51 Books Like Perilous Planet Earth

This book trail-blazed the new scientific discipline of coherent catastrophism back in 1982. Based on ideas in a couple of their earlier academic papers, Profs. Clube and Napier make the case for an important new class of cosmic impact event, one caused by fragmenting comets trapped within the inner solar system.

I found the book to be essential reading to understand how such events can occur and how they have hitherto been largely overlooked by science. It introduced me to a fascinating new view of the solar system. I also found it interesting to see how, in the intervening 40 years, the author’s scientific arguments and predictions are mostly borne out, especially by the Younger Dryas impact, circa 10,850 BC.

This book continues where Cosmic Serpent left off. It’s the New Testament to The Cosmic Serpent’s old one. Published 8 years after the former, it provides even more details on the cometary astronomy of coherent catastrophism along with a healthy dollop of ancient history.

Just like The Cosmic Serpent, I found this book to be essential reading for the coherent catastrophism enthusiast. Indeed, their books are highly prescient, being published long before the Younger Dryas impact became such a hot topic. In my view, Clube and Napier deserve a Nobel Prize.

This is a great introduction to the science of the Younger Dryas impact. Published a year before the seminal paper of Firestone et al. (2007), it makes the case for a devastating cosmic event, probably a meteor or comet impact, circa 10850 BC.

The book combines science with historical accounts and mythology to arrive at this stunning conclusion. Although I think some of the evidence in the book is speculative and possibly wrong, I think their main arguments in 2006 have held up well to intense scrutiny by critics since then. I consider this book to be another essential read for the coherent catastrophist enthusiast.

Prof Mike Baillie presents a fascinating account of how ancient comet impacts, largely a result of coherent catastrophism, might have altered the course of history. Baillie, an eminent dendrochronologist, argues how comets and their impacts might have been instrumental in forming ancient myths and religions across the world.

Even though the examples he provides a far from watertight, I consider his general viewpoint almost certainly correct. And that makes this another essential read for the coherent catastrophist enthusiast.

This is the classic book on the deep history of the Earth. Hutton is known as the father of modern geology, because he understood that today’s rocks represent the accumulation of changes over incredibly long geologic epochs. In publishing his ideas he went against the then-popular notion of catastrophism, which held that sudden, violent events such as floods had shaped most of the Earth’s surface. Hutton instead argued for slow changes over time — a concept known as uniformitarianism — and, crucially, recognized that two rock types at Siccar Point, Scotland, had formed at different times separated by many millions of years. “The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time,” one of Hutton’s companions said. That realization set the stage for future scientists to explore the ramifications of a deep geologic past.

One of the best SF novels I’ve read in the last 25 years.

The story takes you on a journey through multiple, shifting realities as different time travelers compete to change history to their advantage without wiping out everything and everyone they know and love.

Unlike so many books these days, this one never drags or bores with unnecessary background details but keeps moving from one catastrophic change to another. Highly recommended. 

Restoree is a stand-alone novel by Anne McCaffrey of the Dragon Riders of Pern fame. The protagonist, Sara, is swept up in a mass kidnapping and carried away to a planet where she ends up in a new body. She is given the job of caring for a man who seems largely unresponsive. Sara and the reader slowly come to understand what’s happening and she makes a bold move to rescue herself, her charge, and the other restorees. Like all the best science fiction, Restoree is less about the trappings and more about the human story. 

This book is a little more Space Opera than Sci-fi as it focuses more on the adventure than the impossibility of the technology. It takes place thousands of years in the future when man kinds had spread out across the galaxy and forgotten about Earth, for the most part. The characters are not deep, and the story relies more on action than complexity, but it’s fun. It moves from one event to another, the main character is a bit of a rogue that you can’t help but like and his female counterpart is smarter, faster, and deadlier than he will every be, so it's good she is on his side. One of the reasons I like these books (10 book series with some spin-offs) is because it is very different from my style. If my books were Angus Steaks, these would be an Ice-cream Sunday.   

Clarke is the master of the sci-fi short stories in my view, and this collection is a great example of his genius. My dog-eared paperback is over forty years old, and I pick it up often for both nostalgic and professional reasons. With evocative titles such as "The Nine Billion Names of God," "No Morning After," and "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth," these stories were just what my young, curious mind needed. In just a few pages, Clarke had an amazing ability to pull you into the world of the character and make you care. Both my children have read and enjoyed this book. Brilliant collection.

The doorway in this novel is a departure from the usual.

And though it is unusual, yet it ties to humankind's fascination with portals.

The first portal in storytelling history, really, is the threshold a person must pass through to get from life to death.

That threshold has been epitomized in mythology as long as human beings have been using stories to explain the strangeness of existence.

In this sci-fi story, death is once again the portal between worlds. What would you do if, right before you died, an alien entity asks if you’d like to be saved?

Would you do it?

That’s exactly what happens to Meredith Gale. She regrets jumping off that bridge, so she says yes.

The story that follows is surprising and witty and full of heart. A friendly robot pulls the girl from the sea, along with a dozen others like her, every one of… show more.