExecutiveMeddling: A positive example, and actually how this book came to exist. Creator/LarryNiven and Creator/JerryPournelle had presented their publisher with an alien invasion novel in which the invaders strike Earth with an asteroid in order to soften up humanity. The publisher insisted that the asteroid impact would make a great story all on its own and that while alien invasions were a dime-a-dozen, he'd pay big bucks for the asteroid story. So they went back home, removed the alien invasion, and came back later with ''Lucifer's Hammer''. They eventually published the alien invasion story as ''Literature/{{Footfall}}''.''Literature/{{Footfall}}'' (which still involved the aliens using an asteroid strike as an attack).
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Changed line(s) 1 (click to see context) from:
* ExecutiveMeddling: A positive example, and actually how this book came to exist. Creator/LarryNiven and Creator/JerryPournelle had presented their publisher with an alien invasion novel in which the invaders strike Earth with an asteroid in order to soften up humanity. The publisher insisted that the asteroid impact would make a great story all on its own and that while alien invasions were a dime-a-dozen, he'd pay big bucks for the asteroid story. So they went back home, removed the alien invasion, and came back later with ''Lucifer's Hammer''. They eventually published the alien invasion story as ''Literature/{{Footfall}}''.
to:
* ExecutiveMeddling: A positive example, and actually how this book came to exist. Creator/LarryNiven and Creator/JerryPournelle had presented their publisher with an alien invasion novel in which the invaders strike Earth with an asteroid in order to soften up humanity. The publisher insisted that the asteroid impact would make a great story all on its own and that while alien invasions were a dime-a-dozen, he'd pay big bucks for the asteroid story. So they went back home, removed the alien invasion, and came back later with ''Lucifer's Hammer''. They eventually published the alien invasion story as ''Literature/{{Footfall}}''.''Literature/{{Footfall}}''.
* ScienceMarchesOn:
** The novel in general holds up well due to painstaking research and work on the physics. However, the otherwise exhaustive discussion of comet impact consequences is missing a nasty feature that only was identified with modern supercomputers. In addition to enormous amounts of vaporized water, large comet impacts are now believed to throw enormous amounts of vaporized ''rock'' into the atmosphere, which then reenter in an atmospheric heating firestorm.
** Another recently theorized effect is the wake radiation from the massive quantity of ionized material in a large impactor (and impact) could create a strong EMP effect, which would render the focus on the nuclear plant rather moot.
** The tsunami depiction as a giant (surfable!) wave, is debatable. On the one hand, the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami or 2011 Fukushima Tsunami did not look like that. On the other, this event is magnitudes more energetic than even a 9.0 earthquake (~ 475 megatons versus probably millions for the bigger Hammer pieces) and distributed differently.
** The comet journey is begun by a version of what became the Nemesis hypothesis in 1984. This idea has taken a number of hits over the years and probably isn't correct.
** In a remarkable aversion, the depiction of the comet strike as many smaller bodies is exactly what was seen with Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter, and what a reanalysis of 1883 observations implies the Earth very narrowly avoided.
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* ScienceMarchesOn:
** The novel in general holds up well due to painstaking research and work on the physics. However, the otherwise exhaustive discussion of comet impact consequences is missing a nasty feature that only was identified with modern supercomputers. In addition to enormous amounts of vaporized water, large comet impacts are now believed to throw enormous amounts of vaporized ''rock'' into the atmosphere, which then reenter in an atmospheric heating firestorm.
** Another recently theorized effect is the wake radiation from the massive quantity of ionized material in a large impactor (and impact) could create a strong EMP effect, which would render the focus on the nuclear plant rather moot.
** The tsunami depiction as a giant (surfable!) wave, is debatable. On the one hand, the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami or 2011 Fukushima Tsunami did not look like that. On the other, this event is magnitudes more energetic than even a 9.0 earthquake (~ 475 megatons versus probably millions for the bigger Hammer pieces) and distributed differently.
** The comet journey is begun by a version of what became the Nemesis hypothesis in 1984. This idea has taken a number of hits over the years and probably isn't correct.
** In a remarkable aversion, the depiction of the comet strike as many smaller bodies is exactly what was seen with Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter, and what a reanalysis of 1883 observations implies the Earth very narrowly avoided.
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* ExecutiveMeddling: A rare positive example, and actually how this book came to exist. Creator/LarryNiven and Creator/JerryPournelle had presented their publisher with an alien invasion novel in which the invaders strike Earth with an asteroid in order to soften up humanity. The publisher insisted that the asteroid impact would make a great story all on its own and that while alien invasions were a dime-a-dozen, he'd pay big bucks for the asteroid story. So they went back home, removed the alien invasion, and came back later with ''Lucifer's Hammer''. They eventually published the alien invasion story as ''Literature/{{Footfall}}''.
to:
* ExecutiveMeddling: A rare positive example, and actually how this book came to exist. Creator/LarryNiven and Creator/JerryPournelle had presented their publisher with an alien invasion novel in which the invaders strike Earth with an asteroid in order to soften up humanity. The publisher insisted that the asteroid impact would make a great story all on its own and that while alien invasions were a dime-a-dozen, he'd pay big bucks for the asteroid story. So they went back home, removed the alien invasion, and came back later with ''Lucifer's Hammer''. They eventually published the alien invasion story as ''Literature/{{Footfall}}''.
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* ExecutiveMeddling: A rare positive example, and actually how this book came to exist. Creator/LarryNiven and Creator/JerryPournelle had presented their publisher with an alien invasion novel in which the invaders strike Earth with an asteroid in order to soften up humanity. The publisher insisted that the asteroid impact would make a great story all on its own and that while alien invasions were a dime-a-dozen, he'd pay big bucks for the asteroid story. So they went back home, removed the alien invasion, and came back later with ''Lucifer's Hammer''. They eventually published the alien invasion story as ''Literature/{{Footfall}}''.
