From archive (archive) Subject: Footfall - Long with Mild Spoilers! From: PUGH%CCV.MFENET@LLL-MFE.ARPA Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Date: 24 May 86 08:25:04 SDT I am a true Niven and Pournelle fan. I have all their collaborations, which include a few someone didn't mention... The Mote in God's Eye Definatively the best first contact book! Inferno Dante look out. Hell revisited. Funny! Lucifer's Hammer The best Irwin Allen disaster book ever. Oath of Fealty Intriguing questions of morality and technology. Footfall The best invasion of Earth I have read. Footfall SPOILERS!!!!! I just finished reading Footfall in two marathon sessions, and I loved it. I thought the entire thing was well done, as usual for Niven and Pournelle. There were a few things I wasn't quite clear on. Since the snouts could drop rocks within 15 feet of a moving semi, how in the world did we get those space shuttles up into space? Did they go up on Michael, and if so, how did they get from Florida to Bellingham without being bombarded? I think the survivalists were placed in B'ham for two reasons; to get the plot into Bellingham and to take out Roger the reporter after he learns about Project Michael. Aside from that, I am sure that there are plenty of people who would react that way. Survivalism is a definate trend in today's society. Are there any survivalists out there? And as for Bellingham, I was going to Western Washington University when Niven and Pournelle attended our SF club's convention. It was a great con, in stark contrast to the previous ones that no one came to because they didn't know where Bellingham was. Once Niven and Pournelle said they would come a whole slew (do writers come in slews or is there a special word for them?) of SF writers showed up. It was amazing. Turns out the whole reason N&P decided to come was so that they could see what B'ham was like for to blast it to smithereens with a thousand nukes. Impolite of them to do that, but B'ham is a small price to pay for the destruction of the snouts. And contrary to what they say, Bellingham is a very nice little college town that used to be heavy into lumber before the Japanese took over. It has gorgeous mountains, rivers and forests. Stop in and visit on your way to Expo in Vancouver. See where they built the ship. And be sure to take Chuckanut Drive and see the San Juan Islands. They are gorgeous! But enough, I'll leave the rest for the Tourbots. I agree that the most innovative part of the book was the herd mentality of the snouts. They really had a hard time grasping the human way of thinking, whereas we got an insight to them much quicker. Not necessarily a given, but from the assumptions laid down it worked. I also liked the Predessors, which were never clearly identified. It seems they were similar to the Thrint and Tnuctipin that appear in Niven's Known Space series, except that they managed to destroy themselves and not each other. By leaving their "blocks" of information for the snouts to use and learn from, they paved the way for an immature culture to take to the stars. Unfortunately for both sides, this did not allow them to learn many of the things we have learned (all those enrolled in the school of hard knocks, please raise your hands). It was said by the herdmaster that they had anticipated that this was the case when they were travelling. Something about "familiarity with their own technology" instead of learning from the Predessors. All in all, I give the book 3 out of 4 stars. I enjoyed it immensely, and it was not nearly as obvious as Lucifer's Hammer was. The aliens were unique, as far as I can remember. Does anyone know of other stories involving intelligent herd societies? Jon From archive (archive) Subject: Review: "Legacy of Heorot" From: holloway@drivax.UUCP (Bruce Holloway) Organization: Digitalis Research, Inc. Date: 29 Jul 87 20:06:02 GMT LEGACY OF HEOROT [**-] Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Steven Barnes In "Mote in God's Eye", Niven and Pournelle wrote space opera. In "Footfall", they tackled the "Aliens Invade Earth". And in "Legacy", they get to the "hordes of aliens overrun an offworld colony" theme. The colonists of the first interstellar colony are having a tough time of it. It's not enough that almost everyone that comes out of cold sleep suffers from Hibernation Instability, but the guy in charge of Security doesn't seem to want the colony to grow... and after a dog and some livestock are found mutilated, he gets positively paranoid. The colony soon decides that Hibernation Instability has driven him crazy, and that he is responsible for those mutilations to feed his paranoid fantasies, and are just about to the point of relieving him of his duties, when.... the reptilian, nearly unstoppable alien just about destroys the colony. Soon they find that this alien isn't alone, and by the end of the book, they're battling thousands of the beasties. This book suffers from the inevitable comparison to the movie "Aliens", and shares quite a few characters... the unstoppable alien, the momma alien, the larval forms of same lying about innocuously, and the climatic battle scene where these formidable fighting machines die like roaches. But the characters are all forgetable, and are hard to distinguish from one another. The Hibernation Instability seems to drop everyone's IQ several points or more, turn all the men paranoid, and all the women into air-headed bimbos who are just waiting their chance to settle down and have babies, and have their men protect them. Naturally, each author writes himself in to the plot. Jerry Pournelle stars as the cautious security agent who builds his own Heinlein-style freehold in the hills while the rest of the colony grows in ignorant bliss. The other characters are blends of Barnes', Niven's, and Pournelle's standard supporting characters that we all remember from "Lucifer's Hammer", "Oath of Fealty", and the rest of those collaborations (and another, "Dream Park"). As usual, the authors tend to see women as loose bundles of nerves and hormones and little else. "Legacy" suffers from one of the pitfalls of "hard" science fiction - the characters all seem alike, especially the women. And they all take back seat to careful explanations