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Martin Beech's review of Victor Clube and Bill Napier, THE COSMIC
WINTER (1990) from April 1991 Astronomy Now, p. 14 (reprinted with
permission of author):

THE COSMIC WINTER is a superbly crafted book.  It has cast its net
both wide and deep, and leads the reader through a labyrinth of
ancient history, religion, astrology, galactic astronomy,
palaeontology and psychology.  The list could go on.  For all its
interdisciplinary diversity, however, the text has been skilfully
shaped into a coherent and well argued thesis.

THE COSMIC WINTER is not a book for the faint hearted or
conservative.  It is a challenge to orthodoxy, and its pages pull no
punches.  The central issue of the text is Earth catastrophism past,
present and future.  This (in the present intellectual climate) is not
particularly contentious -- the evidence for terrestrial impacts is
now clear and conclusive.  Where the authors break away from the norm
is in their interpretation of cometary cloud dynamics and comet
formation.  Their views are not so much physically untenable but
simply non-standard. This, of course, makes the authors a target for
the orthodoxy camp, whose viewpoint is considered central by the
majority count.  As the authors correctly point out, however, just
because a majority of people support the same idea does not mean that
it must be true.  Certainly the questions relating to the formation of
comets and cometary clouds are far from being answered at the present
time.  The book, as such, does not dwell on these issues for long,
indeed the subject would make a book in itself.  Rather, the authors
adopt the viewpoint that comets form somewhere in the galaxy (in
spiral arms, or molecular clouds) and that the Earth has lost and
gained several cometary clouds through its history as a a result of
passages through spiral arms and encounters with giant molecular
clouds.  It is the authors' contention that the dynamic building and
destruction of these cometary clouds drives a 15 million year
bombardment cycle in the inner Solar System.  This periodicity is
derived from data culled from mass extinctions in the fossil record,
changes in the climate and sea level, known crater ages, geomagnetic
reversals and galactic dynamics.

The main issue at stake in THE COSMIC WINTER is the idea that
interwoven between the pages of human history is evidence for the
existence of spectacular cometary displays and terrestrial impacts.

Indeed, it is suggested that human society and religion were organised
around celestial displays related to a giant comet which adorned the
skies some 4 to 5,000 years ago.  The debris from this comet, it is
argued, is still with us today, and resides in such entities as the
Taurid meteor complex, comets Encke nad Rudnicki, and a whole host of
asteroids.  All these objects are identified on the basis of their
comparable orbital characteristics.  In support of their argument, the
authors reinterpret several ancient Babylonian, Greek and Egyptian (to
name a few civilizations) myths and religious beliefs.  Clearly this
is not an easy task to perform, but the text does present a consistent
and believable argument.  If nothing else the authors have opened up a
whole new field of research, and one suspects that it could be a rich
field of study.  Time will tell.

The book begins and ends with a well placed, if not alarming, reminder
that there is a one hundred percent certainty that the Earth will be
struck again.  Some day, it may be today, a large comet or asteroid
will darken the skies.  Our complacency and complete lack of planning
for such an event has indeed to be questioned.  Once again, one
suspects that the lessons from history will not be learnt.  The
results of such an impact would be devastating not only locally but
globally.  It is not too far fetched, as the authors point out, that
the consequences of an impact with a large celestial body could
trigger the demise of human civilization.  Sobering isn't it?

THE COSMIC WINTER is a very good book.  Its thesis may or may not be
correct, but it does something very important -- it challenges
orthodoxy. I can say little more than read this book and rise to the
challenge.

Note: The reviewer is a professor of astronomy who in 1991 was at the
University of Western Ontario. Presently, he is at the University of
Regina.

ellenberger,  AN ANTIDOTE TO VELIKOVSKIAN DELUSIONS
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/velidelu.html