Send this one to the Moon

The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke is referred to as one of what is sometimes called the “Big Three” of science fiction. He has a comet named in his honour, he's given partial credit with the idea of the satellite, he's been knighted and has numerous very well known and well-received sci-fi novels, stories and essays, not the least of which is 2001: A Space Odyssey.

All this in mind, The Hammer of God is a bit of a let down.

The novel takes place in 2110 and starts off telling the reader about Kali, an enormous asteroid named after the Hindu goddess of death. The asteroid is somehow pulled off its orbital path and starts on a collision course with Earth.

After that, Clarke spends most of his time (almost all of it, actually) building the world of the future. It's almost irritating how optimistic Clarke is about our future. Not only are both the moon and Mars colonized, but there seems to be almost nothing wrong with our society at all. In fact, the only trouble we have is this giant friggin' space rock. Guess what, we have a solution for that too!

Furthermore, the characters — even the ones we care about — are a little flat throughout, the main protagonist is given ample back story and is quite interesting as the events of the novel really unfold, but in that first half where we hear little about him, he's just another name.

Even though the asteroid is presented at the beginning of the book, we aren't given any impression of conflict or disaster. The potential end of the world is near, but since the human civilization seems so advanced, it's almost like this is just another passing obstacle that'll be taken care of when we get around to it.

Even once the asteroid does play a larger role and the people in this world start recognizing its threat, we're told that on Earth people are committing mass suicide, riots and chaos, but since most of the book takes place on a space station with the scientists trying to deflect the asteroid of its course, we never see any of this chaos, which seems almost disappointing in a world that is almost boring with how orderly it is.

There, now that I got the complaints out of the way, I feel like I should give the novel its dues.

Because the book takes place in the future with a very advanced society, a great deal of world building is needed, which is why a good third of the book is developing the setting away from the events. It's necessary, but a little dry to get through, and from an author of this caliber one would hope that it would be a little more interesting.

Moreover, the book's themes and leitmotifs are quite well done. Early on there's mention of what's called the chaos theory, which states that the slightest deviation in law, even in the fractions eventually builds up and over time adds to an incredibly different reality. This is often referred to as the “butterfly effect,” which I'm sure I don't need to explain any further. This is further carried over to the literal asteroid. The plan to save Earth is to knock Kali a few centimeters off course and that initial few centimeters will build up to eventually add up to several hundred thousand kilometers, sending far away from Earth.

It wasn't until after I read the book that I learned that it was inspired by a short story by Clarke about how he sees human development over the next century, which would also account for the time spent on explaining the extraordinary leaps in technology people have made. This fact makes it a little more forgivable, but since this novel is supposed to be about an asteroid and not just the development of the world it can be a little distracting.

I enjoyed The Hammer of God, even in spite of its flaws. It wasn't the best thing I've ever read and I certainly expected more, but it was very readable at the least. Sure there were times where I was cheering for the asteroid, but when it comes down to it, it was well written and intelligent, just perhaps not my cup of tea.