of the alien physiology and psychology, the intricate defense -- Bruce Holloway - Terminal Netnews Addict {seismo,sun}!amdahl!drivax!holloway ALBATROSS, ATARI*TROS @ Plink ALBATROSS @ Delphi >>> HI, KARL! <<< From archive (archive) Subject: New Niven/Barnes book!!! From: fox-r@dinghy.cis.ohio-state.edu (Guitarist from hell) Organization: the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen Date: 4 Sep 89 22:37:34 GMT I just bought the latest Larry Niven/Steven Barnes book. It is a sequel to Dream Park called the "Barsoom Project". It takes place (probably) a few years after Dream Park and involves Alex Griffin who is the Chief Security Guard there (or something like that). This next paragraph contains spoilers from the first chapter: I have only read the prologue and first chapter so I can't say much. One thing that was appearant right away is that they have linked the Dream Park Universe in with the Universe from Descent of Anansi (another Niven/Barnes book). The Anansi incident is mentioned right away. The Barsoon Project has something to do with colonizing and perhaps even terraforming Mars. Dream Park's parent company (I don't remember their name) is attempting to unify the various companies/power blocks/countries of the world into supporting this project. In the meantime, there is something wrong in Dream Park as one of the gaming parties wound up with live ammunition and at least 1 person dies because of it. Thats all I know right now but it should tempt any of you Niven fans to buy it. I was disappointed that Niven wrote a sequel to Dream Park of all books. I have long been hoping to see sequels to many other (and I feel better) Niven books such as World Out of Time, Ringworld (what happens to Louis Wu, now stuck on the Ringworld???), or any of the Niven/Pournelle books (well, except for Inferno). But I'll take what I can get. Especially from a guy who only does a book a year. But in the author's note, it says that Niven has gotten lots of requests for a Dream Park sequel. Must be all the D&Ders who wanted to see that. Well, I thought I'd pass on the news. Does anyone know of Niven's future publishing plans (i.e. are there any other books in the making?). I remember reading in Limits that Niven and Pournelle were going to be writing a child's book with some other author. I wonder if that has come out and what it will/is like. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Richard Fox | fox-r@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence | Research | from the depths of the The Ohio State University | Utility Muffin Research Kitchen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "I asked as nice as I could, if my job would somehow be finished by friday, well the whole damn weekend came and went 'n' they didn't do nothin' but they charged me double for sunday" -- Flakes, Frank Zappa From rec.arts.sf-reviews Tue Jul 9 09:56:50 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!know!stroke.princeton.edu From: sksircar@stroke.princeton.edu (Subrata Sircar) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: FALLEN ANGELS, by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Micheal Flynn Message-ID: <30756@know.pws.bull.com> Date: 3 Jul 91 20:05:39 GMT References: <30562@know.pws.bull.com> Sender: wex@pws.bulL.com Reply-To: sksircar@stroke.princeton.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf-lovers Organization: SPAMIT Lines: 46 Approved: wex@pws.bull.com Nntp-Posting-Host: stroke.princeton.edu Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn A Review by Subrata K. Sircar, Copyright (c) 1991 %T Fallen Angels %A Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Michael Flynn %C New York %D 1991 %I Baen Books %O paperback, US$5.95 [1991] %P 394pp. %G 0-671-72052-X Fallen Angels is the authors reward/tribute to SF fandom. The Earth has been overrun by the evil forces of the proxmires, mclaines, anti-technology and eco-groups. They are in control, and have banned drilling for oil while the world freezes in the enroaching Ice Age, while the Space Habitats are blamed for "stealing the air that kept us warm." Scientists are forced to study the healing powers of crystals. Interest in science fiction and fantasy is seen as unhealthy and such people are watched. Hence, Worldcons must be held underground, and fandom is a persecuted minority. So when two astronauts are shot down on the ice, it's up to the noble SF fans to rescue them! Watch as they rescue the astronauts from the crash and run naked across the ice (protected by a microwave beam from the space stations)! Gasp as they dodge the police attempting to crash Worldcon! Cheer as they reaffirm FIAWOL (Fandom Is A Way Of Life)! It's not appropriate to discuss this book in a serious vein, because it's not serious. This is a light-hearted, fun romp through some of fandom's more cliched points, poking fun at everything from crystal healing to people who can't use computers. I found it very amusing, especially when the more obvious fen caricatures are trotted out. Lots of fun moments at the con, including the bit where they're trying to figure out what committee the astronauts come under... This book is fun to read, and on that scale I recommend that you check it out, curl up with something comfortable, and amuse yourself with some mind candy. -- Subrata Sircar | sksircar@phoenix.princeton.edu |Prophet& SPAMIT Charter Member I don't speak for Princeton, and they don't speak for me. "May their souls rot in easy-listening hell!" - Johnny Melnibone, GRIMJACK #76 "I seem to suffer from irrelevant flashbacks." - Paul, PAUL THE SAMURAI #1 From archive (archive) From: vanpelt@unisv.UUCP (Mike Van Pelt) Organization: Unisys Silicon Valley, San Jose, CA Subject: Re: The Hitchikers guide to Time Travel grammar Date: 22 Apr 88 15:54:19 GMT In article <1181@its63b.ed.ac.uk> csrdi@its63b.ed.ac.uk (Rick Innis) writes: > >see also an essay by Larry Niven in one of his early short story collections, >about time travel. Can't remember the name of the book offhand. "The Theory and Practice of Time Travel", in the book "All the Myriad Ways". There's a lot of good stuff in there -- "Inconstant Moon", "The Theory and Practice of Teleportation", and a couple of short-shorts. I particularly liked "Unfinished Story #1", but it helps if you're familiar with Niven's "Warlock" series, and have studied some thermodynamics. Otherwise it might not make a whole lot of sense. -- Mike Van Pelt Unisys, Silicon Valley vanpelt@unisv.UUCP Bring back UNIVAC! ...uunet!ubvax!unisv!vanpelt From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Jan 6 23:43:27 1993 Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!jvnc.net!rutgers!