(No, it’s not A**hole in Space)
What an enjoyable read! There’s just about everything for the discriminating SF palate: aliens, rockets, laser cannons, teleportation pods, genetic engineering, Mars, more aliens, neutron stars, faster-than-light travel, and even more aliens: mysterious, threatening nasties who hold the power to destroy our sun and lack the morality to prevent them from so doing.
Eight of the short stories (well, there’s one novella thrown in) are hard-SF. My favorite is “There is a Tide,” starring our old friend Louis Wu from Niven’s best-known work, Ringworld, locking horns with an untrusting critter over a strange treasure which neither realize has the capacity to destroy them both. I also enjoyed “The Hole Man,” about a microscopic black hole discovered on Mars and the titular scientist obsessed with it, and especially the novella, “The Fourth Profession,” just about perfect from every aspect a short story needs: characters, conflict, and, of course, cosmic war depending on a bartender. Someday it will be filmed as a cross between Bogartian-film noir and Lucasian alien cantina-ism.
The remaining two pieces give the collection an interesting hue. The first, “$16,940.00” is a gritty, telephone conversation shake-down that’s begging to be filmed in some way shape form by Quentin Tarantino. And the most interesting piece, in an odd sort of way, is “Bigger Than Worlds,” in which Niven spends a dozen or so pages describing the vehicles for mankind’s outward expansion into, and mastery of, the universe. Ideas included and expounded upon are multi-generation starships, flying cities, macroscopic rings (as featured in Ringworld) and spaghetti tubes so large they surround stars and star systems, Dyson spheres (a sphere built around a star at a distance of 1 AU to harness completely the energy of said star), and, ultimately, megaspheres (Dyson spheres enclosing whole galaxies). Though I have actually pondered the future of the species of man and its journey out of the cradle, this little essay really opened up my eyes.
A great read. Just what I needed and what I was looking for. I did a geekish thing and “graded” each story; the collection averages a strong B+. What weighed it down, I think, were a trio of stories which focus primarily on a teleportation device and how it affects the far-flung future of, well, our present now. They didn’t seem plausible, didn’t excite me, and one I flat-out didn’t grasp where Niven was going, despite reading the final page a couple of times. But the other seven stories where well worth the time and money spent.
What an enjoyable read! There’s just about everything for the discriminating SF palate: aliens, rockets, laser cannons, teleportation pods, genetic engineering, Mars, more aliens, neutron stars, faster-than-light travel, and even more aliens: mysterious, threatening nasties who hold the power to destroy our sun and lack the morality to prevent them from so doing.
Eight of the short stories (well, there’s one novella thrown in) are hard-SF. My favorite is “There is a Tide,” starring our old friend Louis Wu from Niven’s best-known work, Ringworld, locking horns with an untrusting critter over a strange treasure which neither realize has the capacity to destroy them both. I also enjoyed “The Hole Man,” about a microscopic black hole discovered on Mars and the titular scientist obsessed with it, and especially the novella, “The Fourth Profession,” just about perfect from every aspect a short story needs: characters, conflict, and, of course, cosmic war depending on a bartender. Someday it will be filmed as a cross between Bogartian-film noir and Lucasian alien cantina-ism.
The remaining two pieces give the collection an interesting hue. The first, “$16,940.00” is a gritty, telephone conversation shake-down that’s begging to be filmed in some way shape form by Quentin Tarantino. And the most interesting piece, in an odd sort of way, is “Bigger Than Worlds,” in which Niven spends a dozen or so pages describing the vehicles for mankind’s outward expansion into, and mastery of, the universe. Ideas included and expounded upon are multi-generation starships, flying cities, macroscopic rings (as featured in Ringworld) and spaghetti tubes so large they surround stars and star systems, Dyson spheres (a sphere built around a star at a distance of 1 AU to harness completely the energy of said star), and, ultimately, megaspheres (Dyson spheres enclosing whole galaxies). Though I have actually pondered the future of the species of man and its journey out of the cradle, this little essay really opened up my eyes.
A great read. Just what I needed and what I was looking for. I did a geekish thing and “graded” each story; the collection averages a strong B+. What weighed it down, I think, were a trio of stories which focus primarily on a teleportation device and how it affects the far-flung future of, well, our present now. They didn’t seem plausible, didn’t excite me, and one I flat-out didn’t grasp where Niven was going, despite reading the final page a couple of times. But the other seven stories where well worth the time and money spent.
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