Books by Niven, Larry
- Benford, Gregory and Larry Niven.
The Bowl of Heaven.
New York: Tor Books, 2012.
ISBN 978-1-250-29709-9.
-
Readers should be warned that this is the first half of a
long novel split across two books. At the end of this volume,
the story is incomplete and will be resumed in the sequel,
Shipstar.
January 2021 
- Niven, Larry and Jerry Pournelle.
Escape from Hell.
New York: Tor Books, 2009.
ISBN 978-0-7653-1632-5.
-
Every now and then you read a novel where you're absolutely certain as
you turn the pages that the author(s) had an absolute blast writing
it, and when that's the case the result is usually superbly
entertaining. That is certainly true here. How could two past
masters of science fiction and fantasy not delight in a
scenario in which they can darn to heck anybody they
wish, choosing the particular torment for each and every sinner?
In this sequel to the authors' 1976 novel
Inferno, the protagonist
of the original novel, science fiction writer Allen Carpenter,
makes a second progress through Hell. This time, after an
unfortunate incident on the Ice in the Tenth Circle, he starts
out back in the Vestibule, resolved that this time he will
escape from Hell himself and, as he progresses ever downward
toward the exit described by Dante, to determine if it is possible
for any damned soul to escape and to aid those willing to follow him.
Hell is for eternity, but that doesn't mean things don't change there.
In the decades since Carpenter's first traverse, there have been many
modifications in the landscape of the underworld. We meet
many newly-damned souls as well as revisiting those
encountered before. Carpenter recounts his story to Sylvia Plath, who as a
suicide, has been damned as a tree in the Wood of the Suicides in the
Seventh Circle and who, rescued by him, accompanies him downward to the
exit. The ice cream stand in the Fiery Desert is a refreshing
interlude from justice without mercy! The treatment of one particular
traitor in the Ice is sure to prove controversial; the authors
explain their reasoning for his being there in the Notes at the end.
A theme which runs throughout is how Hell is a kind of Heaven to
many of those who belong there and, having found their niche in
Eternity, aren't willing to gamble it for the chance of salvation.
I've had jobs like that—got better.
I'll not spoil the ending, but will close by observing that the
authors have provided a teaser for a possible
Paradiso
somewhere down the road.
Should that come to pass, I'll look forward
to devouring it as I did this thoroughly rewarding yarn. I'll wager that
if that work comes to pass,
Pournelle's
Iron Law of Bureaucracy will be found to apply as Below, so Above.
March 2009 
- Niven, Larry, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn.
Fallen Angels.
New York: Baen Books, 1991.
ISBN 978-0-7434-7181-7.
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I do not have the slightest idea what the authors were up to
in writing this novel. All three are award-winning writers
of “hard” science fiction, and the first two are
the most celebrated team working in that genre of all time.
I thought I'd read all of the Niven and Pournelle (and
assorted others) collaborations, but I only discovered this one
when the 2004 reprint edition was mentioned on
Jerry Pournelle's Web log.
The premise is interesting, indeed delicious: neo-Luddite
environmentalists have so crippled the U.S. economy (and presumably
that of other industrialised nations, although they do not figure
in the novel) that an incipient global cooling trend due to
solar
inactivity has tipped over into an ice age. Technologists are
actively persecuted, and the U.S. and Soviet space stations and
their crews have been marooned in orbit, left to fend for themselves
without support from Earth. (The story is set in an unspecified
future era in which the orbital habitats accommodate a substantially
larger population than space stations envisioned when the
novel was published, and have access to lunar resources.)
The earthbound technophobes, huddling in the cold and dark as the
glaciers advance, and the orbiting technophiles, watching their
meagre resources dwindle despite their cleverness, are forced to
confront one another when a “scoop ship” harvesting
nitrogen from Earth's atmosphere is shot down by a missile and
makes a crash landing on the ice cap descending on upper midwest
of the United States. The two “angels”—spacemen—are
fugitives sought by the Green enforcers, and figures of legend to
that small band of Earthlings who preserve the dream of a human
destiny in the stars.
And who would they be? Science fiction fans, of course! Sorry,
but you just lost me, right about when I almost lost my lunch. By “fans”,
we aren't talking about people like me, and probably many readers of this
chronicle, whose sense of wonder was kindled in childhood by science fiction
and who, even as adults, find it almost unique among contemporary literary
genera in being centred on ideas, and exploring “what if”
scenarios that other authors do not even imagine. No, here we're talking
about the subculture of “fandom”, a group of people, defying
parody by transcending the most outrageous attempts, who invest
much of their lives into elaborating their own private vocabulary,
writing instantly forgotten fan fiction and fanzines, snarking and sniping
at one another over incomprehensible disputes, and organising conventions
whose names seem ever so clever only to other fans, where they gather to
reinforce their behaviour. The premise here is that when the mainstream
culture goes South (literally, as the glaciers descend from the
North), “who's gonna save us?”—the fans!
I like to think that more decades of reading science fiction than
I'd like to admit to has exercised my ability to suspend
disbelief to such a degree that I'm willing to accept
just about any self-consistent premise as
the price of admission to an entertaining yarn. Heck, last week
I recommended a zombie book! But for the work of three renowned
hard science fiction writers, there are a lot of serious factual
flubs here. (Page numbers are from the mass market paperback
edition cited above.)