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu.!wex From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: THE GRIPPING HAND by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle Message-ID: Date: 6 Jan 93 17:34:12 GMT Sender: news@news.media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.misc Organization: Lines: 65 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) THE GRIPPING HAND by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper This is billed as the "long awaited sequel to THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE." Some things aren't worth the wait. This book has, so far as I can tell, nothing to recommend it *except* that it is the sequel to a popular novel. The plot is contrived, the solution pat, and the characters flat. This is also the most sexist (and heterosexist) book I have read in a long time. A thousand years in the future all the secretaries and receptionists are women (who wear skirts -- we know this because the clothing and appearance of every woman is described for the reader, while the men could be globs wrapped in circus tents for all we are told about them). The Navy does seem to have one woman officer, but everyone uses the phrase "Navy men" to refer to any Navy unit. (They also refer to someone as a "career woman," a phrase that one doesn't hear even now, and seems unlikely to return.) The woman officer, by the way, is shunted aside when the action begins, while the eighteen-year-old heiress is allowed to tag along on what is at least a quasi-military expedition. She does this by by batting her eyes and stamping her feet, and then has a long discussion with the only other female character of note about whether she should have sex with her boyfriend, providing Niven and Pournelle an opportunity to insert Heinleinesque speeches about sex and morality. All the women in the book are someone's "love interest" and everyone is of course heterosexual, and everyone assumes everyone else is as well. People will still use condoms (although there are also pills--but I guess all those implants are just a passing fad). Everyone drinks coffee and many smoke tobacco. You'd think in a thousand years something new would be discovered--neither of those were enormously popular a thousand years ago. In fact, think about how different society was a thousand years ago, and how different it would be in another thousand. Niven and Pournelle seem to think it would be like the 1950s with spaceships. Except for the politics, which are from the 1980s--the Arab Liberation Organization (ALO) and bomb- throwings on New Ireland. Arabs still hate Jews (apparently), and as much as I am a pessimist about the Middle East, even this seems unlikely without Israel to fight over in 3080 or whenever. Several authors and philosophers are quoted, but none are from after 1992. (Try not quoting anything written in the last thousand years for a while and you'll see how unlikely this is.) There's also the "Crazy Eddie" references, which to West Coasters may be okay, but here in the New York area, all they conjure up are images of the stereo dealer named that who was a staple on television for years. I don't know if this is intentional, but it's annoying as hell. In case you haven't figured it out, I do *not* recommend this book. In "Niven's Laws" he says, "It is a sin to waste the reader's time." This book constitutes a major sin. %T THE GRIPPING HAND %A Larry Niven %A Jerry Pournelle %C New York %D January 1993 %I Pocket Books %O hardback, US$22 %G ISBN 0-671-79593-2 %P 401pp %S Mote in God's Eye %V 2 Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | ecl@mtgzy.att.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Mar 12 03:28:54 1993 Xref: lysator.liu.se alt.books.reviews:296 rec.arts.books:11577 rec.arts.sf.reviews:62 Newsgroups: alt.books.reviews,rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!uunet!gumby!wupost!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!nobody From: sbrock@teal.csn.org (Steve Brock) Subject: The Gripping Hand by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (SF) Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: news@news.media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Colorado SuperNet, Inc. Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1993 02:09:51 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 35 %T THE GRIPPING HAND %A Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle %I Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, N.Y., NY 10020 %P 416 pp. %O $22.00 cloth %G 0-671-79573-2 REVIEW It's virtually impossible to improve on excellence, extremely difficult to equal it, and inordinately easy to fall short of it. Unfortunately, the authors of the sequel to the aclaimed "Mote in God's Eye" haven taken the easy way. "The Gripping Hand" lags far behind its eighteen-year-old predecessor, and I am as disappointed as anyone. At the close of "God's Eye," the Moties had been quarantined in their own solar system while the residents of Earth gave a collective sigh of relief. Horace Bury and Kevin Renner, though, had a feeling that they hadn't seen the last of the insect-like race. Twenty-five years later, the two races come together again - humans with a brain that controls all biological functions, and the Moties with different biological forms, each adapted to perform a specific function. The confrontation takes place amid diplomatic maneuvers and space wars, with the fate of Earth on the line. These two celebrated writers of hard science fiction have written, it turns out, a hard book to read with little below the surface. In "God's Eye," I was fascinated by their look at a race where society is broken up into organisms with distinct biological functions, master, warrior, builder, etc., straight out of Plato's "Republic." Here, it's action with little introspection. What a bringdown. I enjoyed Pournelle's description (in the August, 1992, edition of Byte magazine) of how he stored the novel's text in Word for Windows more than I did reading the story. Although the book is selling well in its hardback edition, I recommend waiting until it comes out in paperback. