This is the plot summary according to wikipedia.
The story details a cometary impact on Earth, an end to civilization, and the battle for the future. It encompasses the discovery of the comet, the LA
social scene, and a cast of diverse characters whom fate seems to smile upon and allow to survive the massive cataclysm and the resulting tsunamis,
plagues, famines and battles amongst scavengers and cannibals.
When wealthy soap company heir and amateur astronomer Tim Hamner co-discovers a new comet, dubbed Hamner-Brown, documentary producer Harvey Randall
persuades Hamner to have his family's company sponsor a television documentary series on the subject. Political lobbying by California Senator Arthur
Jellison eventually gets a joint Apollo-Soyuz (docking with the second flightworthy Skylab) mission into space to study the comet, dubbed "The Hammer"
by popular media, which is expected to pass close to the Earth. Despite assurances by the scientific community that a collision with Earth is
extremely unlikely, the public, fueled with religious fervor by the evangelist Henry Armitage, begins to hoard food and supplies in anticipation.
Eventually, to the shock of scientists at JPL in Pasadena who could not track the trajectory accurately enough due to the comet's constant outgassing,
the Hammer does fall, breaking up into several smaller comets that impact around the world with devastating results, striking parts of Europe, Africa,
the Gulf of Mexico, and both the Pacific and Atlantic. The strikes trigger several volcanoes and earthquakes around the world, including the San
Andreas fault, heavily damaging the Southern California region and the rest of California, causing millions of casualties. Several of the fragments
land in the ocean, causing further damage by the resulting tsunamis (which destroy several major coastal cities around the world, including Los
Angeles, killing millions) and long-term climate problems due to the massive quantities of vaporized seawater. Hundreds of millions are dead, and the
rest of the world is devastated. As the survivors contend with weeks of non-stop rain, flooding destroys practically every dam and levee, leaving the
search for food a top survival priority. Civilization crumbles as people use the few remaining weapons to protect themselves from each other.
Surviving "Hammerfall" is shown to be primarily a matter of random chance, with preparation being a distant second factor. Hamner goes from being a
dilettante astronomer to a determined survivor, with his new wife Eileen. Randall shows true leadership abilities under fire, while Jellison and other
land owners, farmers and ranchers become lords over their fiefdoms and the serfs they employ to provide labor, skills and security. Jellison forms the
centerpost of these fiefs, dubbed "the Stronghold", where he presides over a small population of survivors who wish to retain civilization. The tone
of life after "Hammerfall" is one where those who do not have valuable professions for a world without power or civilization are relegated to being
manual laborers, regardless of their socioeconomic status or profession before the Fall. While doctors and farmers are still valuable, lawyers are
unnecessary—but if civilization is to be rebuilt, scientific knowledge is the most valuable skill of all. Soldiers and police are diminished and
provide security alongside gang members and bikers, both within the Stronghold and within the New Brotherhood Army, the legions of Reverend Henry
Armitage, who indoctrinates his followers into cannibalism to shame them into loyalty. Jellison's stronghold is located slightly east or northeast of
Springville, California, where the North Fork and the Middle Fork of the Tule River meet. West of this stronghold, the city of Porterville has been
destroyed by the collapse of the dam at Lake Success. A portion of the comet breaking off and splashing down in the Gulf of California has turned the
former San Joaquin Valley into a swampy lake. Other small enclaves of civilization exist in this area, until a band of cannibalistic zealots led by
Reverend Armitage and an army of heavily armed soldiers begin a rampage through the area, culminating in a series of battles with the inhabitants of
Jellison's stronghold.
Notice the main protagonist Career description and his wife's name. "Hamner goes from being a dilettante astronomer to a determined survivor, with his
new wife Eileen."
Coincidence? You decide!
Lucifer's Hammer WiKi
Prologue
Before the sun burned, before the planets formed, there were chaos and the comets.
Chaos was a local thickening in the interstellar medium. Its mass was great enough to attract itself, to hold itself, and it thickened further. Eddies
formed. Particles of dust and frozen gas drifted together, and touched, and clung. Flakes formed, and then loose snowballs of frozen gases. Over the
ages a whirlpool pattern developed, a fifth of a light-year across. The center contracted further. Local eddies, whirling frantically near the center
of the storm, collapsed to form planets.
It formed as a cloud of snow, far from the whirlpool's axis. Ices joined the swarm, but slowly, slowly, a few molecules at a time. Methane, ammonia,
carbon dioxide; and sometimes denser objects struck it and embedded themselves, so that it held rocks, and iron. Now it was a single stable mass.
Other ices formed, chemicals that could only be stable in the interstellar cold.
It was four miles across when the disaster came.
The end was sudden. In no more than fifty years, the wink of an eye in its lifetime, the whirlpool's center collapsed. A new sun burned fearfully
bright.
Myriads of comets flashed to vapor in that hellish flame Planets lost their atmospheres. A great wind of light pressure stripped all the loose gas and
dust from the inner system and hurled it at the stars.
It hardly noticed. It was two hundred times as far from the sun as the newly formed planet Neptune. The new sun was no more than an uncommonly bright
star, gradually dimming now.
Down in the maelstrom there was frantic activity. Gases boiled out of the rocks of the inner system. Complex chemicals developed in the seas of the
third planet. Endless hurricanes boiled across and within the gas-giant worlds. The inner worlds would never know calm.
The only real calm was at the edge of interstellar space, in the halo, where millions of thinly spread comets, each as far from its nearest brother as
Earth is from Mars, cruise forever through the cold black vacuum. Here its endless quiet sleep could last for billions of years . . . but not forever.
Nothing lasts forever.
edit on 21-8-2011 by proob4 because: (no reason given)
