Asteroid strikes Earth? What a novel idea!

Reality has caught up with my novel Dinosaur Wars: Earthfall. I wrote about what it would be like to experience an asteroid impact firsthand, way back in 2000. Now, eerily, I seem to have had it just about right.

My Dinosaur Wars novels start with the premise that intelligent human-sized dinosaurs escaped the great impact of 65 million years ago and return in present times from deep space to reclaim their home world–our world! In writing these science fiction tales, I had to sit down at my keyboard and strain my imagination to try to comprehend what it would have been like to be among those who witnessed the mighty destructive force of an incoming giant space rock.

Friday’s news reports and videos of the havoc wrought on the small town of Chelyabinsk in Russia’s Ural Mountains, seemed to confirm quite a bit of what I have written. Of course, the Chelyabinsk “bolide” as scientists call the space rock, was quite a bit smaller and the “event” as they call the impact, was much less destructive. But still the general features were quite similar.

In both cases, things started going wrong when a streaking object appeared in the sky. In both cases, a light was seen burning brighter than the sun. In both cases, the object exploded with multi-atomic bomb force. In both cases, an incredibly loud boom was heard and a super-powerful shock wave shattered parts of buildings and knocked down brick walls.

In fact, in Dinosaur Wars: Earthfall, the connection to an asteroid impact is first made when Dr. David Ogilvey, the crusty old dinosaur digger and “Obi Wan Kenobi” mentor figure of my story, unearths a fossilized mother Pteronychus who died in a scene similar to the Russian experience but on a larger scale, in which she was knocked down by the shockwave and then buried along with her two fondly clutched babies, under a tumbling brick wall of her ancient Cretaceous city, Arran Kra.

Really. I wrote all that, and pretty accurately if you’ll allow me to say it, more than ten years ago. Go and check it out if you doubt me. Dinosaur wars: Earthfall, the ebook, is still being given away FREE by my publisher, for a limited time and just about every electronic version imaginable, and I can imagine quite a few. If you’re still addicted to paper, then wait a couple of months and check back. I anticipate a new, paperback version to be released this spring. Or, look around the web and maybe you’ll find one of the thousands of older copies of the original, out-of-print version for sale used.

And finally, if my description of the “End-Cretaceous Event,” as scientists call it, interests you, there’s more. In my recently published final book of the trilogy, Dinosaur Wars: Blood On The Moon, Dr. Ogilvey and his proteges Kit Daniels and Chase Armstrong have the distinct privilege of watching the whole event on video, complete with nine–count ’em–nine separate bolides hitting the earth in quick succession.

That’s quite a bit nastier than Friday’s measly little two-asteroid sky-show, wouldn’t you agree?