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sat Aug 28 11:52:10 1993 Path: liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!psinntp!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: kcc@wucs1.wustl.edu (Ken Cox) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Review of THE GRIPPING HAND by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <9308261550.AA23812@cs2.wustl.edu> Date: 26 Aug 93 21:37:06 GMT Lines: 59 THE GRIPPING HAND Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle A review by Ken Cox _The Mote in God's Eye_ was an excellent story of the first contact between the Empire of Man and the Moties. In _The Gripping Hand_, Niven and Pournelle return to the Empire and the Moties, producing a novel that, while not quite as good as _Mote_, is still well worth reading. However, _Hand_ is definitely a sequel, not a stand-alone novel; _Mote_ must be read first. Twenty-five years have passed since the events of _Mote_, which ended with the Moties blockaded into their system. Many of the characters from _Mote_ appear again, including a few that you might have thought would be dead -- such as Horace Bury, Imperial Trader, now 116 years old but still directing his formidable talents and resources to the service of Naval Intelligence. Twenty-five years ago, Bury nearly brought Motie Watchmakers into the Empire, and he still has nightmares about it. So when Kevin Renner, now serving as Bury's personal pilot (and superior in Intelligence), reports that the humans on one planet are using the construct "on the one hand, on the other hand, on the gripping hand", Bury is understandably perturbed. And events follow from there. Obviously Moties eventually make an appearance, and a visit to the Mote system follows. We see the various Mote castes in action again, learn something of the Mote asteroid civilizations, and get a few space battles and a lot of interspecies negotiations. This is one aspect in which _Hand_ falls short of _Mote_ -- the Moties' really important secrets are already known, and so there isn't that slight admixture of mystery and horror that _Mote_ had. _Hand_ is, at times, more of an extended travelogue with diplomatic talks. It's still a good read, but don't expect another _Mote_. %T The Gripping Hand %A Larry Niven %A Jerry Pournelle %I Pocket Books (a division of Simon and Schuster) %C New York %D February 1993 %G ISBN 0-671-79573-2 %P 402pp %O hardcover, US$22.00 %T The Mote in God's Eye %A Larry Niven %A Jerry Pournelle %I Simon and Schuster %C New York %D 1974 %G ISBN 1-56865-054-X %P 475pp %O hardcover, US$12.95 (1976 price) Ken Cox kcc@cs.wustl.edu From rec.arts.sf.written Tue Mar 15 15:53:39 1994 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Path: liuida!sunic!news.funet.fi!news.tele.fi!uunet!hearst.acc.Virginia.EDU!murdoch!fulton.seas.Virginia.EDU!abb3w From: abb3w@fulton.seas.Virginia.EDU (Arthur Bernard Byrne) Subject: REVIEW: Niven's _Crashlander_ Message-ID: Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU Organization: University of Virginia Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 18:00:13 GMT Lines: 61 Review of Larry Niven's latest collection in Known Space: _Crashlander_, the stories of Beowulf Schaeffer. I recently stumbled across this in the local bookstore, and read through it on the spot. I'll try to keep major spoilers out of this, but there is a minor one. To begin with, there's not that much new material. It does nicely put all of the Beowulf Schaeffer material under one cover. It does add a new story. It (pretty much) confirms Louis Wu's being Carlos's kid, and explains why he spent enough time on Home to be considered a colonist. On the down side, the new story is just a little more confusing than Niven's earlier, elegant work. He seems to spend a lot of time at playing head games, and having characters play head-games, which gets effing confusing. Niven seems to be building up to the long rumored _Down in Flames_, since at the end, as Beowulf Schaeffer is being put into cold sleep, he wonders whose face he'll see on waking up. A Pak protector, anyone? Still, I think Niven is slipping a bit... or more than a bit. Maybe he can get a good catharsis out of blowing up his universe, and come up with a good story. If only he would spend a little more time explaining things, instead of making such abrupt jumps... Yes, Larry, writing genius characters is *hard*, but you also need to make them understandable. Isn't that what SF is about, making the alien to be understandable? Anyway, I'd recommend picking it up to any serious Niven fan, or anyone who hasn't tried his work before (*is* there anyone?), as it's better than most of the new dreck out there, and puts all of the Schaeffer short stories under one cover, with a neat story line between them. For those of you who aren't serious fans, and have seen the old material, you may just want to look at the new connecting material and the new story in the bookstore-- maybe an hour's time. AB^2 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "You can have my encryption algorithm... when you pry my cold dead fingers from its private key." -John Barlow, "Decrypting the Puzzle Palace" From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sun Apr 10 14:28:50 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!crash!