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The Hammer of God is the Arthur C. Clarke novel about an asteroid on a 2110 collision course with Earth and the mission to deflect it before impact. The setup is one Clarke had used in pieces of short fiction for decades. The novel-length treatment lets him spend more time on the political and theological reactions to the news, which turn out to be more interesting than the engineering.
Clarke handles the science with his usual careful patience. The astronaut characters are sketched lightly in the way late-Clarke characters tend to be. The mid-22nd-century social setting is rendered with quiet detail (a near-utopian Earth, a divided Mars colony, a small religious sect that has decided the asteroid is the hammer of God of the title).
The book is short and reads quickly. The ending is a careful Clarke combination of relief and unresolved threat.
Four stars. Recommended to Clarke readers who want late-period work that holds up. Not the entry point for Clarke, but a satisfying piece of mature SF.
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