Book Review: Meteor by Edmund H. North

By georgelthomas on 12 Jun 2026 • ( 0 )

Hi everyone! I hope you’re all well. Today is Friday, and it’s time for another review. Today, I’m reviewing the novelisation of the 1979 film Meteor by Edmund H. North.

Meteor was published in 1979 by Warner Books and is 226 pages long.

The Plot
A comet strike shears a five-mile-wide fragment from an asteroid, and the splinter is now on a collision course with Earth, preceded by a lethal shower of smaller debris.

To stand a chance of saving humanity from a potential extinction-level event, the U.S. must cooperate with the Soviet Union, a partnership complicated by Cold War mistrust and a tight deadline.

Characters
Dr Paul Bradley
Bradley is a brilliant yet pragmatic scientist who designed the Hercules project, a nuclear defence against asteroid impacts. Tasked with calculating the strike trajectory and managing the launch of the nukes, he becomes a bridge between American resolve and the uneasy Soviet partnership.

Dr Alexei Dubov
Dubov is the Soviet counterpart to Bradley, who is summoned to collaborate with the Americans on the planetary defence plans. He is depicted as pragmatic and guarded, echoing the stoicism of Cold War science and diplomacy.

Harry Sherwood
Sherwood is an American NASA official who re-recruits Bradley to work on the weapons system. He helps interface with political and military authorities, offering occasional managerial insight and tension relief.

Major General Adlon
Adlon is the commander of the secret Hercules launch centre beneath Lower Manhattan. He is portrayed as a resolute figure, balancing strict military priorities with an awareness of the humanitarian stakes.

Tatiana Donskaya
Tatiana is a key member of the American/Russian effort to save Earth. Serving as an interpreter between Bradley and Dubov, she shares a mutual attraction with Bradley.

Writing Style
North’s prose echoes the screenplay’s structure—often terse and descriptive, built more for dramatic pacing than literary flourish. This makes the book quite laborious to read, with technical explanations and protocol-heavy exchanges slowing down the pacing.

The character development in this one isn’t great; aside from Bradley and Dubov, the other characters remain archetypes—talking heads rather than fully fleshed individuals.

And while we’re on the subject of characters, the men in this book frequently banter and objectify women in a way that wouldn’t be acceptable today. It does reflect the norms of the late 1970s, but it’s cringingly bad and takes you out of the story.

Final Thoughts
I love novelisations, but I just couldn’t get away with this one. Where the film is action-packed and fast-paced, the novel is occasionally weighed down by technical jargon and political tropes.

If you liked the film, you may enjoy the slight expansions in terms of slightly developed interiority of Bradley and Dubov—but if you’re coming to the story without seeing the film, don’t expect too much.

I am giving Meteor a 2/10.

Have you read this novelisation? Have you seen the film? How do you think the two compare?

Thank you, as ever, for reading my review!

Until next time,

George