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: terman@rossi.astro.nwu.edu (James Terman) Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Review of CRASHLANDER by Larry Niven Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <2o71pp$mto@news.acns.nwu.edu> Date: Sat, 09 Apr 1994 20:50:37 GMT Lines: 91 Review of CRASHLANDER by Larry Niven The first Larry Niven book I ever read was RINGWORLD, and my reading habits have never been the same since. Up until that point, my SF reading was strictly limited to Star Trek and Heinlein juveniles. After reading RINGWORLD, I was really inspired to search out other SF books in hopes of getting that same sense of wonder. I mention this because I feel that whatever you might think of Larry Niven as a writer, he often succeeded in inspiring that sense of wonder that I think many of us read SF for. Good writing doesn't hurt, but it is surprising how often it is not necessarily that important. CRASHLANDER collects all the Known Space stories involving Beowulf Schaeffer previously published plus a new one written for this collection. These stories, especially AT THE CORE, FLATLANDER and THE BORDERLAND OF SOL, show Niven at his best in the grand hard SF tradition of revealing the wonder of the unknown. Arthur C. Clarke, of course, is the master of this (sans Gentry Lee :-), but as an avid reader of Niven in high school, I cannot deny Niven his due too. I neglect NEUTRON STAR in this list as it was hopelessly out of date when I read it ruining the story for me. I will touch more on this point later in the review. CRASHLANDER also includes a completely new Beowulf Shaeffer (the first in almost 20 years!) which is linked by introductory text to each of the old stories. The linking text is almost the most interesting part of the book as it allows Niven to tie up loose ends (such as what happened after Beowulf and the Elephant got back from Cueball, the anti-matter planet) and to apologize for all the scientific inaccuracies he has made in the stories. Most of these inaccuracies occurred simply due to the fact that the science he based the stories has been superseded with the passage of time. This is an occupational hazard for hard SF writers which, ironically enough, plagued Niven on his first professional sale. He had written a story that involved a lifeform based on Helium II which only exists at extremely low temperatures. The twist of the story was that it took place on Mercury's dark side. This was plausible back in the days when people thought that Mercury only kept one side to the Sun. Between the time the story was accepted (by Poul Anderson, no less) and published, astronomers determined that Mercury did rotate! Since it was Niven's first professional sale, they took pity on him and published it anyway. But it does illustrate the hazards of using real science instead of making it up as you go along. The contrast between the new Beowulf Shaeffer story and the old ones does show a clear evolution in Niven's writing. Frankly, I do not think this evolution is positive. I think his early writing was spare, but this allowed the wonder of the worlds he created to come through. Recently, he seems to be experimenting with more complex prose styles and characterization. If he was up to this as a writer, I would think this would be fine. However, I feel all he does is obscure the world building that was the best part of his early work. Hard science fiction writers should not be ashamed of a clear and simple prose style if they put sufficient effort into world building. In fact, it could perhaps be a deemed a requirement. Gregory Benford, who is probably the most skillful hard SF writer today, used a Joycean stream of conscious style which sometimes was effective in building an atmosphere but most of the time I just found distracting. Recently, his prose style has settled down, and I think his works are the better for it. Still, for the Niven completionist, CRASHLANDER is a must buy. With the new story and linking text, CRASHLANDER is about one third new material and does clear up lingering questions about the old stories. This might also be a good introduction to Niven for the reader who has heard about Niven but has not read any of him (although RINGWORLD is probably better). Although not by Niven, a good warm-up to Niven's upcoming third Ringworld novel is THE GUIDE TO LARRY NIVEN'S RINGWORLD by Kevin Stein. This book is not extremely well organized and thus falls short of a must buy. However, it does contain new info no doubt to be covered in the third Ringworld novel. Check it out. %A Niven, Larry %T Crashlander %I Ballantine %C New York, NY %D April, 1994 %G ISBN 0-345-38168-8 %P 281 pp. %O Paperback, US $4.99, Can $5.99 %A Stein, Kevin %T The Guide to Larry Niven's Ringworld %I Baen %C Riverdale, NY %D February, 1994 %G ISBN 0-671-72205-0 %P 188 pp. %O Softcover, US $14.00, Can $18.00 %O Hardback, US $20.00 -- | James L. Terman | Science may set limits to know- | | terman@holmes.astro.nwu.edu | ledge, but should not set limits | | terman@ossenu.astro.nwu.edu | to imagination. | | | - Bertrand Russell | From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 30 23:52:26 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!trane.uninett.no!eunet.no!nuug!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: sheol!throopw@dg-rtp.dg.com (Wayne Throop) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Crashlander, by Larry Niven Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 30 May 1994 21:43:15 GMT Organization: The Internet Lines: 81 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <770319284@sheol.UUCP> NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu This recently released paperback collects the Beowulf Shaeffer stories together, along with some connecting glue. If you haven't read them all, here's your chance. And the glue isn't bad. The stories are quite well known: Neutron Star, At the Core, Flatlander, Grendel, The Borderland of Sol, along with a new story related to the "glue", Procrustes. Neutron Star, At the Core, and The Borderland of Sol are each stories spun around strange astrophysical objects. The others more simply exploit more varied Known Space staples, such as the curious legal system, bits of Slaver technology, transfer booths, and so on. The more recent material applies more modern terms for what must have been the case all along, such as "nanotechnology" for some of the things that were handwaved away in earlier stories. