Brace for IMPACT! Geologist R.V. Fodor joins with G.J. Taylor (having also coauthored Junior Bodybuilding) for this hefty addition to the big space rock genre of the late '70s. What are we in for when a swarm of meteoroids crosses our path?
Fodor and Taylor have written an odd duck here, with too many dropped threads and dead ends. They give us just a taste of the usual big disaster tropes, with President Stein and his men debating doomsday, scientists decoding the composition of the rocks, and us little people facing oblivion, but soon enough we realize that we're halfway through a 400 page would-be epic and nothing much has happened!
Stein's science advisor is a Malthusian creep with a roster of self serving double talk as to why we should let the big one smash into Central Asia, knocking out the USSR and China and launching a new ice age that will kill billions worldwide. There's some unsatisfactory '70s style cloak and dagger action over exposing this evil plan, but like everything in the story it reads as a pale shadow of other, better writing. There's not much from the POV of the rocks either, which is usually my favorite part of space rock disaster thrillers.
Again and again, Fodor and Taylor drag us through pages and pages of establishing characters only to drop them for the next batch, without building on anything they're already written. The highlights are front loaded, with the complete destruction of small town Ardmore, KS due to a single relatively "small" meteor, and a charming detail about how the satellite surveillance nerds of the Intermilitary Data Center enjoy watching volcanic eruptions change the landscape. Unfortunately nothing really gels as the story unfolds, and the last 100 pages read like filler. By the time the apocalypse smashes down we don't really care, which is never a good sign when you've got the fate of the world in the balance.
The Sino-Soviet split makes for some attempted suspense, with those goddamn Chicoms playing the long game - what's a few hundred million deaths to those inscrutable Orientals anyways?
We get some perfunctory space action in the home stretch, and a ridiculously convenient reveal that saves our boring lead couple from vaporization. Yawn!
Fodor and Taylor's disaster slog earns a very sad 1/4 rating ... It's not as outright crap as Mayhew and Long's Fireball, but there just isn't enough to recommend here. Getcher space rocks off elsewhere.
Lesiure Books, 1979
I used to have a copy of this but it disappeared in a move. I agree with your assessment. Especially bit at the end where the authors have two characters pronounce that now there are no more governments there will be no more wars...
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