Neil Fein's Blog

Larry Niven
Crashlander

I first read Neutron Star when I was maybe 12, in a book called Where Do We Go From Here, an anthology of science-heavy SF stories by Isaac Asimov. There was a brief essay at the end of each story about the science.

Beowulf Schaeffer is a former pilot and perpetual tourist. A protagonist who is intelligent enough to think his way out of situations he really should have been smart enough to avoid makes for fun stories.

Larry Niven's "hard" science fiction is generally characterized as heavy on mind-blowing ideas with weak characters. Louis Wu, Beowulf Schaeffer, Richard Harvey-Schulz Mann, and Gil Hamilton could all be the same man. On the other hand, the ideas are good enough that it's hard to care.

These stories - with one exception - were all written when Mr. Niven was at the zenith of his ability. Even the new story, Procrustes, while hardly a mind-blowing tale, is only weak by comparison to the earlier stories, on it's own it's a fun tale. And, unlike much of his recent work, Procrustes has many fascinating ideas about how technology can change our lives - in this case, it's nanotechnological medicine. Showing it as a special case that hasn't yet become a part of mainstream society cheats the reader a little, though.

If you already have The collections Neutron Star and Tales of Known Space, you'd be buying the book for the one new story and a framing story that really adds nothing. But it's a fun way of stringing the stories together into a narrative. These stories are easily among Larry Niven's best writing.

Labels: books