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not. It gave an odd flavor on top of the basic staple of Known-Space-ness. This is perhaps similar to the flavor of some of the better Man-Kzin-War series. I'd place Crashlander (being done by Niven instead of by collaborators) as better work than the average of the Man-Kzin-War stuff. But in addition to pointing out that you will like this if this is the sort of thing you like, and pointing out that it's mostly a collection of older stories, the thing that perhaps *most* struck me is a contrast between the style of the older work, and the style of the connecting glue and the new story. (Note: possible minor spoilers, but only for the "classic material".) The early Beowulf Shaeffer was so *sure* he had everything significant figured out at the end of each story. It was something that minimally annoyed me about early Niven in general. "The puppeteers don't have a moon". Come *on*. That's totally *lame*. As is, in fact, a lot of the detail science behind, say Neutron Star and the others. For examples, in the situation described, Beowulf Shaeffer would have been torn apart, no matter that he hid at the center of gravity. And the Institute of Knowledge at Jinx didn't know about *tides*? We have the puppeteer reporting some of their followup work on the original attempt: "A mass that large can distort space by its rotation." Said the Puppeteer. "The Laskins' projected hyperbola was twisted across itself in such a way that we can deduce the star's period of rotation to be two minutes twenty-seven seconds." So, the IofK knew enough to run general relativistic calculations on the twist that a massive rotating body gives spacetime, but were naive enough to forget to model *tides*? Foo! Foo I say! My point is, both of these qualities (Niven as author having such faith that thought converges on one, and the correct, solutions to things, and having his characters actually it on it) seem to have have mellowed with age. "Wheels within wheels" makes for a more plausible story than sudden, simple, final strokes of insight. In the end, I rather like a style of sudden strokes of insight that reveal a deep nest of wheels-within-wheels. The juxtaposition of all these stories, written at various times, and with the most modern material between, points out the changes in Niven's style nicely. Niven's characters are no longer so cocksure of themselves. Beowulf points out that maybe the puppeteers just sent him in to *prove* their hulls safe, but they already knew about the tides. They didn't want to tell him in advance: they wanted him to figure it out. And that his "successful" blackmail was simply them reinforcing their covery story. A little bit of reconning from the more mellow, mature Niven. Similar things apply to interpretations of the Puppeteer's actions reacting to the core explosion. I think I like the later Niven somewhat better. At least... I *think* I do. %A Niven, Larry %T Crashlander %I DelRey (Ballantine) %C New York %D 1994 %G ISBN 0-345-38168-8 -- Wayne Throop throopw%sheol@concert.net throop@aur.alcatel.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Jun 8 23:09:35 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca (Aaron V. Humphrey) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Prograde Reviews--Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle:The Gripping Hand Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 8 Jun 1994 19:15:04 GMT Organization: The Anna Amabiaca Fan Club Lines: 51 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <2t3md7$gju@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca> Reply-To: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle: The Gripping Hand A Prograde Review by Aaron V. Humphrey I never really understood the entire furor about _The Mote In God's Eye_. I read the book, it was okay, but I didn't like it as much as _Footfall_. It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I found out how much so many other people liked it. So I wasn't terribly disappointed by _The Gripping Hand_, since I didn't feel that it had that much to live up to. It doesn't have the whole thrill of the first-contact story in _Mote_, true. And it takes a long time to get to the Motie segments anyway. But I liked the character development of Horace Bury and Kevin Renner, among others. The only characters I remembered from _Mote_ were ones I didn't like, like Sally Blaine... I remembered a fair few more from this one. I think one of the "problems" is that the Motie problem left over from the last book was something that needed to be tied up, but by itself it wasn't meaty enough for an entire book, without some "padding" that would concentrate on other matters--in this case, Horace Bury trying to convince anyone else that the Moties are still a threat. I read it without being affected by the hype that surrounded it...and I found it quite readable. If you're expecting the next SF classic, this wasn't it, but _every_ book can't be a classic... %A Niven, Larry %A Pournelle, Jerry %T The Gripping Hand %I Pocket %C New York %D 1993 %G ISBN 0-671-79574-0 %P 412 pp %S Mote %V Book 2 %O Paperback, USD5.99, CAD7.50 [P.S. In case anyone's confused about 'Retrograde' vs. 'Prograde' reviews, what they mean is simply that the latter are more recent, and the former are for 'older' books; the arbitrary dividing line I'm using at the moment is 1990.] -- --Alfvaen (Editor of Communique) Current Album--The Beatles:Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Current Book--Michelle Sagara:Lady of Mercy "It's a one-time thing. It just happens a lot." --Suzanne Vega Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!uunet!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!news.acns.nwu.edu!news.eecs.nwu.edu!wolff From: wolff@eecs.nwu.edu (Daniel Dobson) Subject: BOOK REVIEW: Niven and Pournelle's FOOTFALL (very minor spoilers) Message-ID: Summary: FOOTFALL = Stephen King Sender: wolff@eden.eecs.nwu.edu Organization: EECS Department, Northwestern University Date: Sat, 8 Oct 1994 01:30:31 GMT Lines: 103 BOOK REVIEW: FOOTFALL, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (SPOILERS, though very, very, very few that aren't spoiled by the front cover.) Giant mutant elephants invade earth after travelling in coldsleep all the way from Alpha Centauri. They're not really hyper-intelligent green men or clever interstellar traders out for a buck; these are H.G. Well's-style invaders who want the peoples of the Earth to roll over and submit to their domination. It sounds good. It has a neat cover. It even has a satisfyingly large number of words to back it up. Reading it, though, was like eating junk food---sure, it