- The
Titan II
(not “Titan Two”) uses
Aerozine 50
and
Nitrogen tetroxide
as propellants,
not RP-1 (kerosene) and LOX. One could not fuel a
Titan II with RP-1 and LOX, not only because the sizes of the
propellant tanks would be incorrect for the mixture
ratio of the propellants, but because the Titan II lacks
the ignition system for non-hypergolic propellants.
(pp. 144–145)
- “Sheppard reach in the first Mercury-Redstone?” It's
“Shepard”,
and it was the third
Mercury-Redstone flight. (p. 151)
- “Schirra's Aurora 7”. Please: Aurora
7 was Carpenter's capsule (which is in the Chicago museum);
Schirra's was Sigma 7. (p. 248)
- “Dick Rhutan”. It's “Rutan”. (p, 266)
- “Just hydrogen. But you can compress it, and
it will liquify. It is not that difficult.”. Well,
actually, it is. The
critical
point for hydrogen is 23.97° K, so regardless of how
much you compress it, you still need to refrigerate it to a
temperature less than half that of liquid nitrogen to obtain the
liquid phase. For liquid hydrogen at one atmosphere, you need
to chill it to 20.28° K. You don't just need a compressor,
you need a powerful cryostat to liquefy hydrogen.
“…letting the O2 boil off.”
Oxygen squared? Please, it's O2. (p. 290)
-
“…the jets were brighter than the dawn…“.
If this had been in verse, I'd have let it stand as metaphorical,
but it's descriptive prose and dead wrong. The Phoenix
is fueled with liquid hydrogen and oxygen, which burn with an
almost invisible flame. There's no way the rocket exhaust
would have been brighter than the dawn.
Now it seems to me there are three potential explanations of the
numerous lapses of this story from the grounded-in-reality
attention to detail one expects in hard science fiction.
-
The authors deliberately wished to mock science
fiction fans who, while able to reel off the entire credits
of 1950s B movie creature features from memory, pay little
attention to the actual history and science of the
real world, and hence they get all kinds
of details wrong while spouting off authoritatively.
-
The story is set is an alternative universe,
just a few forks from
the one we inhabit. Consequently, the general outline
is the same, but the little details differ. Like,
for example, science fiction fans being able to
work together to accomplish something productive.
-
This manuscript, which, the authors “suspect
that few books have ever been delivered this close to
a previously scheduled publication date”
(p. 451) was never subjected to the intensive
fact-checking scrutiny which the better kind of
obsessive-compulsive fan will contribute out of a sense
that even fiction must be right where it
intersects reality.
I'm not gonna fingo any
hypotheses here. If you have no interest whatsoever in
the world of science fiction fandom, you'll probably, like
me, consider this the “Worst Niven and Pournelle—Ever”.
On the other hand, if you can reel off every Worldcon from the
first Boskone to the present and pen Feghoots for the local
'zine on days you're not rehearsing with the filk band, you may
have a different estimation of this novel.
May 2008 
- Niven, Larry and Matthew Joseph Harrington.
The Goliath Stone.
New York: Tor Books, 2013.
ISBN 978-0-7653-3323-0.
-
This novel is a tremendous hoot which the authors undoubtedly had
great fun writing and readers who know what's going on may
thoroughly enjoy while others who don't get it may be disappointed.
This story, which spans a period from 5 billion years before the
present to A.D. 2052 chronicles the
expansion of sentient life beyond the Earth and humankind's first
encounter with nonhuman beings. Dr. Toby Glyer, pioneer in
nanotechnology, arranges with a commercial space launch company
to send a technologically opaque payload into space. After
launch, it devours the orbital stage which launched it
and disappears. Twenty-five years later, a near-Earth asteroid is
detected as manoeuvring itself onto what may be a collision
course with Earth, and fears spread of Glyer's asteroid retrieval mission,
believed to involve nanotechnology, having gone horribly wrong.
Meanwhile, distinctly odd things are happening on Earth: the
birth rate is falling dramatically, violent crime is way down
while suicides have increased, terrorism seems to have come
to an end, and test scores are rising everywhere. Athletes
are shattering long-established records with wild abandon,
and a disproportionate number of them appear to be
American Indians. Glyer and space launch entrepreneur May
Wyndham sense that eccentric polymath William Connors,
who they last knew as a near-invalid a quarter century
earlier, may be behind all of this, and soon find themselves
inside Connors' secretive lair.
This is an homage to golden age science fiction where an
eccentric and prickly genius decides to remake the world
and undertakes to do so without asking permission from anybody.
The story bristles with dozens if not hundreds of references
to science fiction and fandom, many of which I'm sure I missed.
For example, “CNN cut to a feed with Dr. Wade Curtis,
self-exiled to Perth when he'd exceeded the federal age limit
on health care.” Gentle readers, start your search engines!
If you're looking for “hard” science fiction like
Niven's
“Known Space”,
this is not your book. For a romp through the near future which
recalls the
Skylark
novels of
“Doc” Smith,
with lots of fannish goodies and humourous repartee among the
characters, it's a treat.
October 2013 