One idea that really bothered me in Lucifer’s Hammer was its portrayal of women. Pournelle and Niven, who are clearly authors of their time, merely portray women as promiscuous and unlikable secondary characters in the novel. This is especially seen in characters such as Maureen Jellison, Marie Vance, and Loretta Randall. First, there is Maureen who is sleeping around with married men including John Baker and Harvey Randall. She conducts her affair with Baker meanwhile Baker’s wife is sadly discussing her marriage problems with Maureen. That honestly does not portray Maureen as a heroine in the text. Second, Marie Vance is described as a cold social climber who sleeps around with both Harvey and George Christopher. Mark, upon first meeting Marie, describes her as the “coldest bitch I ever saw” (278). In addition, she does not seem to care that her husband Gordie has abandoned her. Third, Pournelle and Niven portray Loretta Randall as a ridiculous high maintenance woman who deserves death. (Her survival kit for Hammerfall included nail polish, shampoo, hair conditioner, and lipstick among other things). I feel like there aren’t any female heroines in Lucifer’s Hammer which was a major dissappointment.
I found Cockburn’s article “Death Rampant! Readers Rejoice” very interesting because of its truth. In the article, there was a perfect line in which Cockburn summed up his thesis. He stated that “what the media do, in carefully forged language, is to immunize people against horror by devaluing it… why should an earthquake in Managua receive more attention than the christmas bombing of Hanoi?” (16). The media constantly focuses on stories with higher fatality rates which does in fact devalue other important stories. It’s true that readers crave reading about the horrors that befall other people in order to feel better about the fact that these horrors are not happening to themselves. In addition, the media often desensitizes its viewers to violence by continuously covering extremely violent stories such as school shootings, family slayings, and fatal car crashes. I think that it is important to cover these stories on the news however the media needs to focus on other stories as well. I think that they focus more on high ratings rather than portraying honest news to their audience.