felt good while I was doing it, but I felt vaguely sick afterwards. Or like watching the entire run of "Married...with children" at once: you can't believe you spent all the time and effort for. . .this. Don't get me wrong; it wasn't like I didn't enjoy reading it. But I was never able to really worry about anything in the story. Were the good guys going to win? Could the Earth really crawl out from beneath the clawed, grey foot of the Travelling Herd? Oh, please. Nothing beats good, old-fashioned Yankee knowhow. Not ever. I called that from early on, though exactly *how* they were going to do that was beyond me. And I managed to be surprised at the end. Some of the ideas were interesting---how would primitive herd animals react to human individuality and spirit? In the wild, when an animal submits to the alpha male, it gives up all power to the victor and end of conflict until the next mating season. But here, the alien mindset of these animals can't contain these higher-order thoughts of life without the herd and without this reflex domination/submission idea. Interesting, as was INTEGRAL TREES. Niven and Pournelle have at least grabbed hold of some neat SF ideas drawn from the wild. But then, we get to the story. I work in AI, and we often characterize the world in warped ways. Some of my favorite examples are programs that characterize humans as wanting nothing more than money, sex, power over others, and food (in that order). I write them myself, programs with rules of thumb like "if something bad happens to somebody you don't like, you become happier and like the person who did it in proportion to how much you hated the guy you didn't like." The characters in FOOTFALL fall into this simple definition very well, and in that way, this book resembles a Stephen King novel: lots of pointless sex, talking about sex, adultery, and other such basal matters while DEATH DESCENDS FROM THE SKY! You'd think that there'd be more to talk about than human mating rituals when the planet is being taken over by elephants with an attitude. You get some fun scenes, though, like the Kansas division of weekend warriors going off to battle against sky-based weapons, Hoover Dam being shelled from orbit, Zulu warriors hurling spears at bumbling monsters, an alien spitting out its last warning about "thumbs! They have thumbs!" before keeling over from a (assumably) thumb-caused wound, and more from the vast storehouse of guilty pleasures afforded by FOOTFALL. I, too, was a little disappointed by the lack of general mayhem as civilization collapses---it seems like it should collapse, everyone agrees that "Wow, society is such a thin veneer over instinctual needs of food and territory", yet everyone just goes on with business as usual even though there are no phone communications, roadways, or bridges across major waterways. We don't get to hear about bands of looters and other such spoilage of war; I mean, if looting happens after a single evening of riots in L.A., why don't the people rebel when the elephants disrupt the entire continent? And even worse is the idea that the military would find a bunch of sci-fi writers, lock them in NORAD, give them everything they could ask for, and then actually *listen* to them is asking too much. This is the hardest to swallow. All the way through the book, I kept saying, "Oh, get off it," as the President of the United States walks around in awe of these great brains of hard sci-fi who always seem to know the right answer at the right time. Niven's own ego springs off the page and thrashes you senseless, with even a useless fan character who mourns the death of the SF convention (since you can't have a convention without transportation since how can all the neat-cool authors get there?). Sorry, guys; I think that, say, loss of drinking water from all the burst dams would be a slightly larger problem than no more filksongs. Still, parts of it are a good read. I love stories that have evil beings raining death down from orbiting assault platforms and I'm a sucker for human ingenuity getting the better of space-faring races (that's why I still watch "Trek"). A little less sex (and I can't believe I'm saying that!), a little more realism, and less "pat SF on the back" stuff and this would have been a really cool book. As it is, it's just OK. On a rising scale of 0 to 10 prehensile elephant trunks, this gets a solid 3.8. (Sort of 3 trunks and one that was injured in an industrial accident.) Wolff Dobson --- wolff@eecs.nwu.edu *OR* dobson@medici.ils.nwu.edu "Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack." Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!arclight.uoregon.edu!gatech!18.181.0.27.MISMATCH!sipb-server-1.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: tillman@aztec.asu.edu (P.D. TILLMAN) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 11 Jun 1999 14:24:20 -0400 Organization: none Lines: 52 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: tillman@aztec.asu.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2366 Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven Review Copyright 1999 Peter D. Tillman Rating: "A-". Light, fast-paced and fun -- a must-read for Niven fans. Way back in the sixties, Niven started a series of humorous time-travel stories: Svetz the hero-klutz is sent back from the 31st Century to capture extinct animals, but he never quite finds the "right" beastie. I remembered these as throwaways, but they've aged well. Rainbow Mars is a novel-length sequel, so you'd be well-advised to thumb over to the reprints first, to properly set the stage for the main event. Which involves -- hmm, how to say this without spoiling the fun -- a *very* fast-paced visit to a Martian past that's an amalgam of (and hommage to) Burroughs, Wells, Bradbury, and Heinlein with Integral Tree-style beanstalks thrown in as an illustration of Being Careful of what you wish for. Not to mention a Princess of Mars, and how she learned to surf. And sex in a hot-tub. And enough insider jokes and references to challenge the memory of the best-read fan. And yet *another* sfnal heroine named Miya=Maya. "This is my take on Mars, and Yggdrasil, and (God help me) the space program" -- done up in a delicious hard-fantasy souffle'. Bon