I began by searching for what I thought were interesting words, but google books continuously gave me insignificant results. So then I decided to search for something simple. Paper. A rather ordinary object in our lives, paper’s key role in our day to day lives seems to go unnoticed.
After plugging in the word paper and hitting enter google books gave me twenty one results. I think that is quite a significant number of times for one word to be found in one book. I’m sure that there are other words, like comet!, that make more numerous appearances but paper’s existence in the world of Lucifer’s Hammer is taken just as lightly before the main event occurs. It’s not until after the fall of the comet that paper begins to given more life, so to say.
Before the comet hits paper plays its ordinary role in the same way it does in the three dimensional world. We see it covering desks, being used for unimportant magazines, for bills/memos, as wrapping paper in a waste basket and other similar things. Once the comet hits we see Harry the mail man going above and beyond to deliver that paper in the form of mail to the families they belong to. He dries the unimportant magazines in the case they need to be used later for survival. Tim learns of the children he eventually gives up to the people at the observatory and where there parents possibly were during Hammerfall. We also see paper being given more descriptive life. For example, at one point Harvey has a paper in his pocket that the authors assign a noise to. The book says, “Paper crackled in his breast pocket when he shifted weight.” (pg 627) There are many more examples. Though it seems a simple shift when read without paying close attention, paper’s role in the after comet life becomes more vibrant and almost exciting in comparison to the existence that paper usually plays in both our world and the world before the comet.