Larry Niven

Laurence van Cott Niven (born April 30, 1938) is a US science fiction author. Perhaps his best-known work is Ringworld (1970), which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily in hard science fiction, utilizing big science concepts and theoretical physics in his stories. His writing also often includes elements of detective fiction and adventure stories. His fantasy is perhaps less well-known, and includes "The Magic Goes Away" series, which contains a serious message about overuse of resources. Niven also has a deft touch with humor, as evidenced in the collection "The Flight of the Horse."

Biography

Larry Niven was born in Los Angeles, California. He briefly attended the California Institute of Technology and graduated with a B.A. in mathematics (with a minor in psychology) from Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas, in 1962. He did graduate work in mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles.http://www.larryniven.org/biography.htm. He has since lived in Los Angeles suburbs, including Chatsworth and Tarzana as a full-time writer. He is independently wealthy, having inherited a substantial amount from his grandfather, Edward L. Doheny (otherwise known as a player in the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s).

Career

Niven is the author of numerous science fiction short stories and novels, beginning with his 1964 story "The Coldest Place". In this story, the coldest place concerned is the dark side of Mercury, which at the time the story was written was thought to be tidally locked with the Sun (it was found to rotate in a 2:3 resonance just months before the story was published).

In 1967, Niven won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story for "Neutron Star". He won the same award in 1972, for "Inconstant Moon", and in 1975 for "The Hole Man". In 1976, he won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette, for "The Borderland of Sol".

Niven has also written scripts for various science fiction television shows, including the original Land of the Lost series and The Animated Series ("The Slaver Weapon" with the Kzinti species). One of his short stories, "Inconstant Moon", was adapted for an episode of the television series The Outer Limits. He has also written for the DC comics character, Green Lantern, including in his stories hard science fiction concepts such as universal entropy and the red shift effect, which are common to his novels but unusual in comic books.

Many of Niven's stories take place in his Known Space universe, in which humanity shares the several solar systems nearest to Sol with over a dozen alien species, including species known as the Kzinti, and Pierson's Puppeteers, which are frequently central characters. The Ringworld series is set in the Known Space universe.

The creation of thoroughly worked-out alien species, which are very different from humans both physically and mentally, is recognised as one of Niven's main strengths. However, the criticism was made that once the basic charcterisitic of Niven's alien species have been defined, all subsequent actions by members of that species seem predictable and predetermined, giving them a kind of "pre-programmed" character lacking free will and excusing ruthless actions on their part (for example, the committing of genocide by a Pak Protector).

Niven has also written a logical fantasy series set in The Warlock's Era, detailed in The Magic Goes Away.

The "Bible" for the DC Comics character Green Lantern was written by Niven.

In recent years, much of his writing has been in collaboration with Jerry Pournelle and/or Steven Barnes.

Miscellaneous notes

A thinly disguised Niven appears as the character "Lawrence Van Cott" in the Greg Bear novel The Forge of God. A part of the computer game Wing Commander II takes place in the "Niven Sector" (it is believed that the Kilrathi, the feline alien enemy in the Wing Commander series, were based on Niven's Kzinti). There are those who think that Niven numbers may have been named in his honor, but despite his popularity and mathematical background, they are actually named for Ivan M. Niven. Niven's idea of a beanstalk sucking dry a planet (see Rainbow Mars) seems to be copied in the animated movie The Prophecy.

There is a The Gathering card named Nevinyrral's Disk, which contains Larry Niven's name backwards. When activated it destroys all creature, enchantment, and artifact cards in play, including itself. This is a reference to the Warlock's Wheel from The Warlock's Era/Magic Goes Away series, which when activated drains all magic from a region by using it up with an open-ended enchantment. As well, the game Netrunner has an artificial intelligence named Nevinyrral.

Larry Niven introduced the idea of a flash crowd in his story "Flash Crowd" (1973), which evolved in 2003 to the flash mob in which people meet together to protest in a creative way at a specific time and place to disappear as quickly as they appeared some minutes later. The term Flash Crowd is also used to describe a web site showing little or no response due to excessive amounts of traffic. A Flash Crowd on a web site is synonymous with Slashdotting.

One of Niven's most humorous works is Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, in which he uses real-world physics to underline the difficulties of Superman and Lois Lane mating.

Larry Niven's novels frequently make use of the stasis field concept, which he also popularized.

An interesting note about Larry Niven's work is that he often employs the use of terms that, by the choice of words, are evidently metaphorical, but are in fact meant to be taken literally. A few examples of this are:

The novel entitled Destiny's Road is in fact about a road on a planet called Destiny.
In the Ringworld series, there was an event in the Ringworld's past known as the Fall of the Cities, in which floating cities literally fell out of the sky.
The novel entitled The Integral Trees is in fact referring to trees with tufts at each end, shaped like the mathematical integral sign.

Bibliography

Known Space

Ringworld

Ringworld (1970)
The Ringworld Engineers (1979)
- Guide to Larry Niven's Ringworld (1994) (with Kevin Stein)
The Ringworld Throne (1996)
Ringworld's Children (2004)

Man-Kzin

Man-Kzin Wars (1988)
Man-Kzin Wars II (1989)
Man-Kzin Wars III (1990)
Man-Kzin Wars IV (1991)
Man-Kzin Wars V (1992)
Man-Kzin Wars VI (1994)
Man-Kzin Wars VII (1995)
Man Kzin Wars VIII: Choosing Names (1998)
Man-Kzin Wars IX (2002)
The Wunder War (2003)
Man-Kzin Wars XI (2005)

World of Ptavvs (1966)
A Gift From Earth (1968)
Neutron Star (collection) (1968)
The Shape of Space (collection) (1969)
Protector (1973)
Tales of Known Space: The Universe of Larry Niven (collection) (1975)
''Three Books of Known Space (omnibus) (1989)
The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton (fix-up novel) (1976)
The Patchwork Girl (1980)
- World of Ptavvs / A Gift from Earth / Neutron Star (omnibus) (1991)
- The Collected Tales of Gil 'the Arm' Hamilton (omnibus) (1995)

With Jerry Pournelle

Inferno (1976)
Lucifer's Hammer (1977)
Oath of Fealty (1982)
Footfall (1985)

Moties

The Mote in God's Eye (1974)
The Gripping Hand aka The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye (1993)

Golden Road (set in the same fantasy world as The Magic Goes Away)

The Burning City (2000)
Burning Tower (2005)

Heorot (with Steven Barnes and Jerry Pournelle)

The Legacy of Heorot (1987)
The Dragons of Heorot aka Beowulf's Children (1995)
Destiny's Road (1997) written alone by Niven, not really a continuation of Heorot series, located in the same universe and some events from the first two novels are briefly mentioned.

Dream Park (with Steven Barnes)

Dream Park (1981)
The Barsoom Project (1989)
The California Voodoo Game aka The Voodoo Game (1992)

The Descent of Anansi (1982)

The State

External links

References

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