appetit! Niven's pretty near the top of his form here -- he obviously had great fun writing this. I liked the "mature" tone of Destiny's Road -- but, to quote Dave Barry, "what I look forward to, is continued immaturity followed by death." Maybe "young Larry" is writing more good old new stuff? Lots more? Hope, hope.... Rainbow Mars is getting mixed reviews; recursive-sf humor clearly isn't to everyone's taste. If you haven't liked previous light Niven -- Svetz, Warlock, Fallen Angels -- this may not be for you. Rainbow Mars may not win him many new converts, but Niven trufans -- and readers who like a tall tale well-told -- will be well-pleased. Niven mentions in his afterword that "Svetz & the Beanstalk" (the working title) got its start as a collaboration with Terry Pratchett -- the mind boggles. That didn't work out, but Pratchett may have a *Discworld* beanstalk in the works?!? (over to you, Pratchett insiders...) %T Rainbow Mars %A Larry Niven %D 1999 %I Tor %O $25 %P 316pp %O Short novel (224 pp) + 5 reprint stories. %O Nice Bob Eggleston cover. Read more of my reviews: http://www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cambridge1-snf1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: reeder@cis.ohio-state.edu (doug reeder) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Has Larry Niven Lost His Edge?: A Review of _The Ringworld Throne_ and _Rainbow Mars_ Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Organization: Institute of Knowledge, Jinx Date: 06 Mar 2001 14:59:44 -0500 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Lines: 94 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: 983908786 senator-bedfellow.mit.edu 8790 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2831 Has Larry Niven Lost His Edge? A review of _The Ringworld Throne_ and _Rainbow Mars_ Copyright 2001 by P. Douglas Reeder [contains spoilers for earlier Ringworld novels. --AW] The prior two novels in Niven's Ringworld series won Hugo awards (or was it Nebula?); the prior stories in his Svetz series won none but were still entertaining. The Ringworld novels are hard science fiction (aside from reactionless drives and a half-a-dozen unreasonably strong substances) action adventure. One of the Big Ideas dear to SF, the Ringworld is not a planet, but a ring around a sun, with the livable area of a million planets. His characters are well delineated and memorable: the human adventurer Louis Wu, Chmee of the aggressive Kzin species, Nessus and later the Hindmost of the cowardly and crafty Puppeteers, and Ringworlders of various homonid species occupying different ecological niches. _Throne_ takes place ten years after Wu et. al. saved the Ringworld; the inveterate wanderer Wu is wandering around, Chmee has retired to the estates he carved out, but his son Acolyte has come to learn from Wu, the Hindmost sits in his impromptu fortress. It is really two books stapled together with the weakest of plot links. The first part involves an army of Ringworld natives of various species, led by a local acquaintance of Wu, who ally against an outbreak of vampires. The second part has Wu and his allies drawn into a gradually revealed struggle for control of the Ringworld. There are dozens of significant characters who are difficult to keep track of, despite the guide at the end, and most of the really important ones are not revealed until close to the end. Acolyte is sort of a generic Kzin, and neither do other new characters get enough space to really come alive. The Svetz series is based on the idea that, since time-travel is illogical, travel to the past is travel into fantasy universes. The terrified Hanville Svetz attempts to retrieve a horse, but instead brings back a unicorn, and so on. As humorous, "idea" stories, characterization takes a background to plot, but Svetz, the reserved Zeera, their boss Ra Chen, and the other characters have distinct identities. _Rainbow Mars_ is the title of both the new novella in the Svetz series and the collection of the novella and the Svetz short stories. The government has changed, and Svetz's department must ally with the Space department to justify their budgets. They decide on a trip to Mars of the past, to search for Martians who died out before humans had spaceflight. Svetz, Zeera, and the astronaut Miya are off on a romp through a mosaic of classic Mars science fiction (not all of which, alas, I could identify). Now Svetz is a bold adventurer; Zeera and Miya are too, and after the beginning it's hard to tell them apart, other than that Miya sleeps with the now-attractive Svetz and the inhibition-shedding Zeera doesn't. This is the core of the similarity I see between Throne and Mars: both start out with a reasonable amount of characterization and a reasonable pace of action, but toward the end of both works it's just event after event after event, in a dizzying crescendo of action. Fortunately the action make a logical progression and forms a plot, rather than an unrelated string. There is logic to the plotlines, and if you can keep track of what the heroes know, you can try and guess what the possible threats they will have to deal with, but I found that difficult. It hardly matters who comes up with their strategy to deal with the latest crisis, and indeed it's hard to remember. Svetz ends up seeming awfully similar to Wu, and the other characters similarly devoid of identity, merely filling jobs required by the plot. A large part of Niven's appeal has been his integral use of scientific speculation combined with memorable characters. He can still do the big ideas, but appears to have lost interest in doing the characterization. I hope these two works are an aberration, and not a sign of Niven's decline as a writer. These books are little more than adequate SF adventure. %A Niven, Larry %T Rainbow Mars %P 316 %I Tom Doherty Assoc. %C New York NY %D copyright 1999 %O Svetz series %A Niven, Larry %T The Ringworld Throne %O Ringworld series -- P. Douglas Reeder Lecturer, Computer. Science. Dept., Ohio State Univ.. reeder@cis.ohio-state.edu http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~reeder/reeder.html GE/S d+ s+:- a C+@$ UH+ P+ L E W++ N+ o? K? w !O M+ V PS+() PE Y+ PGP- t 5+ !X R>+ tv+ b+++>$ DI+ D- G e+++ h r+>+++ y+>++