Ancient writings are fascinating to inter-compare, but Velikovsky's links between them are selective, creative and credulity-stretching. His notions of physics make no sense, and his hypothesis, evidence and conclusions are the kind of fare now served up by the worst of satellite TV channels. ( )

> Christ Le récit est à ta fois cosmologique et historique et s'appuie sur les témoignages de textes historiques ainsi que sur plusieurs oeuvres littéraires, dont les épopées nordiques, les livres sacrés des peuples d'Orient et d'Occident, les traditions et le folklore de tribus primitives, de vieilles inscriptions et d'antiques cartes astronomiques ainsi que sur des découvertes archéologiques, géologiques et paléontologiques.
—Mainmise, décembre 1977

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Velikovsky-Mondes-en-collision/869444
> BAnQ (Québec science, 1977, Mai) : https://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/2873954

So if you read everything else written here about this book you will read that this is a book of pseudo-scientific nonsense.

But you should know that Velikovsky had a close personal relationship with (the) Albert Einstein. Velikovsky wrote this in the aftermath of Einstein's passing:

"Gina Plungian who arrived the same day went with Helen Dukas to the study to find how everything had been left there the Friday before. On Einstein’s table close to the window was Worlds in Collision in German, with many strips of paper between the pages, and open on some page. It was the last book that he read, actually re-read for the third time, each time differently impressed. I was also the last man with whom he discussed a scientific subject (besides a doctor friend from Switzerland, with whom, as I was told by Miss Dukas, about the time of my last visit he also discussed some scientific matter)."

I was initially attracted to Worlds In Collision (WIC) by my high school physics teacher who mentioned (c. 1963) that this book connected ancient writings and drew conclusions from them. So the example of a connection the teacher gave was that when Joshua saw the sun stand still, there was something written in (present day) Mexico about prolonged night; and something else from Iceland about prolonged twilight. Wow! I'm not a believer in coincidences so I had to find out what this was all about. Conclusions that Velikovsky drew (not directly from the Joshua stories) included existence of the Van-Allen belts, radio noise from Jupiter. &c.; none of which were thought about when WIC was published (c.1950) but were well known when I heard my physics teacher talk about the book. Double Wow!

I wound up writing my senior term paper on WIC. And I also wound up subsequently reading many of Velikovsky's other books. Many objected to WIC's reliance upon ancient legends so in Earth in Upheaval Velikovsy proudly stated that he would only refer to stones and bones to draw many of the same conclusions he drew in WIC. In Ages in Chaos (AIC), Velikovsky argued for a revised chronology based upon many of the same ancient writings mentioned in WIC. So that Mexican legend and Joshua weren't simultaneous in the conventional chronology, but Velikovsky they must have been simultaneous and proposed a revised chronology based upon events such as this. It was Einstein's opinion that Velikovsky would have been received more favorably by the scientific community if he have published AIC before WIC. ( )

Given the premise of planetary collisions, Immanuel Velikovsky tries to establish the date when Venus, ejected from Jupiter, narrowly missed colliding with the Earth. He works with literary and geological evidence available in the 1940's. It is a sensational and controversial work, chiefly useful for reminding scientists and the general public, that never embrace the idea that the knowledge in a given field is fixed and will not be subject to revision. By and large the book itself contains little of value, yet it inspired a great deal of education of the general public by more respectable and insightful scientists, in the 1950's and 1960's as Mr. Velikovsky continued his writing career. ( )

I have read many classics of Fortean literature that turned out to be anthropologically intriguing, entertainingly written or simply striking historical objects. This is not one of them and I regret bothering to pull it down from my shelf.

The scholarship is atrocious. Velikovsky rarely builds an argument by strict reason, preferring instead to state his interpretation then beat the reader in to submission with page upon page of quotes from historical sources that he feels support it. What constitutes evidence varies: sometimes a close apparent synchronicity in time and event, but more often than not a superficial similarity of incident or general closeness in era. Metaphorical texts may be read as literal and vice versa if it suits the author's purpose. The cataclysms proposed are justified by the interpretation of the examples, while the interpretation of the examples is made in the context of the same supposed cataclysms; and down the drain of circular reasoning the book goes for page after endless page. (Velikovsky only briefly discusses the scholarly merits of his interpretative approach around page 300. I imagine he did not want the reader to look at it too closely.)

The sources cited are seldom from within two decades of the book's publication which is a particular issue for Velikovsky's scientific arguments, which supposedly ground the whole endeavour. (One cannot make points about astronomy in 1950 based on the state of the science in 1800-1930.) The author casually treats planets and comets as similar entities (except where his argument requires them to be wholly distinct classes of objects) in a manner that suggests a disinterest in this side of his own case. The coup de grace comes in the desperate Epilogue, where Velikovsky argues that we must make way for a new astronomy on the basis of these historical cataclysms, although the idea that the cataclysms themselves occurred depends entirely on those selfsame astronomical ideas. This is a book that is constantly trying to lift itself up by its own bootstraps.

This was ostensibly a deeply controversial book in the 1970s (when my copy was printed and at which point most of its sources were four decades or more out of date). Its popular appeal had led me to assume it must at least have some drive or scholarly strength despite its ultimately wrongheaded conclusions. Instead it somehow manages to be as tedious as it is fatuous.