Far Thoughts and Pale Gods by Greg Bear

Author:Greg Bear
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2015-12-21T21:27:19+00:00

Afterword

Researching this story in 1977 led me back to a science article by J.E. Enever, “Giant Meteor Impact,” published in Analog in March of 1966. J. E. Enever—no biography or credentials are given in the magazine, and he published, as far as I can discover, only a couple of items later—started something really big with this piece. To my knowledge, nobody before the mysterious Mr. Enever had ever written realistically about the effects of a large rocky mass striking the Earth. It’s hard to imagine now, but in those years, Catastrophism—the belief that the Earth had ever been subjected to short, sharp shocks—was not in favor in mainstream geology. Most geologists were only beginning to seriously consider the theory of continental drift, espoused by Alfred L. Wegener. It’s possible Enever could not have published this article in any respectable science journal.

That left John W. Campbell, Jr., and Analog.

Within a few years, Walter Alvarez would begin thinking about giant asteroids and dinosaur extinction …

In his 1972 novel, Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke (now Sir Arthur) would propose Spaceguard, a security system designed to watch for meteorites and asteroids that could collide with Earth.

Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven would write the bestselling Lucifer’s Hammer …

Gregory Benford and William Rotsler would write Shiva Descending.

Scientists would begin looking for the Big Ones, the impact craters that would provide the evidence for Alvarez’s hypothesis. They would find several such craters, and the public imagination would be altered forever. We would watch a calved comet fall into Jupiter’s atmosphere, and imagine our own possible fate.

We would feel very mortal.

Decades later, Deep Impact and Armageddon would compete for big bucks in the movie marketplace. Nearly every documentary on dinosaurs would show them peering up, squinty-eyed, at that bright light descending from the sky …

Today (2004), Spaceguard exists, in a rudimentary form. It has been organized by J. R. Tate in the United Kingdom, where it is struggling to procure funding to keep watching the skies.

All, possibly, because of J. E. Enever.

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