Cradle of Saturn (Cradle of Saturn #1) by James P. Hogan

Among the Saturnian moons, farsighted individuals, working without help or permission from any government, have established a colony. They call themselves the Kronians, after the Greek name for Saturn. Operating without the hidebound restrictions of bureaucratic Earth, the colony is a magnet, attracting the best and brightest of the home world, and has been making important new discoveries. But one of their claims -- that they have found proof that the Solar System has undergone repeated cataclysms, and as recently as a few thousand years ago -- flies in the face of the reigning dogma, and is under attack by the scientific establishment.
Then the planet Jupiter emits a white-hot proto-planet as large as the Earth, which is hurtling sunwards like a gigantic comet that will obliterate civilization..

Velikovsky? Really? It was bad enough that the characters were cardboard cut-outs, that the story is practically a paean to laissez faire capitalism, dripping sarcasm whenever any type of regulation is mentioned. But for a so-called science fiction book, by a so-called hard science fiction writer, to be so obviously based on the discredited work of Immanuel Velikovsky has to be a cosmic joke. And how come the first time a planet just pops out of Jupiter, all it does is part the Red Sea and bring down all the plagues on Egypt, but this time it’s going to wipe out civilization? Didn’t this guy ever watch Cosmos?

I’ve enjoyed several of Hogan’s previous books. They were well thought out with interesting characters. I really do wonder where that writer went.

Needless to say, I won’t be reading the sequel.




Mount TBR 2016 Book Links

Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. Alexander's Lovers
2. The Border
3. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
4. Green Darkness
5. The Return of the Wolf to Yellowstone
6. Rise to Rebellion
7. Return to Sodom and Gomorrah
8. Through a Glass Darkly
9. Lisey's Story
10. The Man He Became
11. The Handmaid's Tale
12. The Great Warming
13. Sacrament
14. The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country
15. The Front Runner
16. The King's Grave: The Discovery of Richard III’s Lost Burial Place and the Clues It Holds
17. Aldo Leopold: A Fierce Green Fire
18. Under an English Heaven
19. A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There
20. Washington Square
21. The Passing Bells
22. The Touch
23. Changeling
24. The Select
25. Cradle of Saturn